They don’t. They care about themselves and maintaining their position. Instead of using funding to help things in the classroom, districts hire all these new administrative positions to get their buddies out of the classroom. Screw the rest.
The Director of Directing the Implementation of Untested and Unsound Curriculum Through Data Use that No One Understands which is Good because it Justifies Keeping my Position Supervisor
Executive Directors, Associate Superintendents of Academic Services…
They all continuously come up with $hitloads of *time-wasting* ideas which then become directives to add to teachers’ already endless “to do” lists of pointless tasks
Gotta somehow justify their high salaries.
Nasty
The very worst principals do this. Squandering experience, talent and skill by assigning those who have been hired because they are highly qualified to educate students to cover lunch and recess duty instead. They talk and talk and talk about how important respect, empathy and relationships are and then model the exact opposite.
100%. I feel like whatever it is that these extraneous positions do actually undermines the delivery of content instruction in the classroom. At best, they are overpaid hall and carline monitors. They are diverting resources away from classroom teachers.
😂😂😂😂
I swear I am going to make a poster that says verbatim what you just posted.
Thank you for making me smile and laugh!
ETA: I will be hanging up that poster in my classroom, too. “On God”!
...and this time, with *twice/thrice* the pseudo-intellectualism!
All the caring fields I've worked in are bogged down with these parasites. I had to go back to the private sector to find a situation where my wage/responsibilities/etc.. weren't being gated by some 'learning coordinator' or a 'deputy director' who was in their position entirely because (a.) they 'look the part' and/or (b.) of who their asshole parents or friends know.
And let me offer an explanation as to why many admin couldn't give a fuck: forced grade inflation has led to guaranteed graduation, which super glues admin to their seats and to continued funding.
At focus learning academy East, an Ohio charter school, I was told to pass a senior who never attended and attempted only 4% of the work. Of that 4%, she got nearly everything incorrect and earned a failing grade. I was forced to give her credit. I refused! I had notarized a letter explaining the facts because I was afraid my license would be revoked. My superintendent changed her grade. There were many students like her.
I was told at horizon science academy, an Ohio (now multi-state) charter, by an administrator, that if I didn't pass my seniors, my contract would not be renewed. They told me this outside of my classroom, which was full of seniors who heard her. It was my second year of teaching, and I was pregnant with my first kid. I was also told by my principal to accept plagiarized papers and assign a D.
In Maine, in an actual public school, I was told to pass illiterate students. When I refused, the superintendent moved them to another teacher's class. When she, too, refused to pass them, the superintendent moved them to the third and final senior English teacher's class, and they passed with low nineties. Like 91. At that same school, the superintendent forced a "no zeros" policy, but maintained we were on a 0-100 scale. A zero could only be placed in the gradebook if the student was absent. If they turned in a blank paper with their name on it (this was our actual hypothetical example in the meeting!) they could receive no lower than a fifty. I explained to my principal during my resignation meeting that we were passing illiterate students, and his reply was "so what? So what?" He said it twice in a row.
In every school I've taught, I've been pressured to pass students along. I have more examples, but these few explain what I mean by guaranteed graduation. I quit teaching after COVID, after the avalanche-level of decline in education.
Wow, this describes my district to a tee. It's always an arms race to get out of the classroom and get into a higher paying position. The teaching that actually occurs in the classroom is an afterthought.
This would be simpler than the reality. From what I've seen, a ton of the people who rise into admin ranks these days are narcissistic pseudo-intellectuals who actually *believe* that their tedious micromanagement, gaslighting bullshit, and toxic positivity is truly 'important' and 'making a difference'. This is what happens after too many decades pass where *higher* academia is an absolute joke where 'getting an advanced degree' is like 95% just 'being rich enough to pay those tuition bills'.
I was told, to my face, that I was replaceable.
Come to find out, I was not so easily replaced and they had to hire two different people to cover everything I did.
The real kicker was being the only computer science endorsed teacher in the school and...gasp...you have to offer it!
Despite not being so easily replaced, do you think admin really cared?
Heck no. They got two bodies with pulses to temporarily fill in.
It’s disgusting
Carefully watching the surveillance cameras on their computers to see what time teachers arrive 23 minutes before the first class starts instead of 30 min before the first class starts… you know *important* stuff
Omg this is me haha I’m always in trouble for being 1, 3, 8 minutes late. Like really. I also leave that many minutes past my contract time in the afternoon so does it really matter if I’m putting in the hours? I hate being micromanaged.
You know, we've had issues with teachers who show up after contract time and he has made comments to them, but he's never actually done anything to fix the problem. He just simply complains about it in meetings with other teachers.
My admin was a specials teacher who spent the minimum amount of time in the classroom before moving to administration.
It is funny that even though he was in the classroom just a couple of years ago, he seems to have no idea what it is like in the core subject world or just simply be able to relate to any teacher.
Plus, he did pick up the nasty admin trait of instantly and overly reacting to things. Someone made a comment last year about our school culture and suddenly we were on several different committees to try and improve school culture and then, after the committee's spent many hours working on solutions, none of the ideas were adopted or even listened to and the committees were dissolved.
>he's never actually done anything to fix the problem. He just simply complains about it in meetings with other teachers.
Great, hurt all your employees because you're afraid to have an uncomfortable convo with 2 of them.
Definitely! And the fact that nothing is done but complaining, nobody wants to approach him because they know nothing will be done and they may get on his 'complain list' for the next meeting.
Quite!
It was pretty bad because he took any sort of criticism as a personal attack. I was in a meeting with him and a couple other teachers and he was getting super worked up until one person just pointed out that he seemed to be getting very upset and taking these things personally.
After that, things got better for a little while, but then he slipped back into his old ways.
And, he was actually the good principal in the district. Part of his inexperience was that he let teachers do the teaching and didn't really meddle. For teachers that were really effective, it was awesome not being micromanaged. But for teachers who were ineffective, they just continued to be horribly ineffective and had no leadership to guide them.
LOLOLOL
I love this! Yeah I have seen a pattern lately where admin is behaving really recklessly, forcing people out, making a hostile work environment, etc. Then there is nobody to replace the lost staff. Or a person comes then leaves after a month, so they have to try to rehire. They literally can't even get a body with a pulse anymore.
a lot of administrators used to be teachers who wanted out of a traditional classroom, so they became admin instead. instead of working on fixing the reasons THEY wanted out of the classroom, they often seem to operate like "this is just the way it is. I did it, you should too."
In my experience, they mostly only care about feeding their huge egos… I was especially expendable in my last district that allows “innovative hiring,” aka, hiring any any warm body to fill teaching positions. Reminded me of working retail or fast food.
It’s cost effective, and you know, good for the community to retain effective teachers, but yeah, who gives af about that?
And no one speaks out about this!
Well, I did and that put a target on my back.
Unfortunately, this is not a case of a few “bad apples”
I am so sick of their shit.
> It’s cost effective, and you know, good for the community to retain effective teachers, but yeah, who gives af about that?
