PBS高端访谈:现在的新教师面临着艰巨的工作和高离职率

　　GWEN IFILL: It's likely that everyone watching has spent time in a classroom, either as a student or a teacher. At 3.1 million, school teachers make up one of the largest portions of the American work force. And because teacher turnover¹ is very high, there are probably even more former teachers.

　　The NewsHour's special correspondent for education, John Merrow, has the story.

　　JOHN MERROW: It's graduation day for students at Montclair State University, which has one of the largest schools of education in New Jersey².

　　WOMAN: It gives me pleasure to state that 665 members of this class are certified³ and qualified⁴ to teach in the public schools of the state of New Jersey.

　　JOHN MERROW: These graduates are among the more than 200,000 women and men who've just completed teacher preparation programs across the country.

　　WOMAN: I'm trying to find a job in elementary education K-6.

　　MAN: So, I'm a math major. I want to become a math teacher.

　　WOMAN: Certified in special education. I would like a teaching job anywhere in New Jersey.

　　JOHN MERROW: Is this a good time to become a teacher? Salaries haven't kept up with inflation, tenure⁵ is under attack, and standardized⁶ test scores are being used to fire teachers.

　　Richard Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania says teaching attracts a certain kind of person.

　　RICHARD INGERSOLL, University of Pennsylvania: We have these surveys that ask people, college seniors, you know, what do you want out of a career? Is it money, is it prestige, is it security, is it problem-solving, is it intellectual challenge, is it doing good and helping⁷ people?

　　WOMAN: If it wasn't for the people in my schools, I would have never have graduated or been here. So I want to be in the systems to help other children.

　　MAN: I'm not really looking for wealth or riches or anything like that.

　　RICHARD INGERSOLL: It's not that they, you know, want to live on a low salary or something like that. It's that their main driver is to feel that they can make — make a difference.

　　JOHN MERROW: First, however, they need jobs.

　　If you want to be a teacher in the fall, give me a hand. If you have a teaching job in September, raise your hand.

　　WOMAN: Not yet.

　　JOHN MERROW: If you have a teaching job, raise your hand. One — one hand. Wow. Not yet? Not yet?

　　WOMAN: Applying. We're all applying.

　　JOHN MERROW: Nationwide, job prospects⁸ for teachers vary widely by state, school district and subject matter. In this part of New Jersey, jobs are hard to find. School districts surrounding Montclair told us they're receiving thousands of applications for just a few dozen teaching positions.

　　WOMAN: It's very competitive.

　　MAN: There's enough of us graduating, not enough jobs.

　　JOHN MERROW: This isn't new. Between 2010 and 2012, Montclair State graduated 555 elementary school teachers, but only about half have found jobs in New Jersey.

　　WOMAN: It's a little tough right now, but I'm hoping that I'm going to get something soon.

　　JOHN MERROW: If and when they do get hired, chances are at least 40 percent of them will leave teaching in the first five years. Why do they leave?

　　RICHARD INGERSOLL: Lots of reasons. But the biggest set of reasons has to do with the quality, the caliber⁹ of the job. It's the amount of support. It's the amount of student discipline and behavioral problems in the building. It's how much say teachers have in the decisions in the building that affect their jobs. Do they have input¹⁰ and voice?

　　And I'm sorry to say that the more poor schools, the urban schools have higher teacher turnover than do the more affluent¹¹ schools and the suburban¹² schools.

　　JOHN MERROW: Standing¹³ in line with all these young soon-to-be-graduates, I noticed most of them were women.

　　RICHARD INGERSOLL: Yes, the teaching occupation's becoming more female-dominated. It was always a female occupation. People thought that was going to decline in the last 20, 30 years, as all kinds of male-dominated occupations, professions have opened up to women. However, the opposite has happened. Teaching is becoming even more female, and we have now passed the three-quarters mark.

　　MAN: There's not too many elementary men in the field, unless you are a physical education, art and stuff like that.

　　RICHARD INGERSOLL: There's large numbers of elementary schools in which there's not a single male teacher. This is a big concern.

　　JOHN MERROW: But there's been a huge effort to try to recruit men.

　　RICHARD INGERSOLL: That has never succeeded.

　　JOHN MERROW: The student population is changing dramatically; 20 years ago, 65 percent of students were white, today, 49 percent.

　　To keep up, school districts have been recruiting minority teachers to work in high-poverty schools with large numbers of minority students.

　　RICHARD INGERSOLL: The numbers of minority teachers have more than doubled. But the catch is that those schools and districts often are less attractive places to work. And, as a result, minority teachers have distinctly higher quit rates than do non-minority teachers.

　　JOHN MERROW: So minority teachers are more likely to teach in…

　　RICHARD INGERSOLL: In high-minority and urban schools, yes.

　　JOHN MERROW: And more likely to leave teaching?

　　RICHARD INGERSOLL: Yes. In fact, minority teachers in affluent schools, they don't quit at any higher rates than the white teachers. No, it's — it boils down to the working conditions in these places. So the data tell us we need to start paying far more attention to the retention¹⁴, not just recruitment, but also retention of minority teachers.

　　JOHN MERROW: And so efforts to recruit minority teachers have resulted in only a 4 percent gain over the past 25 years. The teaching force remains¹⁵ more than 80 percent white, and most of the new hires are young.

