Teachers—Like Students—Deserve More Support And Better Rules Next Year

Removing needless red tape and ideology in the teaching profession will help schools retain good teachers—and ensure students thrive.

It wasn’t just students who were relieved to put away school supplies and close the door on the school year. Teachers also needed a break.

A recent report shows that teachers are generally unhappy in their profession. Just one in five teachers reports being very satisfied in their jobs, and only an abysmal 16% of teachers say they would recommend their profession. It’s little wonder that 86% of schools say they are having trouble hiring and a growing number of teachers are leaving their jobs. It’s clear that our education system isn’t just failing students—it’s failing teachers, too.

Public discussions about education reform tend to miss this reality. Instead, teachers are typically cast as part of the problem. Outrageous videos of purple-haired teachers voicing deeply political and inappropriate content on social media often reach millions of people, creating the false impression that teachers are generally unhinged and want to use their perch to push a personal agenda. But while a vocal minority of teachers are this way, the vast majority are just normal men and women trying to do their jobs. Teachers—unlike the unions and the social media influencers that unfortunately represent the public face of the profession—are ideologically diverse, and most entered the profession because they sincerely want to help students thrive.

Rather than being obstacles to reform, teachers are the sleeping giants of the education reform movement. They know what the classroom is like better than anyone else and have the potential to be forceful advocates for policy change. Anyone who cares about improving student outcomes should also champion policies that improve the environment for good teachers. Usually debates about improving the teaching profession center on dollars and benefits. Of course compensation matters to teachers, but other factors matter too, and reforms can be embraced that don’t require more from taxpayers.

In the report, Give Teachers A Break: Cutting Red Tape to Unleash the Potential of America’s Great Teachers, Neeraja Deshpande—herself a former teacher—argues that teachers need to have more autonomy and authority. First, policy leaders need to roll back requirements that tie teachers’ hands from disciplining students. Too often, one unruly, even violent, student is allowed to disrupt the learning environment for everyone else. That isn’t fair to other students, and it’s not fair to the teacher—for that matter, it’s not even fair to the student who is acting out. Students, both the ones who behave and the ones who misbehave, need to know that there are real consequences for unacceptable behavior. It’s a travesty that this kind of common sense has been sidelined in so many schools for so long.

State and local leaders should also roll back any guidance that is meant to force teachers to dumb down curriculums or provide passing grades to students who are failing or inflate grades across the board. Again, a system that disguises a student’s lack of skill attainment is not kind, but cruel. It allows school systems to fail at their jobs of preparing students to be functional, independent adults and allows children to fail without even realizing it due to the lack of standards. Teachers should be empowered to use grades to signal whether a student is making good progress on learning the assigned material or not.

States and school leaders should also stop forcing teachers to act as therapists and end mandates for “social and emotional learning” (SEL) and other curricula that elevate feelings over learning. Teachers cannot be expected to be counselors, and the schools have other officials to deal with students who are experiencing problems. Bringing pseudo-therapy into the classroom invites students to dwell on their emotional issues rather than use classroom time constructively and adds a needless, heavy burden on teachers who already have enough on their plates.

Policy leaders should also explore ways to cut red tape around teacher licensing to make it easier for highly qualified leaders to enter and stay in the teaching profession. There are too many industry leaders who are being told that entering classrooms require years of additional study. That’s a mistake.

Summer is a perfect time for a reset. Across the country, policy leaders are thinking about how we can make real progress to provide students with a better learning environment next year. They should also prioritize identifying reforms that will encourage great teachers to thrive—and stay.