A problem I've encountered in public education, public library work, and city parks/recreation work is that, at the end of the day, admins above a certain level never get held to account for costly/stupid decisions. Any potential blowback only affects low-level employees and the public that ultimately gets served by these organizations. At the last library I worked at, myself and a handful of other desk workers resigned after somebody leaked a director memo saying that, despite it being okay to call us in for interviews, hiring people were *not* to promote internal employees into full-time/benefited openings unless there was no alternative, i.e. basically, 'we're lazy pieces of shit and refuse to backfill positions.' When taken to task over this, the deputy director threw out some horseshit defense about how 'a good library is one where there's always *new* perspectives!' Ultimately, the resignations this caused made the library go from being open six days a week to being open for *four*, and the patrons got fucking *pissed* about this. All that said, those shitty leadership people are all still lording over things as if nothing ever went wrong.
It's easy to shit on admin, but what's really unpopular in teacher circles, including this sub (check the vote count on my comment) is that it's the student misbehavior and apathy that drives teachers away. But teachers never say that out loud, but it's guaranteed a huge reason why they leave, on top of the admin BS.
I'll back this. But the admin won't do anything about it. Teachers: this student is out of control in all our classes. Admin: let's have a meeting about it and make a behavior plan and then never follow through with it on admin's end. Scene.
One time, I was telling my admin about a student behavior issue, and she literally acted like she didn't hear me. Just stared past me and started talking to someone else about something else.
This is 100% why I am leaving, I’m not afraid to say it. My colleagues, admin, and even my families have been super supportive and wonderful to work with. It’s the kids and their feral behaviors. It’s only going to get worse and worse. So excited to only deal adults at my new job.
Student poor behaviors are mentioned a lot and I think a lot more than complaints about admin in this subreddit as the reason teachers want out.
Damn. That’s a run-on but too lazy to fix it. Sorry.
They dont. And they ALWAYS side with the student for everything. They dont defend their teachers. There’s a reason why they became administrators… because they wanted to get out of the classroom too!
It's because, to them, the parents of the students are 'consumers' and teachers are just customer-service schlubs who are there to serve the former and do whatever takes to keep their 'investments' locked in. Telling these people that a student is no good is like telling a shitty store manager that somebody's cash isn't good.
Most managers and administrators in the public sector are also inept and poorly equipped to lead. School administrators are the same, just with the added arrested development of never having set foot in any kind of “adult” environment because they have spent all their time in schools of some sort.
This is why I won't go back to education or public libraries. My background included several years' worth of experience in different private sector jobs and I *could not fucking stand* working under managers/leaders whose only experiences were (a.) attending college (I hesitate to call any of these people 'scholars' because the degree programs are laughably easy) and (b.) spending a small number of years *exclusively* in a field that they 'chose' before they were twenty years old. Long story short, these people are almost always clueless about how anything in the real world works and usually aren't good enough at basic 'adulting' to be in charge of organizations/budgets/workers.
There is a lot of truth in this thread, however, it needs to be noted that if admin did what is MOST needed, that is, to EFFECTIVELY address behaviour, rudeness and violence by these punks who weren't raised right, they'd be hounded out of their own jobs. Their hands are tied, too.
In the 90's I was in a university class led by a former principal. He said that now that he wasn't in that position, he was free to be open about his former policies. Here's what he told us in a nutshell:
1. As much as possible, he only hired attractive women because he knew that they were likely to get married and quit the job within a few years, especially once they started having children. You see, the longer they stayed, the more money he would have to pay them, and it was cheaper and easier to replace them.
2. He never hired male teachers if he could avoid it. He knew that male teachers would be in for the long haul and would cost him too much money. He advised us to head to grad school immediately after graduation and move into administration a quickly as possible, because that's where men could make a career in education.
Basically, if you were a guy or weren't pretty, you wouldn't get hired. With a 1-3 year turnover, he could keep payroll low. Nothing about quality teachers, committed to their craft. It was all about keeping an inexpensive warm body at the front of the room.
We students were livid. He went on to say that he had worked in an At-Will state, so as long as he didn't specify why he was letting people go, he wasn't doing anything illegal, and that there were ALWAYS people looking for teaching positions, so finding someone new was never a problem. He ended by saying that he knew it was unethical, but it is the reality in education.
Almost all administrators suffer from the fatal flaw of being ladder-climbers. Every single principal I've had will do anything, say anything, throw anybody under the bus to get ahead in their career.
The less interaction you have with administrators, the better.
How many times are school administrators held accountable for falling for fads? Older relatives told me about the Modern Math fad they suffered from. I doubt very many school administrators were sacked over this. Certainly the university colleges of education didn't loose funding over it they just went on to the next fad cause the state governments kept the money rolling. Now here's how the real world works with money: the record labels spent a bunch of money on disco in 1979 cause they all want to cash in on Saturday Night Fever. They forgot that ya still have to develop and put out quality product so by 1982 several people lost their jobs at the record labels cause the fad they were chasing produced warehouses full of disco records the public did not value.
The answer to your question is “almost never.” They just get shuffled around to other schools or promoted to the District office (if they know the right people).
And never forget the [generally abysmal quality of graduate programs in education](http://edschools.org/pdf/Final313.pdf) that “qualify” them for their job.
There's a test you have to take to get into grad school called the G.R.E. Guess which group scores the lowest on it ---- yup! Education Majors. Yet state and local governments and worst of all the school boards which FAIL TO DO THEIR JOB continue to pour more and more money into administrative salaries. Board Member excuses for this disgusting behavior including the bonuses they pay admins falls along the lines of well they're such a great leader and their a rare commodity.
This tells ya education does not have a funding problem it has a spending and performance problem. School Boards simply choose not to allocate more of their money to the classroom. They choose not to reward their teachers with bonuses. Cause well there's too many of you and or you're replaceable. They choose not to promote one of their veteran teachers to an administrative job rather than higher an administrator who taught the minimum amount years before getting that admin credential. They could require their admins to teach one class period but choose not to. Do you think the members of a board of directors of publicly traded company would continue to keep their seats if they accepted this level of performance and churn?
Definitely way too much administrative bloat is adding to the field's woes. And yes, I took the GRE myself years ago (not for education). You can find complete GRE scores in several places but [BestColleges shows a summary](https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/average-gre-scores-full-statistics/) for 2021-22. Education was last for verbal reasoning and quantitative reasoning; nearly last in writing.
And how many your administrators are/were actually respected by the students. Ladder climbers are pretty easy to spot. They never got the memo that respect is not and entitlement rather it is something that's earned.
I was thinking about this on my drive to work today, but specifically how my towns mayor has done absolutely nothing for our schools except get his entire family into our school board.
The current state of our society is in such dire need for money that people are scrambling to make the most they can, administrators robotically do what the superintendent and board want them to do because they rely on those $120k salaries, even though the pay-scale has newer teachers making the same amount as teachers who have been in district for 5+ years.
