The Boomers' Revenge

MANIFESTO

A couple of things strike me as I look upon this situation:

Over the next four years, more than a third of the nation’s 3.2 million teachers could retire, depriving classrooms of experienced instructors and straining taxpayer-financed retirement systems, according to a new report.

The problem is aggravated by high attrition among rookie teachers, with one of every three new teachers leaving the profession within five years, a loss of talent that costs school districts millions in recruiting and training expenses, says the report, by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, a nonprofit research advocacy group.

"The traditional teaching career is collapsing at both ends," the report says. "Beginners are being driven away" by low pay and frustrating working conditions, and accomplished veterans who still have much to contribute are being separated from their schools by "obsolete retirement systems" that encourage teachers to move from paycheck to pension when they are still in their mid-50s, the report says.

I'm struck by the fact that rookies just don't stay very long—more than half leave within five years—and that the Times recognizes the reason for their early exit as the crapola that exists in education. To use Connecticut as an example, new teachers have to jump through so many state-mandated hoops (while simultaneously trying to keep their feet on the ground) in their first two years that they're dissuaded from entering the profession at all. And once they actually get going with their careers, they find that it's a pretty onerous one: The teachers prep programs never really let on how much homework there'll be.

Moreover, it seems quite ironic to me that the very best candidates are mere dabblers as a result of the Teach for America program, wherein top notch participants know they're going to be at it for only a few years until they get a "real job."

And as one who plans to wait until 2015 to retire, I'm a little nonplussed by the possibility that the state's retirement system might be strained in the next four years. Perhaps I'll have to reconsider my plans.