Happy Teacher Appreciation Week: A history of teacher depreciation

A few years ago, when I was working for an education news outlet, I published a listicle (intended to please SEO algorithms) with tips to celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week. I suggested families and students can never go wrong with a thank you card. And while I stand by a handwritten note :) , I wrote this “op-ed” in 2022 as a revision (of sorts) to navigate how our education systems historically depreciate the role of teachers.

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This Teacher Appreciation Week, combative parents spar with disillusioned teachers, as students, withdrawn from the traumatic toll of the pandemic, struggle to stay afloat in the classroom. All the while, tied up in the divisive political debates at the end of another Covid school year is Biden’s American Rescue Plan (ARP). The stimulus act, which passed in the spring of 2021, is committed to sending $122 billion to schools over the next three years. 

Like its federal school aid predecessors, the ARP draws on public and private stakeholders to streamline an innovative “fix” that supplements teachers and school staff in the aftermath of online learning. A portion of that funding is intended to intercept pandemic learning loss with tutoring, specifically permitting spending on virtual tutoring. 

Unsurprisingly, the bulk of virtual tutoring providers seizing the opportunity are non-governmental, private organizations. They offer a range of services from video streaming that replicates in-person instruction to softwares that rely on artificial intelligence and remove the human element altogether. And while in-person learning with consistent, paid and trained adults is proven to be a more effective option, many schools have instead opted to contract these private companies that adopt new virtual forms of instruction.  

During this critical inflection point as we recover from the pandemic, the deliberate choice to fund private tutors, be it in-person or virtual, rather than investing in teachers, is nothing but predictable. The preference for privately-sponsored virtual tutoring programs reflects a conflict of interest arching back to the conception of the common school: the obscured crossover between private entities in public schools. Importantly, yet implicitly, underlying this tension is the devaluation of the teaching profession. 

Privatization and philanthropy are threaded into the economy of U.S. public schools; an economy that Horace Mann once intended to exchange free, sufficient moral education in return for a strengthened democracy. However, despite his vision, the implementation of common schools faltered in the attempt to become a taxpayer funded public good. In large part because from the start, common schools operated within free-market capitalism.

In his 10th address to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Mann warned “vast and overshadowing private fortunes are among the greatest dangers to which the happiness of the people in a republic can be subjected.” Regardless of this fear, education systems had always responded to the wants and needs of the business sector and the white men who dominated it. Even a white man like Mann could not fully persuade Massachusetts legislators and communities to raise public money for schools. 

Part of the apprehension about taxation surrounded teachers. Local leaders feared that the government, not local districts, had the authority to select teachers and direct the curriculum of students. In response to their opposition, Mann solicited the help of his friend, Edmond Dwight, a wealthy manufacturer who offered $10,000 in return for the local government to match the investment in schools. Therefore, in order to sideline leaders’ mistrust in a centralized government-controlled teaching force, Mann looked to private funding to finance his public vision.

By the late 19th century, this weariness of public investments in teachers coincided with the trend of female teachers replacing men in the classroom because they were cheaper labor and could be paid 60 percent less on average. In Mann’s eyes, as an agent of white supremacy himself, white women in particular fit the racialized Victorian mold of “maternal“ teachers serving as disciplinarians and "poised character models” for children. Ultimately, this socialized feminization of the workforce as a woman's role only further deterred investing in teacher wages in public schools. 

District-level leaders' distaste for financing a government-controlled and feminized profession spurred a cyclical pattern of distrust in public schools. Teaching was estranged from other male-dominated professions like medicine and law because it was positioned at the intersection of a civil service job subject to public scrutiny and an inferior career path due to the predominance of women.

Still today, this view of teaching as a weak, public-facing profession lives on in the ARP’s agenda. The pandemic heightened already existing issues in the teaching field: stress, shortages, declining enrollment in preparation programs, and teacher effectiveness. Yet, instead of making critical investments to address teacher shortages, ARP funds are prioritized for supplementary, and often private, programs and services like virtual tutoring, technology, broadband, and tech-focused professional development. At the end of the day, while these investments may be helpful, they are fruitless without effective teachers to activate them. 

Even beyond times of crisis like the pandemic, distrust in teachers prevails in blue-skies. The self fulfilling prophecy of viewing teachers as insufficient, yet still not deserving of public investment has long pervaded policymakers' determination to prioritize standardization, evaluation, and short-term professional development over targeting investment in long-term improvements like higher starting wages and loan forgiveness. 

In the context of our capitalist economy and history, the preference for short-term competitive fixes comes at no surprise. During the industrial era, our nation expanded its international presence, and our allegiance to the neoliberal apex of success required quantifiable and standardized performance evaluation to compete in the global marketplace. In this line of thinking, competitive practices drive teaching and learning, valuing private over public institutions which are seen to meet these goals. 

Therefore, policymakers often turn to what they know best to govern what they see as “unruly” schools and teachers: technocratic logic and private entities. That means infusing business methods of administration in order to rationalize the educational field and teaching profession.

One example where we see technocratic methods come into play is teacher training, with alternative, privately offered teaching certifications like Teach for America. Critics argue these preparation programs further silo the teaching profession into the act of disseminating knowledge to perform for tests. Their fast-track preparation programs focus solely on subject-matter expertise and learning on site, correlating teacher success to student testing performance. These alternative programs reflect a pro-market, privatized vision for attaining credentials outside of traditional teacher programs while providing a quick fix approach to fixing American schools by minimizing the teaching profession to a 5 -7 week training program. 

I argue the disregard for making public investments in the teaching profession, the reliance on technocratic standardization, and the preference for alternative accelerated training programs stems from a deep-seated distrust in public institutions, teachers, and frankly, women.

However, when it comes to the ARP, some states may be countering this historic distrust  by utilizing funds and other surplus pandemic dollars to invest in long-term teacher hiring and retention solutions. North Carolina, for example, has used some funds to hire more teachers and teaching assistants in addition to psychologists to support their work. Likewise, many states have utilized their budget surpluses this year to pass bills giving teachers a bigger paycheck. 

Although notably, despite these efforts, when adjusted for inflation, the national average salary for teachers has only increased slightly in the past decade. 

Ultimately, recent investments do not address the perceived low-status of the teaching profession nor do they negate a general preference for private entities over public. While the latter may be a more challenging problem to solve, to initiate a long-term cultural shift in respect for the teaching profession, teachers should consistently be centered in policy solutions. This Teacher Appreciation Week, in addition to a hand-written thank-you card, let’s start by using the momentum of the ARP to increase starting salaries and forgive teachers’ loans.