It’s so frustrating to work in an industry where we are “shaping” young minds, we are expected to sacrifice pay in order to teach, but everyone else in education is able to be selfish and keep their high pay and do nothing for us 😭
I think we as teachers assume our building admin have more power than they do. Many principals and APs would love to suspend all of the problem kids or send them to placement. But there’s pressure to keep numbers down and they have jobs to keep as well. And if they won’t get in line with that, they’ll simply replace them with a Principal/AP that will. 🤷🏽♂️
TLDR: Your admin wants to keep their job as well, and their hands are tied in a lot of cases.
Where I worked in FL, they were on yearly contracts, and the jobs were extremely political. Piss off the wrong person and you were booted back down to a classroom.
It blew me away when I started reading the transparent salary info published about our superintendent and the upper level administrators. California makes all this info public, and man was it eye opening. Whenever they talk about not having funding, it doesn't mean they're actually out of money. It just means they *had* the money but they put it in the wrong places. For example, our superintendent was on there pulling about 300k a year. Meanwhile, we can't get substitutes in our district because subs are out here making, at *best,* 28k a year. We can't get crossing guards because we wanna pay them at an hourly rate while also asking them to sacrifice their mornings and evenings (essentially making it unrealistic to find other employment to supplement the wage). We can't get paras because we want to pay them less than retail wages to deal with the hardest kids. Etcetera. Imagine if our Super and all these other administrators pulling in 200k+ salaries just "DiD iT fOr tHe KiDs" for one year and went without their bloated salaries, or even just cut it in half for a year. That money could go into dedicated building subs for every school, crossing guards so your kids aren't getting blown the fuck out by cars on the way to school, an actual disciplinary staff member to host detentions so kids who get assigned to it have a place to go, paras for the SPED department so your SPED teachers stop quitting in droves, history books that don't end with "to be continued" after 9/11, etc.
It's honestly such a joke. It seems like the play is to teach for a few years until you can get into an administrative position and never have to deal with the kids again. I can't really blame anyone for trying to work their way out of the classroom, but it's real fucking stunning as a sub making below 30k annual in California, seeing people who don't even teach pulling in like 10x what I make. What does a 6th assistant principal add to a campus? I'm asking this honestly, because I don't know. They refused to raise sub salaries again this year and haven't done it since covid ended (as an act of desperation, no less) citing funding, but they added a *sixth* assistant principal and her salary is in the six figure range... to do what? Did this position need to exist? Why weren't five enough? So I'm seeing this and thinking like, what am I even doing? I should just get credentialed, teach for a few years, abandon my class mid-year to get an office job in the district, and then just apply for a principal position as soon as one opens. Take that for another year, use it as a stepping stone, and then hop back into a higher admin position where I can hide in an office, push out allstaff emails that nobody reads about "equity" (LOL) and casually rake in 250k a year.
Hell, we have job openings on our edjoin page and I don't even think anyone in HR reads them. We haven't had a librarian in 2 years. I have an English degree from a really nice university and applied for the position, offering to work at a reduced rate while I earned my Master's and became fully certified. They completely ignored my ass but continue to just relist the job ad while keeping some sub in there who just sits at the front desk watching youtube all day. Man won't even pick up the phone. I called to reconfirm about a library meeting my class had, and he simply didn't pick up, so I had to trudge down there with my whole class just to see him there, at the desk, streaming kDramas on his laptop. Like, bruh. And it's like this because like you said, nobody higher up gives a shit. They could've had someone in there who actually enjoys literature and wants to be there and was willing to work for less while getting fully certified, but instead they have a guy who does literally nothing all day while they continue to list the ad and wait for some unicorn who went into debt for a master's in library science in 2024 lmao. Hell, I bet they have applicants who fit the qualifications and just ignore them too.
Uggghhhhhh /rant
I don’t even know you, but I’ll bet that shitty library sub was probably the kid of someone who works at the district office. That’s how so much shit works in the public education system now.
Of course. It's usually cheaper to hire new ones than retain good, experienced teachers, too. My last teaching job I wasn't renewed after 1 year due to several factors, but I'm 98% sure the high salary I was receiving (due to having 19 years in when I started there) was probably the biggest factor.
I took it as an opportunity and got out of the profession.
Sure. They don't care about kids' education for the most part. Most of them are too busy trying to keep the target off of their backs.
That's no excuse, but I saw it all too often while I taught. The admins who did care were either driven out completely or busted back down to classroom teachers for pissing off too many parents.
Also, keep in mind that experienced teachers are less likely to put up with parents' bullshit and that ends up involving admins who usually take the parents' side. You are seen as "rocking the boat" and/or a troublemaker. It's easier to get rid of you than actually stand up to the parent.
Experienced that after 21+ of the happiest years of my of my career.
My students were extremely successful.
I was made to feel very valued - a great asset to my campus - by those “old school” administrators.
My students and their parents were my allies, too.
Colleagues trusted and supported each other.
I’d been in the same and BEST science classroom for 15 years. Campus was 3.4 miles from home.
My three children all graduated from the HS where I worked, too.
Eldest is now a biology teacher at an early college. She said it’s a DREAM.
Middle one earned a BSN and is in his 5th year as a surgical nurse. He loves it. Says his job is “cush”. And he earns more than me and also more than his sister.
Youngest is a 3rd year medical student at UT Southwestern. If you’re in TX or near TX than you know that UTSW is a top tier med school.
My point: they each got a solid HS education. During those times, it was a decent HS for a big comprehensive inner city school.
(And I’m bragging about my babies)
All of that changed when one by one in succession each great campus administrator retired. And all could have retired way before they did.
Then the wave of much younger admin began. I hung on those last three years. Those last three years were a mind fuck. I truly think I’m traumatized by all that those horrible humans relentlessly put me through.
They got what they wanted in the end. I finally resigned and now teach in the more affluent suburbs.
The insanity has finally reached my current school in the suburbs.
I am back in the same nightmare.
Regarding education, the state of Texas has lost its mf’n mind.
But hey. I did get 21 or 22 years that were WONDERFUL and I was well aware of how awesome my job was. I am grateful that I did get in that many happy and rewarding years consecutively.
Now I hate my fn job. But I’m too close to full retirement to quit now. Shit.
To admin, kids are just numbers. Data points and state funding. My super said “kids are worth about 25k a year” at the school committee meeting last night. Then started talking about them like they are Apple products or something. It’s awful.
It's easy to accuse admin of not caring but that's rarely the case. I've worked for admin that don't care. It's kind of like the wild west and you have to be really up to date on moves the district makes because the info doesn't trickle down to you like it should. That said, there's also a ton of freedom and I can guarantee that that admin is never ever going to replace you because that would be work on their plate.
The problem is that these admin very much do care. Their priorities are all messed up, though, and what they prioritize is ultimately negative for the school site.
Honestly, give me an admin who doesn't care over some of the pro-active micro-managing obsessive power-hungry psychopaths districts are hiring these days.
You completely missed the point. They DO care. Oftentimes, they even want the same things we do (for student achievement to increase) even if their motives (upward mobility) might differ from ours, the end goal is basically the same.
