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Katy Farber
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Why Great Teachers Quit and How We Might Stop the Exodus Kindle Edition

by Katy Farber (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.2 out of 5 stars 17
See all formats and editions
Learn why today’s best teachers are leaving—from the teachers themselves.

Low pay, increased responsibilities, and high-stakes standardized testing—these are just some of the reasons why more talented teachers are leaving the profession than ever before. Drawing on in-depth interviews with teachers all over the country, Katy Farber presents an in-the-trenches view of the classroom exodus and uncovers ways that schools can turn the tide.

Farber's findings, which have been featured on Education Talk Radio, Vermont Public Radio, and in the Huffington Post, paint a sometimes shocking picture of life in today's schools, taking a frank look at

• Challenges to teacher endurance, including tight budgets, difficult parents, standardized testing, unsafe schools, inadequate pay, and lack of respect
• Strategies veteran teachers use to make sure the joys of teaching outweigh the frustrations
• Success stories from individual schools and districts that have found solutions to these challenges
• Recommendations for creating a school environment that fosters teacher retention

Featuring clear analysis and concrete suggestions for administrators and policy makers, Why Great Teachers Quit takes you to the front lines of the fight to keep great teachers where they belong: in the classroom.
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  1. Print length
    201 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Skyhorse
  5. Publication date
    February 17, 2015
  6. File size
    3267 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“This book is for every parent who has had their child’s teacher leave in the middle of the year, every administrator who marvels at the difficulty of teacher retention or team spirit, every policy maker ready to walk the walk, and anyone who has invested years in preparation for a career in the classroom only to be faced with the thought of cutting his or her losses.” -- Esmé Raji Codell, Author of Educating Esmé Published On: 2010-05-06

“In this lively and interesting book, Katy Farber makes public the real reasons why inexperienced teachers rarely stay long enough or get the support they need to become good, why good teachers don’t become great, and why great teachers quit.” -- Deborah Meier, Educational Reformer, Writer, and Activist Published On: 2010-02-08

"This book can remind those who teach why we do so, not only reconnect us with our core beliefs, but also to motivate us to speak up beyond our individual classrooms on behalf of the well-being of our students and the ultimate success of public schools." -- Kenneth J. Bernstein Published On: 2011-10-12

"A timely book about a major crisis affecting our schools and real solutions to keep our best teachers in the classroom." -- Anthony J. Mullen, 2009 National Teacher of the Year Published On: 2010-05-28

"Finally, a book written by a practicing teacher who really understands what it is like to teach in today′s schools: the demands, challenges, and rewards. Joining her are the voices of teachers from all over the country who have come together to share their stories and wisdom. Written with passion and insight, this is an excellent resource for anyone vested in improving education and keeping quality teachers in the classroom. This book should be required reading for every administrator and school board member." -- Julie Smart, Special Educator Published On: 2009-07-01

"This book is a must-read for every principal, school board member, and policy maker concerned about teacher turnover. Farber does an excellent job framing the problems. Now the question is: What are we willing to do to stem the exodus of great teachers from our schools?" -- Tom Israel, Executive Director Published On: 2009-05-18

About the Author

Katy Farber is a teacher, author, and founder of the blog, Non-Toxic Kids. She is also the author of two books about education, Why Great Teachers Quit and How We Might Stop the Exodus and Change the World with Service Learning. Katy has written for various news, parenting, non-profit and educational publications, including MomsRising, Moms Clean Air Force, Educational Leadership, CNN’s School of Thought Blog, Problogger, Fox News opinion, and many others.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00R3LDZQU
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Skyhorse (February 17, 2015)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 17, 2015
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3267 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 201 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1412972450
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 out of 5 stars 17

About the author

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Katy Farber

Katy Farber

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Katy Farber, Ed.D, is an educator, teacher coach, and writer from Vermont. She is the author of three books about education: Why Great Teachers Quit and How We Might Stop the Exodus; and Change the World with Service Learning: How to Create, Lead and Assess Service Learning Projects; and its new edition, Real and Relevant: a guide for service and project based learning, released in June 2017. She also wrote a middle grade fiction novel called The Order of the Trees (Green Writers Press, 2015). Her writing has been published on CNN’s School of Thought blog, Educational Leadership, Edutopia, Huffington Post and the Synapse.

