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9486 in the collection
Teaching Candidates Aplenty, but the Jobs Are Few
In a profession long seen as recession-proof, applications far outnumber the jobs available for educators. Of course the corporate politicos who scream that everybody should go to college never admit that the jobs aren't there.
This article provoked a lot of passion from readers. Here are a few of the online comments:
Reader Comment: . . . No mystery and no surprises; the only real puzzle is why colleges and universities continue to admit and graduate so many students in Education programs when there are obviously so few jobs. This "crisis" may well be one that has been manufactured by institutes of higher learner out of pure financial self-interest.
Reader Comment: "Jade Stier, 27, finally gave up and enrolled in a nursing program last fall — along with five other former teachers — after three years of looking for an elementary school job."
This is the reality of the Millennial generation. Our childhoods were abbreviated to make room for all the extra-curricular activities, all the SAT study sessions, all the college-level AP exams that are now a requirement for college admissions.
Then, once in college, we faced new anti-grade-inflation policies that some of my former professors used to cite as reason for "not believing in As" while our tuition, and the professors' pay, went up without fail every single year. (Isn't tenure sweet? Too bad it probably won't exist by time my generation is eligible.)
Now when someone my age applies to a job, we face the same level of competition we did trying to get into college, only this time it's the difference between being able to support yourself or having to move back in with your parents after dedicating four years of your life to an ultimately useless and overpriced piece of paper.
As if tens of thousands in student loan debt and the frustration of unemployment weren't enough, moving back home is still considered a "cop out" in our status-driven society.
My generation has been labeled a bunch of "slackers" since before I can even remember. Unlike the Boomer generation, however, we played by the increasingly draconian rules placed upon us due to the misbehavior of both Boomers and Gen Xers and yet receive only stricter standards and increased competition as a result.
The Boomers didn't trust anyone over 30 because of Vietnam. I don't trust anyone over 30 because I'm not sure what double standard they're going to impose on me next.
Reader Comment:. . . We need to increase the number of people coming from schools of education, not rely upon ivy league graduates who want to slum as a teacher until they can get back into the financial markets. I fear that the learning curve for the country will be very painful if we follow the current thinking about who can be the best teachers. The how to teach is just as important as the what to teach.
Reader Comment: I was shocked to read this story. Here we are, spending untold billions on our bloated defense budget, including the waging of two endless wars, and we don't have the money to educate our children properly.
When people talk about reducing the deficit, and providing more money for education, I seldom hear anything about reducung spending for war.
It's always about Social Security and Medicare. What about the 800 military bases we maintain around the world? Certainly, there are billions that can be cut there.
Is it any wonder that Obama's support has dried up? The Change he spoke about so gloriously has become change of the wrong kind!
Reader Comment: The new governor of New Jersey is cutting thousands of teacher jobs so that he can cut or avoid raising taxes on the wealthy. This money will either be spent on consumption or saved. If it were just spent on the teachers' salaries it would have the same effect on local businesses but instead of paying for weekend houses at the Jersey shore and other luxuries, kids would be getting a better education. Also, we'd have fewer people collecting unemployment benefits.
Reader Comment: What makes me really angry about our education system is that there are thousands of baby boomer teachers, making twice what a new teacher makes, sitting on their jobs for another year or two. We laid of 20 teachers this year in my school district. If the 12 teachers with 35+ years would actually retire, they would not only save teacher's jobs, they would save our school budget. Please retire. If you keep waiting, in five years when you will have to retire, all of the highly qualified teachers looking for jobs will be somewhere else.
Reader Comment [from Knoxville, TN]: I did it for two years and still wake up in a sweat from middle school foxhole flashbacks. A person would be wise to learn hvac systems or how to drive a big rig instead.
By Winnie Hu
PELHAM, N.Y. — In the month since Pelham Memorial High School in Westchester County advertised seven teaching jobs, it has been flooded with 3,010 applications from candidates as far away as Colorado and California. The Port Washington district on Long Island is sorting through 3,620 applications for eight positions — the largest pool the superintendent has seen in his 41-year career.
Even hard-to-fill specialties are no longer so hard to fill. Jericho, N.Y., has 963 people to choose from for five spots in special education, more than twice as many as in past years. In Connecticut, chemistry and physics jobs in Hartford that normally attract no more than five candidates have 110 and 51, respectively.
The recession seems to have penetrated a profession long seen as recession-proof: superintendents, education professors and job-seekers say that teachers are facing the worst job market since the Great Depression. Amid state and local budget cuts, cash-poor urban districts like New York City and Los Angeles, which used to hire thousands of young people every spring, have taken down the help wanted signs.
