7 million students in America attend special education classes that cater to their learning needs. But whether it was speech or physical therapy or modified instruction, teaching shut down for some when classes went virtual during the pandemic.

NPR explores this story, which deserves your attention. NPR reports:

Without the usual access to educators, therapists and in-person aides, these families, and many like them, say they watched their children slide backward, losing academic, social and physical skills. And now they’re demanding help, arguing to judges, state departments of education and even to the U.S. Department of Education that schools are legally required to do better by their students with disabilities. In complaints filed across the country, families say schools need to act now to make up for the vital services kids missed.

It is not just that students who need special education didn’t progress as fast as they might have, educators and parents fear they may have lost ground. NPR again:

In October 2020, RAND researchers asked a sample of K-12 principals to estimate how their students with disabilities would perform in fall 2020 compared with in fall 2019. A little more than two-thirds of those principals said their students with disabilities would perform somewhat or much lower than they had before the pandemic.

Will a fourth of all teachers really quit in the next year?

A new Rand survey says one in four teachers are considering quitting before the end of the next school year.

This may sound familiar since it is the same thing we heard a year ago. The latest figures do not show a significant increase in teacher resignations despite the dire predictions of the last year.

The newest survey — which was conducted earlier this year, before most schools reopened to students — found:

“Teacher stress was a concern prior to the pandemic and may have only become worse. The experiences of teachers who were considering leaving at the time of our survey were similar in many ways to those of teachers who left the profession because of the pandemic,” said Elizabeth Steiner, lead author of the report and a policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization. “This raises the concern that more teachers may decide to quit this year than in past years if nothing is done to address challenging working conditions and support teacher well-being.”

Stressful working conditions included a mismatch between actual and preferred mode of instruction, lack of administrator and technical support, frequent technical issues with remote teaching, and lack of implementation of COVID-19 safety measures. Stressors relating to mode of instruction and health were ranked most highly by teachers surveyed.

About a third of the teachers in the survey not only were teaching other people’s kids remotely, but they had kids of their own at home at the same time.

Chalkbeat, an education website, reports:

While some news reports and polls triggered fears of a “massive wave” of teacher resignations going into this school year, that doesn’t seem to have happened.

But as the economy improves, and teachers have more options, will that change?

“If the economy accelerates with all the government spending, as I anticipate it will, outside-of-teaching opportunities are going to look pretty good, so we may well face some staffing challenges,” said Dan Goldhaber, a leading researcher on teacher quality issues at the University of Washington. But, he emphasized, such challenges likely won’t be felt across the board, but rather in subjects like special education and math and science, as well as in schools with more low-income students and more students of color.

Goldhaber, an economist, was always skeptical of a turnover spike amid the pandemic since people are less likely to quit their jobs during a recession, because it’s hard to find a better one.

There’s no complete national data yet — that will take years, if it ever comes. But some state and local data show modest declines, rather than increases, in teacher turnover.

Far from being a record year for teacher turnover, some school systems have held on to more teachers than usual. Again, Chalkbeat reports:

In Chicago, continuing a multiyear trend, fewer teachers have left this year. New York City also saw fewer teachers and principals leave last summer compared with summer 2019, school officials said during a recent city council hearing.

And, as a matter of perspective, teacher turnover is pretty high even in a typical year:

National data from 2012 found that while 13% of teachers in affluent schools left that year — either to switch schools or exit teaching — 22% of teachers at high-poverty schools departed. Turnover is also substantially higher among special education teachers and teachers of color.

This does not mean that your school system is not in a bind. Check it out and keep asking how high turnover rates affect learning. It is especially harmful if it happens mid-year or if a school loses experienced teachers in tough-to-replace areas like math and sciences.

Source: https://www.poynter.org

Department of Digital Communications and Public Relations