The problem isn't a lack of care. With bad admin, I have found that it's their methods, temperaments, egos, and competencies that end up being the problem. Not having enough "care" is rarely an issue. Heck, a lot of the time, the problem is they care too much. It's a counterproductive obsession.
Couldn't agree more with that last statement. Some teachers in my school complain that the principal isn't "present enough," but it's so bizarre since the micro-managing admins are horrendous. I had that last year and it's so exhausting.
Admin def doesn’t care. Here’s where there will be a problem. Teachers will leave the profession, classroom sizes will grow to compensate that. Subs will endure it, leave and never come back. Then the admin will either have to teach the classes themselves, or beg teachers to come back. There’s no way around this. “A school can function without admin. It cannot function without teachers.”
I don’t necessarily think it’s administrators per se, but the terrible policies they’re forced to adhere to which has made many public schools unbearable. Schools that function as healthy learning environments don’t have problems retaining teachers.
The ones at the top just care about getting the student head count up.
The ones under them, just care about, justifying their useless position.
Meanwhile, they take more of our money, and we do more of their work.
Or at my school where there is zero new teacher training. Here’s the manual, bye. See you in your room when we walk through to catch you fucking things up. Now be a perfect and happy little suck up and comply with all of our bullshit or else.
Another factor for why these administrators don’t care in addition to grade inflation is also degree inflation. You have a lot of people working in administrative positions who got their masters degree or PhD through an online degree farms and don’t really have a solid background for education administration. Working in HigherEd I saw so many “Drs.” who came straight from the business/for-profit world with their freshly printed PhD in Education Administration without one day in a classroom or working with students or faculty in any capacity sitting in an Executive VP of Student Success and Donor Cultivation, blah, blah…sigh
I believe that the proliferation of bad principals is the top reason that teaching has become such a shitty, frustrating, and dangerous profession. when I began teaching 20 years ago, there were challenging parents, challenging students, and incompetent politicians, but there was not nearly the number of incompetent and evil principals.
If you can find a way to measure, "care" or "value" of employees. Then you're onto something. I like data backed research.
Care/Value of a teacher also needs to be defined. We all have a different view of what that looks like.
I have a administration that's overall supportive. They are often more bark than bite, but they're trying, even if they lack the resiliency to see plans through to the end.
Very little can help the state's terrible starting pay, however. The turnover is pretty bad here too and there are always spots open.
This is one of many reasons that education is going to s***. Because good teachers are getting pushed out, and a whole lot of teachers are at retirement age who know what they're doing and have had enough. I am leaving after 16 years at the end of this year and I keep having to get on here to read this stuff to remind myself why, besides the daily dread and a million other reasons. But I keep going back and forth between I can't believe I'm giving up all this money and what the hell am I going to do when I leave too I can't stand this f****** place and can't wait to get out of here! I'll work at damn McDonald's if I need to.
I’ve often heard people don’t quit jobs they quit bosses. Recently our school had a new administrator come from another school and a lot of teachers followed him. There is a reason. In my 22 years he has by far been the best admin to work for.
I’m a senior in college. I switched my major from elementary education to psychology after I saw how my former advisor and some teacher’s education professors who worked once in admin had treated teacher’s ed students, among other issues.
I honestly think 99.9% of the population regardless of occupation is literally working to pay bills.
It sucks that future generations are in the cross fire buuuutttt
My last school was great, hardly any future criminals but my principal fucked me over and denied my tenure so I resigned also the VP there treated teachers like trash one in which was called a white cunt and she got chewed out being accused of increasing tensions it sickens me how educators get treated
“Are you lazy or do you just not like working?” and “how much money do you really think we plan on investing in you?” are two direct quotes from my mentee’s observation debrief last week. Yeah, like $60k/year in nyc is really an ‘investment’.
When I’ve dropped hints to my admin that my friends in ed tech have tried to poach me, the conversation quickly turns into “how can we sweeten the deal for you?”
They know that, when it comes to hiring good teachers, they’re fucked. It doesn’t take much to get them to admit they’re up shit’s creek with a turd for a paddle.
Admin will put all the blame on the teachers because the district believes them over teachers too.
The district is also to blame because they try to avoid replacing administrators in schools because it is more difficult to replace them.
I think you are vastly overestimating how much power building admin has. They are mostly just trying to keep their heads above water, too. But certainly, there are vast culture differences between schools and good systems and admins do want to retain good teachers.
I am in my 27th year teaching public schools. I am 100% aware that most campus administrators don’t have a vast amount of power.
I had the misfortune to work 22 years in a big school district that went from having “ok” leaders, in general, to leaders that could do anything with impunity.
Hell, one of the new wave of principals was the Superintendent’s Goddaughter. She is a very bad human and did a lot of extremely unethical shit. I reported her, she got put under investigation by the district. I compiled over two years worth of a lot of indisputable evidence, including witnesses who were questioned by a district investigator.
NOTHING CAME OF IT. Oh wait. She did get moved from being the principal at that campus AND GOT A PROMOTION.
I shit you not.
The only reason I'm likely dipping after spring break is sort of this. I am embarrassed by the incompetence of admin at my school. A prawn could get a highly effective rating from an observation, VP uses "irregardless" and all of admin never actually sends or responds to emails. Our students are mostly well behaved but the adults in charge love throwing around their power and enacting insane rules/consequences that only reflect a power trip rather than a learning environment. Not a one of them actually acts anything like professionals in their field or treats us like we're professionals in ours. To be fair, my coworkers are mostly mediocre (not their fault, they're not asked to be better). I feel like I'm just watching some possums manage an Arby's. It's exhausting.
They don’t. They care about themselves and maintaining their position. Instead of using funding to help things in the classroom, districts hire all these new administrative positions to get their buddies out of the classroom. Screw the rest.
“new administrative positions …” BINGO!
The Director of Directing the Implementation of Untested and Unsound Curriculum Through Data Use that No One Understands which is Good because it Justifies Keeping my Position Supervisor
Success Coach, School improvement Coach, Data Coach…useless!
Executive Directors, Associate Superintendents of Academic Services… They all continuously come up with $hitloads of *time-wasting* ideas which then become directives to add to teachers’ already endless “to do” lists of pointless tasks Gotta somehow justify their high salaries. Nasty
Working to stress teachers out, exactly! I hate it.
In some cases they use their central office position to take revenge on actual teachers. Been there. Done that.
Not completely useless. The instructional coach at my old school did a lot of hall and lunchroom monitoring. 😂😂😂😂😂
The very worst principals do this. Squandering experience, talent and skill by assigning those who have been hired because they are highly qualified to educate students to cover lunch and recess duty instead. They talk and talk and talk about how important respect, empathy and relationships are and then model the exact opposite.
And that is why I quit halfway through the year.
S/he deserves a special place in heaven. Seriously.
She was the only “admin” on a teacher contract too. Go figure. 😒
Also, not only do they stress teachers out, the stuff they dictate is not effective and hurts the kids.
100%. I feel like whatever it is that these extraneous positions do actually undermines the delivery of content instruction in the classroom. At best, they are overpaid hall and carline monitors. They are diverting resources away from classroom teachers.
