On Teacher Appreciation Day, "Fox & Friends" interviewed three teachers who shared their concerns about the nation's schools' challenges.
Brook Ooten, an elementary school teacher from New York, highlighted the national teacher shortage as the biggest issue.
"Three-quarters of U.S. states now report that they are short on teachers. We have teachers leaving the profession in droves and I think that puts a lot of stress on the teachers that are in the classroom teaching," she said.
Daniel Buck, a visiting fellow at the Fordham Institute and author of "What Is Wrong With Our Schools?" added that the trend away from discipline in the classroom is the number one reason teachers are quitting. "There's kind of a trend away from discipline, from standard punishments, consequences, and behavior is worsening across the country, and it's affecting everything else in education, including teacher morale," he said.
The issue of education has become a top concern among voters as Republican candidates are leaning heavily into teaching as a critical issue in the 2024 elections. Polls reveal parental rights, transgender policies, and politicized school curriculums as critical issues.
Since the pandemic, school board meetings have often become battlegrounds between parents and school board officials, reigniting the debate over how much control parents should have over their children's education. Furthermore, school districts nationwide struggled to fill hundreds of open teaching positions in the remaining weeks of summer before the 2022-2023 school year kicked off.
A National Center for Education Statistics survey found that 44% of public schools report having total- or part-time teacher vacancies. The survey, published in March 2022, also found that 61% of public schools saying at least one vacancy cited the pandemic for the open jobs. The survey reported that most of the vacancies were due to resignations, not retirement.
Rhode Island high school teacher Ramona Bessinger raised concern over teachers being forced to "adhere to political ideologies in the classroom." She said, "Teachers are being forced to adhere to these political ideologies in the classroom and contrary to what their personal beliefs are and contrary to what is even right or true. For example, this anti-American content that we're seeing, this anti-girl, anti-boy content that we're seeing." Bessinger said teachers are being left with a "moral decision" to make, and many are opting out. "Sometimes they just elect to leave the profession or they're pushed out, quite frankly, harassed and bullied," she added.
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