The Teachers Leave Because...?

A tale of narrative collapse within a single article. First we have the bait:

Nearly 200 teachers have quit their jobs in D.C. Public Schools since the school year began, forcing principals to scramble to cover their classes with substitutes and depriving many students of quality instruction in critical subjects.

See the teachers are quitting and depriving the students of quality instruction. See the setup. See the first thing I asked is: Why would a teacher up and quit in the middle of a school year? Of all the times that is the worst. There must be something very wrong going on to cause them to make such a decision. Well, 16 paragraphs later you find the reason:

Several former Ballou teachers told The Post they did not want to leave mid-year and felt bad about the consequences for students. But they said a number of problems drove them to leave,from student behavior and attendance issues to their own perception of a ack of support from the administration. They also raised questions about evaluations. Some veterans said that in previous years they had received high marks from administrators, but this year they were given what they believe are arbitrarily low evaluation scores. [my underlines]

So we have a trifecta of issues: If teachers are leaving in the middle of the school year then these three problems must REALLY be a problem. And if these three problems are THAT bad then who or WHAT is really "depriving many students of quality instruction"? Could the case really be that the student [mis]behavior, poor attendance and silly lefty "disciplinary" policies the real reason for that. I mean if you were subject to this:

How long would you stay?

Right. Carrying on:

Langford said she asked administrators for help with behavior problems in her classroom — but didn’t get it.

Her classes were large. One had more than 33 students. She said the students were very far behind and lacked the foundation needed to be successful.

“A lot of them felt really discouraged about math and used other methods to lash out,” Langford said. “I couldn’t address those problems they were having on my own.”

So again. It's not the teacher's fault. The students are out of control and the administration is too worried about being called racist. The students are ill-prepared many because they were socially promoted or given sympathy grades.

Langford said she threatened to quit two months into the school year but was hopeful she would get support to manage her classroom. She said nothing changed. In January, she decided to quit.

See, colleges can sell all the utopia bullshit they want to their naive students. They can call people like me "sellout" and "uncle tom" all they want, but when people are hit with reality it comes reallllllllll quick. 2 months and she was "fin to leave".

Ballou has about 930 students, and all qualify for free or reduced-price lunch because they live in poverty. Many come from homes where their parents didn’t go to college. The school ranks among the city’s lowest-performing high schools on core measures. Its graduation rate in the last school year, 57 percent, was second-lowest among regular high schools in the DCPS system.

Let me say this, parents not having gone to college is not an excuse. It is about expectations. Period.

“Students simply roam the halls because they know that there is no one present in their assigned classroom to provide them with an education,” Brokenborough said. “Many of them have simply lost hope.”

I call bullshit. I bet a lot of these students were roaming the halls when the teachers were there. Besides why are students roaming the hall? When I was in high school one could not be in the hall while class was in session without a hall pass.

This also shows how unprepared these students are for college. Why not still go to class and, I don't know, study the material you have to cover? What, you only study if you have too? Oh OK.

Iyonna Jones, an 18-year-old senior, said in one of the letters that security guards tell the students lingering in hallways to go to class, but she has a substitute teacher in her math class and doesn’t feel she is getting the instruction she needs.

Let me share a story. In jr high school we had a substitute teacher who basically tried the take attendance and do nothing tactic. We took it for about a week. Then we complained to the higher ups. We actually demanded that she teach us out material or they find someone who would. She was replaced shortly. Yes, she was a bad sub. They exist. But students (and parents) can and should do more. But if a class is unmanageable due to ill behavior, you cannot blame the teacher.