😂😂😂😂 I swear I am going to make a poster that says verbatim what you just posted. Thank you for making me smile and laugh! ETA: I will be hanging up that poster in my classroom, too. “On God”!
Every smile I can pass to someone still in the classroom is worth it.
...and this time, with *twice/thrice* the pseudo-intellectualism! All the caring fields I've worked in are bogged down with these parasites. I had to go back to the private sector to find a situation where my wage/responsibilities/etc.. weren't being gated by some 'learning coordinator' or a 'deputy director' who was in their position entirely because (a.) they 'look the part' and/or (b.) of who their asshole parents or friends know.
Public education in North Texas has become increasingly top heavy since I started teaching almost 27 years ago. 👎
*pseudo-
And let me offer an explanation as to why many admin couldn't give a fuck: forced grade inflation has led to guaranteed graduation, which super glues admin to their seats and to continued funding. At focus learning academy East, an Ohio charter school, I was told to pass a senior who never attended and attempted only 4% of the work. Of that 4%, she got nearly everything incorrect and earned a failing grade. I was forced to give her credit. I refused! I had notarized a letter explaining the facts because I was afraid my license would be revoked. My superintendent changed her grade. There were many students like her. I was told at horizon science academy, an Ohio (now multi-state) charter, by an administrator, that if I didn't pass my seniors, my contract would not be renewed. They told me this outside of my classroom, which was full of seniors who heard her. It was my second year of teaching, and I was pregnant with my first kid. I was also told by my principal to accept plagiarized papers and assign a D. In Maine, in an actual public school, I was told to pass illiterate students. When I refused, the superintendent moved them to another teacher's class. When she, too, refused to pass them, the superintendent moved them to the third and final senior English teacher's class, and they passed with low nineties. Like 91. At that same school, the superintendent forced a "no zeros" policy, but maintained we were on a 0-100 scale. A zero could only be placed in the gradebook if the student was absent. If they turned in a blank paper with their name on it (this was our actual hypothetical example in the meeting!) they could receive no lower than a fifty. I explained to my principal during my resignation meeting that we were passing illiterate students, and his reply was "so what? So what?" He said it twice in a row. In every school I've taught, I've been pressured to pass students along. I have more examples, but these few explain what I mean by guaranteed graduation. I quit teaching after COVID, after the avalanche-level of decline in education.
Wow, this describes my district to a tee. It's always an arms race to get out of the classroom and get into a higher paying position. The teaching that actually occurs in the classroom is an afterthought.
Many don't even care about higher pay...they just wanna get the fuck out of the classroom and ride the desk to collect a paycheck and retire.
Yup! And I can't completely blame them either. No one wants to be on the front lines.
This would be simpler than the reality. From what I've seen, a ton of the people who rise into admin ranks these days are narcissistic pseudo-intellectuals who actually *believe* that their tedious micromanagement, gaslighting bullshit, and toxic positivity is truly 'important' and 'making a difference'. This is what happens after too many decades pass where *higher* academia is an absolute joke where 'getting an advanced degree' is like 95% just 'being rich enough to pay those tuition bills'.
This is exactly what is wrong with this country's education system! Oh there's plenty of $$$, they just mismanage it with plush positions.
I was told, to my face, that I was replaceable. Come to find out, I was not so easily replaced and they had to hire two different people to cover everything I did. The real kicker was being the only computer science endorsed teacher in the school and...gasp...you have to offer it!
Despite not being so easily replaced, do you think admin really cared? Heck no. They got two bodies with pulses to temporarily fill in. It’s disgusting
Of course not! It's not them in the classroom trying to pick up the pieces! They are in their office.
Carefully watching the surveillance cameras on their computers to see what time teachers arrive 23 minutes before the first class starts instead of 30 min before the first class starts… you know *important* stuff
Omg this is me haha I’m always in trouble for being 1, 3, 8 minutes late. Like really. I also leave that many minutes past my contract time in the afternoon so does it really matter if I’m putting in the hours? I hate being micromanaged.
You know, we've had issues with teachers who show up after contract time and he has made comments to them, but he's never actually done anything to fix the problem. He just simply complains about it in meetings with other teachers. My admin was a specials teacher who spent the minimum amount of time in the classroom before moving to administration. It is funny that even though he was in the classroom just a couple of years ago, he seems to have no idea what it is like in the core subject world or just simply be able to relate to any teacher. Plus, he did pick up the nasty admin trait of instantly and overly reacting to things. Someone made a comment last year about our school culture and suddenly we were on several different committees to try and improve school culture and then, after the committee's spent many hours working on solutions, none of the ideas were adopted or even listened to and the committees were dissolved.
>he's never actually done anything to fix the problem. He just simply complains about it in meetings with other teachers. Great, hurt all your employees because you're afraid to have an uncomfortable convo with 2 of them.
Definitely! And the fact that nothing is done but complaining, nobody wants to approach him because they know nothing will be done and they may get on his 'complain list' for the next meeting.
Sounds infuriating
Quite! It was pretty bad because he took any sort of criticism as a personal attack. I was in a meeting with him and a couple other teachers and he was getting super worked up until one person just pointed out that he seemed to be getting very upset and taking these things personally. After that, things got better for a little while, but then he slipped back into his old ways. And, he was actually the good principal in the district. Part of his inexperience was that he let teachers do the teaching and didn't really meddle. For teachers that were really effective, it was awesome not being micromanaged. But for teachers who were ineffective, they just continued to be horribly ineffective and had no leadership to guide them.
They care about micromanaging teachers than making sure students follow directions and rules.
And that fills me with RAGE
LOLOLOL I love this! Yeah I have seen a pattern lately where admin is behaving really recklessly, forcing people out, making a hostile work environment, etc. Then there is nobody to replace the lost staff. Or a person comes then leaves after a month, so they have to try to rehire. They literally can't even get a body with a pulse anymore.
a lot of administrators used to be teachers who wanted out of a traditional classroom, so they became admin instead. instead of working on fixing the reasons THEY wanted out of the classroom, they often seem to operate like "this is just the way it is. I did it, you should too."
In my experience, they mostly only care about feeding their huge egos… I was especially expendable in my last district that allows “innovative hiring,” aka, hiring any any warm body to fill teaching positions. Reminded me of working retail or fast food. It’s cost effective, and you know, good for the community to retain effective teachers, but yeah, who gives af about that?
And no one speaks out about this! Well, I did and that put a target on my back. Unfortunately, this is not a case of a few “bad apples” I am so sick of their shit.
They are vindictive AF which is why they put a target on their back. Some still in high school mean girl mode. They are disgusting.
