Teachers were already leaving everywhere after the COVID peak and the vaccine battles. But in red states, teacher departures are so much worse that most public schools have severe teacher shortages with little hope of refilling the ranks. In some red state school districts, teacher qualification standards have been lowered, but the shortages still persist. As “anti-woke” statutes abound, as anything that smacks of teach anything about gender differences at any class level is subsumed under that generic “grooming” epithet (i.e., recruiting children by sexual indoctrination into what evangelicals believe are deviant minorities), anything that accurately depicts racial/ethnic/religious discrimination (including historically accurate texts on slavery) is easily removed from the curriculum of the school library upon the petition of a rightwing parent or student… teachers leave, and potential replacements look elsewhere.
This malaise is everywhere, as American educational performance continues to plummet when compared with rising standards in Asia and Europe. The MAGA right openly campaigns to eliminate anything that contradicts their vision of right thinking… with purges and protests at every level. Red state teachers often can be held responsible for teaching that contradicts MAGA doctrine. Sometimes even criminally, but often at risk of losing their tenured jobs. It’s everywhere, not just schools.
A few years ago, Chick-fil-A, a privately held company whose owners are openly evangelicals, was boycotted by LGBTQ+ groups for their financial support for an outspoken anti-LGBTQ+ movement. The boycott worked, and Chick-fil-A relented. But now, the religious right is taking aim at conservative Chick-fil-A and its owners as being “woke” on Twitter in that reversal. Something we have seen at Target (over “rainbow” clothing choices) and Disney World (over supporting LGBTQ+ employees), to name a few.
What is equally real is the rise of violence throughout our nation, whether Uvalde-level shootings, where teachers were executed by an AR-15 along with a lot of young students, or a general notion rising within the MAGA rights that violence for political reasons can be justified. Both GOP frontrunners have pledged to pardon most if not all of the January 6th attackers, where cops were killed or injured.
When you combine all of the above factors, one thing becomes horribly clear: the value of good teachers is been seriously undermined. Instead of being a noble and self-sacrificing profession, it has become downright dangerous. Even students are finding teachers to be anything but valued professionals. Danger lurks everywhere in our nation’s schools. So dangerous that many parents have gone out of their way to protest teachers, fearing for their safety from students, who have attempted to find protection from the rise of student-on-teacher violence. School districts have reduced the use of suspensions for student violations of all kinds of rules that we have accepted for decades. That often keeps dangerous students off the streets but, where alternative facilities are not available, it puts them right back into the classrooms where their disruptive and often violent behavior just resumes. Teachers are often disciplined for defending themselves.
Writing for the June 4th Wall Street Journal, Scott Calvert writes: “Across the U.S., violence against teachers has ratcheted up since the widespread return to in-person learning in 2021, and in some areas the problem is worse than it was prepandemic. The data are limited, because many states don’t specifically track teacher assaults, or use the same methodology to make the data comparable.
“From September through May of the current school year, the number of assault-related workers’ compensation claims filed at some 2,000 schools in different regions of the U.S. topped 1,350, a five-year high, according to claims and risk-management services firm Gallagher Bassett… The average cost of those claims has increased 26% to around $6,700 compared with the same period in 2018-19… ‘We are witnessing the highest levels of frequency, severity and complexity for these kinds of assault claims when compared to the last four complete school calendar years,’ said Greg McKenna, public-sector practice leader at Gallagher Bassett.
“Several high-profile attacks on educators have made national headlines, such as in Newport News, Va., where authorities said a 6-year-old boy wounded teacher Abigail Zwerner in January by intentionally shooting her in the hand and chest with a gun he brought from home. The boy’s family has said he has an acute disability. His mother faces criminal charges of child neglect and for leaving the gun in reach of the child. She hasn’t entered a plea, her lawyer said. In March, two administrators at Denver’s East High School were shot and wounded by a 17-year-old student who fled and was later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot.
“In a nationwide American Psychological Association survey of nearly 15,000 teachers and staff from July 2020 to June 2021, 14% of teachers reported physical violence from students, and 49% of teachers said they wanted to quit or switch schools. While teachers are frequently hurt intervening in fights, some are targeted. The incidents go along with more attention on violence in schools more broadly, including fighting and bullying among students.
“‘Across the board, we continue to see significant mental and behavioral health challenges with youth, some of which are manifesting in violence and aggression to fellow students and staff,’ said Kelly Vaillancourt Strobach, director of policy and advocacy at the National Association of School Psychologists. She said greater access to school psychologists, counselors and social workers is needed, along with increased involvement of students’ families.” Gang fights break out in inner city classrooms, with teachers caught in the middle.
But we’ve done this to ourselves. All those champions of purported Second Amendment gun rights, especially protecting the ownership of military-grade assault weapons, all those who have supported the violent protestors from the January 6th Capitol invasion to the August 2017 violent marchers in Charlottesville to the politicians seeking to reverse criminal convictions, often involving guns… are part of this national movement to condone, accept and forgive violence at every level. We care more about stopping non-existent “grooming” and CRT “indoctrination” within our nation’s schools than in quality teaching with valued teachers. Teachers held in such low regard that their safety is often nothing more than an afterthought. Ask Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump what should be done to protect teachers, and they say, “teachers should be armed.” Really? We need more guns to stop violence?
I’m Peter Dekom, and it is the most obvious solutions that generate the greatest red state opposition… common sense seems to have left those jurisdictions.
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