SCHOOLS

 Compact - In October 2023, 86 percent of schools belonging to the National Education Association indicated that they were seeing more educators leave the profession since the start of the pandemic. Numerous school districts—especially in lower-income neighborhoods—are faced with teacher shortages. Many of these former teachers... are heartbroken—even bitter—about what they once thought of as their dream jobs....

Those who leave teaching behind cite low pay (since 1996, the average wage of a public school teacher has risen just $29, $416 less than the average wage increase earned by other college graduates), unmanageable class sizes, lack of support from both administrators and parents, and disrespect from students. 

In his 1979 book The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch warned that the bureaucratization of education would erode the legitimacy of adults’ authority over children, provoking in them “a boundless rage against those who fail to gratify them.” The stories told by former teachers of students spitting, cursing, and hurling desks at teachers—and of the administrators who cave to the parents demanding the teacher, rather than the student, be penalized—suggest Lasch’s warning was prophetic. 

Individual teachers, school boards, and think tanks are attempting to find ways to improve teachers’ working conditions so as to combat burnout, proposing a variety of measures ranging from increasing pay and benefits to offering coverage for mental health care. But such measures fail to address the deeper problem: a bloated bureaucracy that has swallowed up education and now makes it nearly impossible for teachers to do their job