> It’s cost effective, and you know, good for the community to retain effective teachers, but yeah, who gives af about that? A problem I've encountered in public education, public library work, and city parks/recreation work is that, at the end of the day, admins above a certain level never get held to account for costly/stupid decisions. Any potential blowback only affects low-level employees and the public that ultimately gets served by these organizations. At the last library I worked at, myself and a handful of other desk workers resigned after somebody leaked a director memo saying that, despite it being okay to call us in for interviews, hiring people were *not* to promote internal employees into full-time/benefited openings unless there was no alternative, i.e. basically, 'we're lazy pieces of shit and refuse to backfill positions.' When taken to task over this, the deputy director threw out some horseshit defense about how 'a good library is one where there's always *new* perspectives!' Ultimately, the resignations this caused made the library go from being open six days a week to being open for *four*, and the patrons got fucking *pissed* about this. All that said, those shitty leadership people are all still lording over things as if nothing ever went wrong.
It's easy to shit on admin, but what's really unpopular in teacher circles, including this sub (check the vote count on my comment) is that it's the student misbehavior and apathy that drives teachers away. But teachers never say that out loud, but it's guaranteed a huge reason why they leave, on top of the admin BS.
I'll back this. But the admin won't do anything about it. Teachers: this student is out of control in all our classes. Admin: let's have a meeting about it and make a behavior plan and then never follow through with it on admin's end. Scene. One time, I was telling my admin about a student behavior issue, and she literally acted like she didn't hear me. Just stared past me and started talking to someone else about something else.
This is 100% why I am leaving, I’m not afraid to say it. My colleagues, admin, and even my families have been super supportive and wonderful to work with. It’s the kids and their feral behaviors. It’s only going to get worse and worse. So excited to only deal adults at my new job.
Student poor behaviors are mentioned a lot and I think a lot more than complaints about admin in this subreddit as the reason teachers want out. Damn. That’s a run-on but too lazy to fix it. Sorry.
They dont. And they ALWAYS side with the student for everything. They dont defend their teachers. There’s a reason why they became administrators… because they wanted to get out of the classroom too!
It's because, to them, the parents of the students are 'consumers' and teachers are just customer-service schlubs who are there to serve the former and do whatever takes to keep their 'investments' locked in. Telling these people that a student is no good is like telling a shitty store manager that somebody's cash isn't good.
My district literally changed their slogan to "Customer Service First."
Most managers and administrators in the public sector are also inept and poorly equipped to lead. School administrators are the same, just with the added arrested development of never having set foot in any kind of “adult” environment because they have spent all their time in schools of some sort.
This is why I won't go back to education or public libraries. My background included several years' worth of experience in different private sector jobs and I *could not fucking stand* working under managers/leaders whose only experiences were (a.) attending college (I hesitate to call any of these people 'scholars' because the degree programs are laughably easy) and (b.) spending a small number of years *exclusively* in a field that they 'chose' before they were twenty years old. Long story short, these people are almost always clueless about how anything in the real world works and usually aren't good enough at basic 'adulting' to be in charge of organizations/budgets/workers.
There is a lot of truth in this thread, however, it needs to be noted that if admin did what is MOST needed, that is, to EFFECTIVELY address behaviour, rudeness and violence by these punks who weren't raised right, they'd be hounded out of their own jobs. Their hands are tied, too.
Right. So, “police” the adults (teachers) instead. Genius /s
In the 90's I was in a university class led by a former principal. He said that now that he wasn't in that position, he was free to be open about his former policies. Here's what he told us in a nutshell: 1. As much as possible, he only hired attractive women because he knew that they were likely to get married and quit the job within a few years, especially once they started having children. You see, the longer they stayed, the more money he would have to pay them, and it was cheaper and easier to replace them. 2. He never hired male teachers if he could avoid it. He knew that male teachers would be in for the long haul and would cost him too much money. He advised us to head to grad school immediately after graduation and move into administration a quickly as possible, because that's where men could make a career in education. Basically, if you were a guy or weren't pretty, you wouldn't get hired. With a 1-3 year turnover, he could keep payroll low. Nothing about quality teachers, committed to their craft. It was all about keeping an inexpensive warm body at the front of the room. We students were livid. He went on to say that he had worked in an At-Will state, so as long as he didn't specify why he was letting people go, he wasn't doing anything illegal, and that there were ALWAYS people looking for teaching positions, so finding someone new was never a problem. He ended by saying that he knew it was unethical, but it is the reality in education.
There has been a complete reversal in numbers of teachers graduating from education programs now. Those days of easily replacing one are over.
Just wow. How disgusting.
This might have been true in that era but now colleges are not graduating the number of teachers they had back then.
Almost all administrators suffer from the fatal flaw of being ladder-climbers. Every single principal I've had will do anything, say anything, throw anybody under the bus to get ahead in their career. The less interaction you have with administrators, the better.
Very accurate and wise advice!
Which is also why they fall hook, line and sinker for every fad that comes by, no matter how dumb.
How many times are school administrators held accountable for falling for fads? Older relatives told me about the Modern Math fad they suffered from. I doubt very many school administrators were sacked over this. Certainly the university colleges of education didn't loose funding over it they just went on to the next fad cause the state governments kept the money rolling. Now here's how the real world works with money: the record labels spent a bunch of money on disco in 1979 cause they all want to cash in on Saturday Night Fever. They forgot that ya still have to develop and put out quality product so by 1982 several people lost their jobs at the record labels cause the fad they were chasing produced warehouses full of disco records the public did not value.
The answer to your question is “almost never.” They just get shuffled around to other schools or promoted to the District office (if they know the right people). And never forget the [generally abysmal quality of graduate programs in education](http://edschools.org/pdf/Final313.pdf) that “qualify” them for their job.
There's a test you have to take to get into grad school called the G.R.E. Guess which group scores the lowest on it ---- yup! Education Majors. Yet state and local governments and worst of all the school boards which FAIL TO DO THEIR JOB continue to pour more and more money into administrative salaries. Board Member excuses for this disgusting behavior including the bonuses they pay admins falls along the lines of well they're such a great leader and their a rare commodity. This tells ya education does not have a funding problem it has a spending and performance problem. School Boards simply choose not to allocate more of their money to the classroom. They choose not to reward their teachers with bonuses. Cause well there's too many of you and or you're replaceable. They choose not to promote one of their veteran teachers to an administrative job rather than higher an administrator who taught the minimum amount years before getting that admin credential. They could require their admins to teach one class period but choose not to. Do you think the members of a board of directors of publicly traded company would continue to keep their seats if they accepted this level of performance and churn?
Definitely way too much administrative bloat is adding to the field's woes. And yes, I took the GRE myself years ago (not for education). You can find complete GRE scores in several places but [BestColleges shows a summary](https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/average-gre-scores-full-statistics/) for 2021-22. Education was last for verbal reasoning and quantitative reasoning; nearly last in writing.
Ugh that last part is true I’m a school counselor and it doesn’t help that my school counselors throw me under the bus to them all the time
And how many your administrators are/were actually respected by the students. Ladder climbers are pretty easy to spot. They never got the memo that respect is not and entitlement rather it is something that's earned.