Even upscale suburban districts are bracing for huge levels of layoffs -- school officials and union leaders estimate than more than 150,000 teachers nationwide could lose their jobs next year, far more than any other time, including the last major financial crisis of the 1970s.
Juliana Pankow, who just graduated from Teachers College at Columbia University, has sent out 40 résumés since January. A few Saturdays ago, she showed up at a Harlem school because she heard the principal would be there (she was invited back to teach a demonstration lesson, but it may be for naught since the city has a hiring freeze). Now, Ms. Pankow said she may have to move back in with her parents in Scarsdale, N.Y., and perhaps take up SAT tutoring.
"I can't think of anything else I'd rather do," said Ms. Pankow, 23, as she waited outside the Pelham principal's office last week, one of 619 people applying for one English position. "Which is a problem, because I might have to do something else."
At Teachers College, so many students like Ms. Pankow are looking for work that two recent job fairs attracted a record 650 students and alumni, up from 450 last year. And last month, the college added a new job fair focusing on Harlem schools.
But job postings are down by half this year, to between one and two dozen a week -- mostly in charter schools, according to Marianne Tramelli, the college's director of career services.
Charter schools, which are publicly financed but independently run, are practically the only ones hiring in New York and elsewhere, because of growing enrollments amid expanding political and economic support for school choice. Even so, they do not have nearly enough jobs to go around.
In New York, where the Success Charter Network is hiring 135 new teachers for its seven schools in Harlem and the Bronx, some of the 8,453 applicants have called the office three times a day to check on their status. Veteran teachers have also offered to work as assistant teachers.
"It's heartbreaking -- there's much more desperation out there," said Eva S. Moskowitz, a former city councilwoman who is the network's founder and chief executive.
KIPP, another charter school network with 82 schools nationwide, has received 745 applications since January at its seven schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, compared with 385 last year.
At the University of Pennsylvania, most of the 90 new teachers who graduated last weekend are still jobless. Many had counted on offers from the Philadelphia public schools, but had their interviews canceled this month after the district announced a hiring freeze.
"We're trying to encourage everyone to hold on," said Kathy Schultz, an education professor at Penn. "But that's very difficult because students have taken out loans and want to be assured of a job."
Michigan State University has pushed its 500 graduating teachers to look out of state. As local jobs have dried up, it started an internship program in Chicago, which is a four-hour drive from the East Lansing, Mich., campus. Professors now go with students to the annual campus job fair to make sure they do not hover around the Michigan tables, but walk over to, say, North Carolina, Virginia or Texas.
"We have a culture of people wanting to stay here and teach where they went to school, but we also want them to get jobs," said Suzanne Wilson, chairwoman of the Department of Teacher Education.
Jade Stier, 27, finally gave up and enrolled in a nursing program last fall -- along with five other former teachers -- after three years of looking for an elementary school job. She sent out hundreds of résumés, only to land one interview a year. She settled for working as a substitute teacher, earning $85 a day with no benefits.
"Spending $50,000 for an education you can't use is really frustrating," she said. "I definitely miss teaching, but I felt like I had no other choice. I had to just move on."
If there is an upside to the shortage of teaching jobs, it is that schools now have their pick of candidates.
Teach for America, which places graduates from some of the nation's top colleges in poor schools, has seen applications increase by nearly a third this year to 46,000 -- for 4,500 slots. From Ivy League colleges alone, there are 1,688 would-be teachers.
Here in Pelham, a well-regarded district where teaching salaries range from $50,000 to $134,000, high school administrators and teachers have spent the past three weeks winnowing résumés. Candidates with grade-point averages below 3.0 were eliminated (3.3 in some departments), as were those who missed the April 30 application deadline. Almost 200 were invited for interviews.
"It's very difficult," said Jeannine Clark, the high school principal in Pelham. "More so than in years past because there are so many very qualified candidates."
While Ms. Clark and the English supervisor were meeting with prospective teachers last week, candidates for the social studies job were down the hallway typing a 40-minute timed essay on the French Revolution. Upstairs, interviews for physics and biology teachers were being conducted.
"People will come in here begging for anything," said Dennis R. Lauro Jr., the superintendent, who started closing his office door this year because out-of-work teachers would drop in unannounced to hand him résumés. "We've never seen these kinds of numbers before."
Top candidates will be asked to return several more times to meet with Dr. Lauro, parents and students and teach a demonstration class.
Ms. Pankow is hoping she will be among them.
"It would be unbelievable," she said. "I would love it here, but I'm not necessarily putting all my eggs in this basket."
— Winnie Hu
New York Times
2010-05-19
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/nyregion/20teachers.html?hp
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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