Substitute Teaching creates the lost year
There is an outstanding op ed by Carolyn Bucior in the New York times on substitute teaching. it is outstanding because the facts are just incredible and it is extremely well written by someone who is has been a substitute teacher for years.
So let’s review the facts:
- 77% of school districts give no training to substitute teachers at all - throw 'em in and hope for the best
- 56% of school districts hire a sub with no face-to-face interviews - if they are alive, they can teach
- In 28 states a principal can hire a sub who only has a high school diploma - 18 year olds teaching 18 year olds?
So what’s the big deal? Here is where our penchant for moving percentages to real numbers using math comes in handy.
Nationwide, 5.2% of teachers are absent on any given day. Not too bad for absenteeism, but let us remember that there are 3.4 million teachers. So on any given day, we have to employ 176,800 substitutes. Using a very conservative class size of 15, over 2,652,000 students are in a class with an untrained, non-degreed adult (maybe) not really learning anything at all.
The author goes even further with some great math of her own to discover that during a student’s K-12 career, they will lose almost an entire school year to substitute teaching. Since the substitute must be paid and the teacher still receives their pay, the cost of this problem is $4 billion per year to taxpayers.
While we should not release the over-reaction team on this issue, it does need to be looked at. For instance, substitutes should complete a minimum of some training in order to teach (perhaps the professional teaching knowledge portion of ABCTE) and they should have a college degree.
In any industry when budgets need to be cut, the temps are the first to go. In this case, reducing absenteeism by 20% could save $800 million dollars and means that on any given day, 530,400 students would have their actual teacher working through a real lesson. Sounds like a pretty good way to see some student learning gains.
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Comments
I am a certified teacher and
I am a certified teacher and a substitute. I think most subs would love to have professional developement opportunities, but most districts don't offer them (I have asked). We are more than just a warm body in a classroom, and I seek to make sure the students are learning, even in their teacher's absence. Subs do their job for the pay I am sure, but several of us do it to be a service to the teacher who has to miss, and the students who need supervision.
While I wait for a full time spot, I enjoy serving others through subbing. I don't feel like a warm body at most schools. Most of us subs are educated people who seek to have job that means something and accomplishes a purpose.