Taylor Schoolar

10/10/2018
3A
Georgia’s Dropout Crisis

In Georgia, over 44% of teachers dropout of the profession within five years of

teaching. That is a very high rate, which leads to concerns for the future. All the

reasons that were listed in the article, ¨Georgiaś Droput Crisis¨, were reasons that I

have heard my teachers talk about in school. All of the survey response reasons are

very reasonable.

Teaching is one of the most important jobs out there. Seeing that there is such

a high dropout rate is truly alarming. Teachers are responsible for more than just

educating students on a particular subject, but to create better people and teach

skills that will last a lifetime. If teachers continue to leave the profession, I worry

about what is to come. The future world of education is already changing so much

with technology and other requirements; the loss of teachers would not help.

Students need teachers.

As stated before, teaching is one of the most important professions. It is not a

high paying job, but teachers enter the profession aware of this. They do it because

they love it; you have to love what you do. In the article, it talked about how teachers

are required to do more than what they agreed to. Lots of paperwork needs to be

done, athletic games need to be attended, lunch monitoring needs to be completed,

and much more. Extra jobs like those are driving teachers away from doing what

they love. Administration is putting too much pressure on the teachers without even

realizing it.

Standardized testing is also unfair to the teachers. Teachers are spending too

much of their time trying to make sure each student passes the test, instead of

teaching them what is important in life. Administrators puts stress on the teachers to

make sure their students perform in a certain way. They want the statistics to look

good. This is driving teachers away from the profession. Their job often depends on

how well their students perform.

Many adjustments need to be made in order to keep teachers teaching.

Teachers need to be excited about coming to work everyday, they need to love the

environment they are in, and they need to love what they do! Those in charge need to

let teachers teach and do what they are good at instead of pushing test scores and

certain requirements. When teachers are happy, students are happy. The

compensation is something that is an issue, but as stated earlier, that is lower on the

totem pole of reasons why teachers leave the profession. Let teachers do what they

love and eliminate the pointless stress!

Owens, Stephen J. “Georgia's Teacher Dropout Crisis.” Georgia Department of

Education, Dec. 2015.