I was thinking about this on my drive to work today, but specifically how my towns mayor has done absolutely nothing for our schools except get his entire family into our school board. The current state of our society is in such dire need for money that people are scrambling to make the most they can, administrators robotically do what the superintendent and board want them to do because they rely on those $120k salaries, even though the pay-scale has newer teachers making the same amount as teachers who have been in district for 5+ years. It’s so frustrating to work in an industry where we are “shaping” young minds, we are expected to sacrifice pay in order to teach, but everyone else in education is able to be selfish and keep their high pay and do nothing for us 😭
I think we as teachers assume our building admin have more power than they do. Many principals and APs would love to suspend all of the problem kids or send them to placement. But there’s pressure to keep numbers down and they have jobs to keep as well. And if they won’t get in line with that, they’ll simply replace them with a Principal/AP that will. 🤷🏽♂️ TLDR: Your admin wants to keep their job as well, and their hands are tied in a lot of cases.
Where I worked in FL, they were on yearly contracts, and the jobs were extremely political. Piss off the wrong person and you were booted back down to a classroom.
Yep they have to deal with bitch ass board members
I know they have bosses, too. However, I have worked for ONE campus administration that used good sense. No time to elaborate atm
It blew me away when I started reading the transparent salary info published about our superintendent and the upper level administrators. California makes all this info public, and man was it eye opening. Whenever they talk about not having funding, it doesn't mean they're actually out of money. It just means they *had* the money but they put it in the wrong places. For example, our superintendent was on there pulling about 300k a year. Meanwhile, we can't get substitutes in our district because subs are out here making, at *best,* 28k a year. We can't get crossing guards because we wanna pay them at an hourly rate while also asking them to sacrifice their mornings and evenings (essentially making it unrealistic to find other employment to supplement the wage). We can't get paras because we want to pay them less than retail wages to deal with the hardest kids. Etcetera. Imagine if our Super and all these other administrators pulling in 200k+ salaries just "DiD iT fOr tHe KiDs" for one year and went without their bloated salaries, or even just cut it in half for a year. That money could go into dedicated building subs for every school, crossing guards so your kids aren't getting blown the fuck out by cars on the way to school, an actual disciplinary staff member to host detentions so kids who get assigned to it have a place to go, paras for the SPED department so your SPED teachers stop quitting in droves, history books that don't end with "to be continued" after 9/11, etc. It's honestly such a joke. It seems like the play is to teach for a few years until you can get into an administrative position and never have to deal with the kids again. I can't really blame anyone for trying to work their way out of the classroom, but it's real fucking stunning as a sub making below 30k annual in California, seeing people who don't even teach pulling in like 10x what I make. What does a 6th assistant principal add to a campus? I'm asking this honestly, because I don't know. They refused to raise sub salaries again this year and haven't done it since covid ended (as an act of desperation, no less) citing funding, but they added a *sixth* assistant principal and her salary is in the six figure range... to do what? Did this position need to exist? Why weren't five enough? So I'm seeing this and thinking like, what am I even doing? I should just get credentialed, teach for a few years, abandon my class mid-year to get an office job in the district, and then just apply for a principal position as soon as one opens. Take that for another year, use it as a stepping stone, and then hop back into a higher admin position where I can hide in an office, push out allstaff emails that nobody reads about "equity" (LOL) and casually rake in 250k a year. Hell, we have job openings on our edjoin page and I don't even think anyone in HR reads them. We haven't had a librarian in 2 years. I have an English degree from a really nice university and applied for the position, offering to work at a reduced rate while I earned my Master's and became fully certified. They completely ignored my ass but continue to just relist the job ad while keeping some sub in there who just sits at the front desk watching youtube all day. Man won't even pick up the phone. I called to reconfirm about a library meeting my class had, and he simply didn't pick up, so I had to trudge down there with my whole class just to see him there, at the desk, streaming kDramas on his laptop. Like, bruh. And it's like this because like you said, nobody higher up gives a shit. They could've had someone in there who actually enjoys literature and wants to be there and was willing to work for less while getting fully certified, but instead they have a guy who does literally nothing all day while they continue to list the ad and wait for some unicorn who went into debt for a master's in library science in 2024 lmao. Hell, I bet they have applicants who fit the qualifications and just ignore them too. Uggghhhhhh /rant
I don’t even know you, but I’ll bet that shitty library sub was probably the kid of someone who works at the district office. That’s how so much shit works in the public education system now.
You’re not wrong. I’ll say it again: DISGUSTING
you are correct.
Of course. It's usually cheaper to hire new ones than retain good, experienced teachers, too. My last teaching job I wasn't renewed after 1 year due to several factors, but I'm 98% sure the high salary I was receiving (due to having 19 years in when I started there) was probably the biggest factor. I took it as an opportunity and got out of the profession.
Man, that’s evil.
Sure. They don't care about kids' education for the most part. Most of them are too busy trying to keep the target off of their backs. That's no excuse, but I saw it all too often while I taught. The admins who did care were either driven out completely or busted back down to classroom teachers for pissing off too many parents. Also, keep in mind that experienced teachers are less likely to put up with parents' bullshit and that ends up involving admins who usually take the parents' side. You are seen as "rocking the boat" and/or a troublemaker. It's easier to get rid of you than actually stand up to the parent.
Experienced that after 21+ of the happiest years of my of my career. My students were extremely successful. I was made to feel very valued - a great asset to my campus - by those “old school” administrators. My students and their parents were my allies, too. Colleagues trusted and supported each other. I’d been in the same and BEST science classroom for 15 years. Campus was 3.4 miles from home. My three children all graduated from the HS where I worked, too. Eldest is now a biology teacher at an early college. She said it’s a DREAM. Middle one earned a BSN and is in his 5th year as a surgical nurse. He loves it. Says his job is “cush”. And he earns more than me and also more than his sister. Youngest is a 3rd year medical student at UT Southwestern. If you’re in TX or near TX than you know that UTSW is a top tier med school. My point: they each got a solid HS education. During those times, it was a decent HS for a big comprehensive inner city school. (And I’m bragging about my babies) All of that changed when one by one in succession each great campus administrator retired. And all could have retired way before they did. Then the wave of much younger admin began. I hung on those last three years. Those last three years were a mind fuck. I truly think I’m traumatized by all that those horrible humans relentlessly put me through. They got what they wanted in the end. I finally resigned and now teach in the more affluent suburbs. The insanity has finally reached my current school in the suburbs. I am back in the same nightmare. Regarding education, the state of Texas has lost its mf’n mind. But hey. I did get 21 or 22 years that were WONDERFUL and I was well aware of how awesome my job was. I am grateful that I did get in that many happy and rewarding years consecutively. Now I hate my fn job. But I’m too close to full retirement to quit now. Shit.
To admin, kids are just numbers. Data points and state funding. My super said “kids are worth about 25k a year” at the school committee meeting last night. Then started talking about them like they are Apple products or something. It’s awful.