Connect with her on Twitter at @non_toxic_kids and @katyfarber, or at her website katyfarber.com.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
17 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

David J. Wilson
5.0 out of 5 stars Why Great Teachers Quit
Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2010
Verified Purchase
Farber does an excellent job of describing why the professional mortality rate in public school teaching is so high, and why many of the casualties are just those teachers whom we can least afford to lose. The list of reasons is formidable: abuse of standardized testing; teachers powerless to control violence and chaos in the classroom; dilapidated, miserably maintained schools; ever-increasing expectations that must be met with ever-decreasing resources; an inept bureaucracy that is more interested in shifting blame and finding scapegoats than in addressing the problems; compensation that is far less than that available in fields making similar demands for intelligence, training, and skill; parents who micromanage their child's education; parent who don't give two hoots about their child's education; schools and teachers blamed for a host of socioeconomic ills (poverty, family breakdown, etc.) over which they have no control whatsoever. As one who has mentored school science and math projects for years and done a lot of volunteering in the schools, I was not surprised by Farber's extensive and accurate indictments. One of the results I've seen as a university prof has been the tendency of the brighter students to avoid careers in education as if they were the plague. Who wants a job (no longer a profession!) that is viewed with such contempt by our society?

I am less happy with Farber's proposed solutions to these problems. While her solutions are very reasonable, by and large, I fear the chances of their being implemented in America as it exists today are absolutely zero. In the long haul, this breakdown of our educational system will turn the U.S. into a second-rate or third-rate country. American politicians and the American people seem to be very much more interested in finding scapegoats and remaining in denial than in dealing with our badly broken public school system.
9 people found this helpful
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Stephen Owens
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book, very much of the moment
Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2010
Verified Purchase
If you are a teacher and have ever been tempted to find a new career, if you are an administrator and wondered why that promising young teacher quit, if you are a parent and questioned why that gifted teacher your child adored took a job in insurance, or if you are a policy maker struggling with the problem of recruiting 1.6 million new teachers in the next five years, then Katy Farber's book is for you. If you care about education and want a gripping tale of its frustrations (and joys) this book is for you, too.

In addressing the causes and cures for teacher attrition, Farber interviewed hundreds of teachers, performing qualitative research that transcends simple analysis by offering practical, human scale solutions. Each chapter addresses an aspect of the problem, such as standardized testing, working conditions, compensation, and the actions of administrators, parents and school boards. The chapters follow a narrative structure that begins with a story of a teacher on the verge of being driven from the profession. Farber proceeds with an analysis of the problem, suggestions for multiple small converging solutions that can be implemented quickly and inexpensively at a variety of levels, and concludes each chapter with a message of hope.

Farber's book makes a practical contribution to solving real problems. It is a fascinating book that belongs in the hands of everyone who believes in great education.
2 people found this helpful
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cjspeak
2.0 out of 5 stars Too repetitive
Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2013
Verified Purchase
Too much of the same things over and over again. Not really an in depth look at what is happening in education. More a book about the perils of standardized testing. While this is a major concern and it may have an impact in the classroom it is not everything.
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D. van Velsen
3.0 out of 5 stars don't buy the kindle version
Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2011
Verified Purchase
Don't buy the kindle version as the tables and some of the written sections are too small to read and you can't enlarge them as you can with regular text.
5 people found this helpful
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Zetica
5.0 out of 5 stars A Class Act
Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2012
If the by-line read "Because let's face it the pay is s*** and if you are any good you are burnt out in five years", well, that would be the truth of it so there would be no book. Perhaps there ought to be an abstract on the cover 'When you put good people in a bad system - the system always wins'. I read this `Why Great Teachers Quit' book really just looking to read about people like myself and my fellow contemporaries who left the so-called teaching 'profession' over the last 18 months. Whilst I would not say that I was a great teacher, I did love my job so much, I discovered I was born to it, was good at it and I wanted to keep doing it, hone my skills and become a person that students would remember in their adult years as someone who had guided and perhaps inspired them to expect more of themselves than others had in store for them. Like many who enter the profession with ideas, I never realised my ambition. In reading 'Why Great Teachers Quit' I at least found some degree of validation for quitting as within the text I found the club of which I had become a member was not a particularly exclusive one.

It appears that, according to Katy Farber, the main reasons great teachers quit are, quite aside from the lengthy list provided in earlier reviews; an increasing lack of autonomy within their job, the lack of tenure from the over use of short-term contracts and poor leadership by an ageing cohort of Principals. There is little knowledge nor experience of other working environments amongst the present cohort of Principals, many of whom are known less for `inspirational leadership' and more for poor communication, bad hiring policies and a desire to be liked.

Such principals avoid or delegate difficult decisions. In this power vacuum, those beneath them write their own job descriptions as they go. The Principal is left wringing their hands when it all goes wrong, (recognise anyone you know here David Tyson, Principal of Westall Secondary College?).