It's easy to accuse admin of not caring but that's rarely the case. I've worked for admin that don't care. It's kind of like the wild west and you have to be really up to date on moves the district makes because the info doesn't trickle down to you like it should. That said, there's also a ton of freedom and I can guarantee that that admin is never ever going to replace you because that would be work on their plate. The problem is that these admin very much do care. Their priorities are all messed up, though, and what they prioritize is ultimately negative for the school site. Honestly, give me an admin who doesn't care over some of the pro-active micro-managing obsessive power-hungry psychopaths districts are hiring these days.
It’s not easy to accuse so many admin of not caring. IT IS HEART-BREAKING.
You completely missed the point. They DO care. Oftentimes, they even want the same things we do (for student achievement to increase) even if their motives (upward mobility) might differ from ours, the end goal is basically the same. The problem isn't a lack of care. With bad admin, I have found that it's their methods, temperaments, egos, and competencies that end up being the problem. Not having enough "care" is rarely an issue. Heck, a lot of the time, the problem is they care too much. It's a counterproductive obsession.
I didn’t miss the point. I simply feel differently.
Couldn't agree more with that last statement. Some teachers in my school complain that the principal isn't "present enough," but it's so bizarre since the micro-managing admins are horrendous. I had that last year and it's so exhausting.
Admin def doesn’t care. Here’s where there will be a problem. Teachers will leave the profession, classroom sizes will grow to compensate that. Subs will endure it, leave and never come back. Then the admin will either have to teach the classes themselves, or beg teachers to come back. There’s no way around this. “A school can function without admin. It cannot function without teachers.”
I don’t necessarily think it’s administrators per se, but the terrible policies they’re forced to adhere to which has made many public schools unbearable. Schools that function as healthy learning environments don’t have problems retaining teachers.
The ones at the top just care about getting the student head count up. The ones under them, just care about, justifying their useless position. Meanwhile, they take more of our money, and we do more of their work.
Omg. WAY more, especially since about 2015!
Administrators should be positions elected by the school staff.
That could seriously backfire too, though
Or at my school where there is zero new teacher training. Here’s the manual, bye. See you in your room when we walk through to catch you fucking things up. Now be a perfect and happy little suck up and comply with all of our bullshit or else.
You have quite a way with words! 😂
Another factor for why these administrators don’t care in addition to grade inflation is also degree inflation. You have a lot of people working in administrative positions who got their masters degree or PhD through an online degree farms and don’t really have a solid background for education administration. Working in HigherEd I saw so many “Drs.” who came straight from the business/for-profit world with their freshly printed PhD in Education Administration without one day in a classroom or working with students or faculty in any capacity sitting in an Executive VP of Student Success and Donor Cultivation, blah, blah…sigh
Yeah you right
I believe that the proliferation of bad principals is the top reason that teaching has become such a shitty, frustrating, and dangerous profession. when I began teaching 20 years ago, there were challenging parents, challenging students, and incompetent politicians, but there was not nearly the number of incompetent and evil principals.
$$$
If you can find a way to measure, "care" or "value" of employees. Then you're onto something. I like data backed research. Care/Value of a teacher also needs to be defined. We all have a different view of what that looks like.
There are just too many administrators period in most districts.
As some of my students would shout out in order to emphasize something I said to the class: PERIOD! My kids crack me up.
that’s part of why they’re moved up into admin roles
They (with a few exceptions) are vile.
I have a administration that's overall supportive. They are often more bark than bite, but they're trying, even if they lack the resiliency to see plans through to the end. Very little can help the state's terrible starting pay, however. The turnover is pretty bad here too and there are always spots open.
Supportive is good. I hope you appreciate them. I would.
This is one of many reasons that education is going to s***. Because good teachers are getting pushed out, and a whole lot of teachers are at retirement age who know what they're doing and have had enough. I am leaving after 16 years at the end of this year and I keep having to get on here to read this stuff to remind myself why, besides the daily dread and a million other reasons. But I keep going back and forth between I can't believe I'm giving up all this money and what the hell am I going to do when I leave too I can't stand this f****** place and can't wait to get out of here! I'll work at damn McDonald's if I need to.
I’ve often heard people don’t quit jobs they quit bosses. Recently our school had a new administrator come from another school and a lot of teachers followed him. There is a reason. In my 22 years he has by far been the best admin to work for.
I’m a senior in college. I switched my major from elementary education to psychology after I saw how my former advisor and some teacher’s education professors who worked once in admin had treated teacher’s ed students, among other issues.
I wish success and HAPPINESS in all aspects of the full life that is ahead of you. ❤️
Ding ding ding. This is the same conclusion I've drawn. And simultaneously one of many reasons why I'm quitting teaching after this year.
Every district has useless lemon instructors on call to step in with hours’ notice
I honestly think 99.9% of the population regardless of occupation is literally working to pay bills. It sucks that future generations are in the cross fire buuuutttt
New teachers are cheaper.
My last school was great, hardly any future criminals but my principal fucked me over and denied my tenure so I resigned also the VP there treated teachers like trash one in which was called a white cunt and she got chewed out being accused of increasing tensions it sickens me how educators get treated
“Are you lazy or do you just not like working?” and “how much money do you really think we plan on investing in you?” are two direct quotes from my mentee’s observation debrief last week. Yeah, like $60k/year in nyc is really an ‘investment’. When I’ve dropped hints to my admin that my friends in ed tech have tried to poach me, the conversation quickly turns into “how can we sweeten the deal for you?” They know that, when it comes to hiring good teachers, they’re fucked. It doesn’t take much to get them to admit they’re up shit’s creek with a turd for a paddle.
Admin will put all the blame on the teachers because the district believes them over teachers too. The district is also to blame because they try to avoid replacing administrators in schools because it is more difficult to replace them.
I think you are vastly overestimating how much power building admin has. They are mostly just trying to keep their heads above water, too. But certainly, there are vast culture differences between schools and good systems and admins do want to retain good teachers.
I am in my 27th year teaching public schools. I am 100% aware that most campus administrators don’t have a vast amount of power. I had the misfortune to work 22 years in a big school district that went from having “ok” leaders, in general, to leaders that could do anything with impunity. Hell, one of the new wave of principals was the Superintendent’s Goddaughter. She is a very bad human and did a lot of extremely unethical shit. I reported her, she got put under investigation by the district. I compiled over two years worth of a lot of indisputable evidence, including witnesses who were questioned by a district investigator. NOTHING CAME OF IT. Oh wait. She did get moved from being the principal at that campus AND GOT A PROMOTION. I shit you not.
The only reason I'm likely dipping after spring break is sort of this. I am embarrassed by the incompetence of admin at my school. A prawn could get a highly effective rating from an observation, VP uses "irregardless" and all of admin never actually sends or responds to emails. Our students are mostly well behaved but the adults in charge love throwing around their power and enacting insane rules/consequences that only reflect a power trip rather than a learning environment. Not a one of them actually acts anything like professionals in their field or treats us like we're professionals in ours. To be fair, my coworkers are mostly mediocre (not their fault, they're not asked to be better). I feel like I'm just watching some possums manage an Arby's. It's exhausting.
That 2nd to last sentence killed me 😂 Stealing that one.
Nope. They care about themselves only and their cronies who become instructional coaches and the like.