Perhaps this is because the majority of government principals are drawn from the teaching ranks, earning their position due to their years of service and friends within the Department. This meretricious tradition, being no indicator of ability, duds staff, students, the wider school community leaving schools across the map to be led with impeccable mediocrity. Many College Principals have never involved themselves in any other career. In today's world the continued employment of time-served staff in Education with little or no outside world experience to positions of authority where they can direct and control the lives of staff and students alike is unsustainable and should cease as indeed the present Liberal State government proposes. Exceptions tend to be in the private school sector, men like David Warner of Eltham College have vision, but those like him are a rarity.

I formed a mental picture from reading the text in 'Why Great Teachers Quit' that schools and colleges are set up rather like an Allied army of soldiers in WW1.

Every school is different, every class is different and every student is different - they are also different with every teacher. You have the poor bloody infantry; the teaching staff, at the front line, facing students with all their various learning methods and their other individual needs, agendas and in some cases social and domestic problems such as multi-social-urban-deprivation and family breakdown. Teachers have to deal with these issues head-on with little or no care or support.

Next we have the Officers in Charge of Supply; the college bureaucracy. The great teachers are disheartened by this monstrous regiment of mostly middle aged women with low grade qualifications dating back years who want nothing to change, let alone have a new teacher on the staff with, oh no - high qualifications, a life outside teaching and worst of all - those darned 'ideas' that might help to improve and inspire student learning.

Finally we have the Staff back at Divisional HQ; The Education Department. Mostly time-served escapees from the classroom that got into education initially because they were the first member of their family to go to University and teaching has been historically an `entry - level' profession into the middle class or maybe , "it just fitted in with my kid's routine". Such characters just worked the system till they got comfortable and now sadly the people at this most aggravating and mendacious level of bureaucracy seeks constantly to justify their existence by contriving new policies and agendas for teachers to follow and unfortunately have authority over our children's learning.

Most front line teachers are exceptional, that's why they are teachers, and having forsworn promotion/s to remain in the classroom they unfortunately don't have any rights to any executive powers. That's probably why most of the state schools in Victoria (Australia) are in such a mess. The good people are not involved in the decision making process - and they should be. Meanwhile, those that opted to give up on the class room in favour of promotion and a career path into the bureaucracy are the very ones making the decisions on the hire and retention of staff. Decisions which they tend to base on their own prejudices and the petty micro-politics that dominates the school community. These people really should have turned left into Secretarial College instead of right into Teacher Training. The worst offenders are the 'always the bridesmaid - never the bride' Assistant Principals. Think of the ones you have met, are they really the kinds of persons who should be working in schools and colleges these days? (Remind you of anyone, Eva Kesidis, Assistant Principal at Westall Secondary College?).

The individuals about whom we all should be concerned, (by whom I refer to as the educators, ex-educators and ourselves as parents) are the goons in our schools who are more concerned with protocols, procedure, having their paperwork in order, ordering staples and paperclips and who are possessed with a predisposition to the use of `eduspeak' and a predilection to uttering lush phrases like 'have you got clearance for that activity?'. Such educational parasites focus on committees, paperwork and procedure as opposed to the actual value of supporting a vibrant learning activities that could lead to an inspirational outcome, or not. They won't even allow staff to try, taking chances and giving ideas a go. Such low-grade people in the Principal class have a poor staff hire and retention level and yet try and assert that their bureaucracy is great. However, for example, ask a Year Level Co-ordinator for a College to pull out the college's policy on bullying and I doubt if they could find it never mind implement it.

I entered teaching because I wanted to put something into society after a successful career in business and the media. I found many teachers and nearly all school management to be mean-spirited and defensive, interpreting any government initiative, guidelines or curriculum framework at the most conservative level whilst showing a complete lack of respect and integrity to anyone that did not share their view - views that are as narrow as the corridors down which they walk.

'Why Great Teachers Quit' lays it all out and whilst reading the text I found lashings of unsolicited solace and succour. I can't unfortunately see any of the solutions proposed by Katy Farber ever being introduced here in Australia, where, as mentioned at the beginning of this review, the number one barrier to why great teachers quit is due to schools and colleges being run by people with the mentality of a grocer's clerk - I am reminded of the phrase, "The mediocre Principal is a clerk, the good Principal a manager, the superior Principal a demonstrator, but the great Principal is an inspiration to others."

Suffice to say I solved my issues with teaching by, like many, many others, quitting, getting out and finding a more rewarding job, with nicer people.
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