　　RICHARD INGERSOLL: And you have schools now where, you know, there's hardly any veterans around. The most senior teacher is someone in their fifth or sixth year. So from a taxpayer¹⁶ viewpoint, there's maybe a benefit to this.

　　WOMAN: We are fresh out of school, we are first-year, and they don't have to pay us as much.

　　RICHARD INGERSOLL: On the other hand, we — common sense tells us — and also we have research showing — that experience counts, that teaching's a complex job, there's a lot of different aspects, not just simply raising students' test scores, and that — and that you get better over time.

　　WOMAN: It's a struggle at first, but you just got to keep trying.

　　WOMAN: And I feel confident in the classmates that I have seen and in myself that we can be the change they want to see in teachers.

　　JOHN MERROW: So what do all these changes in teaching add up to?

　　RICHARD INGERSOLL: Maybe all these changes aren't so much new, as they're returning to the old patterns. So when the public school system was invented over a century ago, it was — teaching was quite explicitly¹⁷ and intentionally¹⁸ made an occupation that was women, young women. Indeed, you — when you got married, you had to quit. So it — there was a lot of transiency.

　　JOHN MERROW: That was then.

　　RICHARD INGERSOLL: That was then. Now we see that it's the nation's largest occupation. It's getting bigger all the time. It's becoming more female. And its instability is increasing.

　　So, maybe the data are telling that these transformations¹⁹ are not something new; they're returning to the old.

　　JOHN MERROW: So, the title of this movie is not back to the future, but forward to the past?

　　RICHARD INGERSOLL: It could be. It could be.

　　JOHN MERROW: A fair number of these newly certified teachers may yet find jobs, because school districts continue hiring right up to the beginning of the school year, even into it.

　　For the PBS NewsHour, I'm John Merrow, reporting from Montclair, New Jersey.

1 turnover   

n.人员流动率，人事变动率；营业额，成交量

参考例句：

• The store greatly reduced the prices to make a quick turnover.这家商店实行大减价以迅速周转资金。
• Our turnover actually increased last year.去年我们的营业额竟然增加了。

2 jersey   

n.运动衫

参考例句：

• He wears a cotton jersey when he plays football.他穿运动衫踢足球。
• They were dressed alike in blue jersey and knickers.他们穿着一致，都是蓝色的运动衫和灯笼短裤。

3 certified   

a.经证明合格的；具有证明文件的

参考例句：

• Doctors certified him as insane. 医生证明他精神失常。
• The planes were certified airworthy. 飞机被证明适于航行。

4 qualified   

adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的

参考例句：

• He is qualified as a complete man of letters.他有资格当真正的文学家。
• We must note that we still lack qualified specialists.我们必须看到我们还缺乏有资质的专家。

5 tenure   

n.终身职位；任期；(土地)保有权，保有期

参考例句：

• He remained popular throughout his tenure of the office of mayor.他在担任市长的整个任期内都深得民心。
• Land tenure is a leading political issue in many parts of the world.土地的保有权在世界很多地区是主要的政治问题。

6 standardized   

adj.标准化的

参考例句：

• We use standardized tests to measure scholastic achievement. 我们用标准化考试来衡量学生的学业成绩。
• The parts of an automobile are standardized. 汽车零件是标准化了的。

7 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

8 prospects   

n.希望，前途(恒为复数)

参考例句：

• There is a mood of pessimism in the company about future job prospects. 公司中有一种对工作前景悲观的情绪。
• They are less sanguine about the company's long-term prospects. 他们对公司的远景不那么乐观。

9 caliber   

n.能力；水准

参考例句：

• They ought to win with players of such high caliber.他们选手的能力这样高,应该获胜。
• We are always trying to improve the caliber of our schools.我们一直在想方设法提高我们学校的水平。

10 input   

n.输入(物)；投入；vt.把(数据等)输入计算机

参考例句：

• I will forever be grateful for his considerable input.我将永远感激他的大量投入。
• All this information had to be input onto the computer.所有这些信息都必须输入计算机。

11 affluent   

adj.富裕的，富有的，丰富的，富饶的

参考例句：

• He hails from an affluent background.他出身于一个富有的家庭。
• His parents were very affluent.他的父母很富裕。

12 suburban   

adj.城郊的，在郊区的

参考例句：

• Suburban shopping centers were springing up all over America. 效区的商业中心在美国如雨后春笋般地兴起。
• There's a lot of good things about suburban living.郊区生活是有许多优点。

13 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

14 retention   

n.保留，保持，保持力，记忆力

参考例句：

• They advocate the retention of our nuclear power plants.他们主张保留我们的核电厂。
• His retention of energy at this hour is really surprising.人们惊叹他在这个时候还能保持如此旺盛的精力。

15 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

16 taxpayer   

n.纳税人

参考例句：

• The new scheme will run off with a lot of the taxpayer's money.这项新计划将用去纳税人许多钱。
• The taxpayer are unfavourably disposed towards the recent tax increase.纳税者对最近的增加税收十分反感。

17 explicitly   

ad.明确地，显然地

参考例句：

• The plan does not explicitly endorse the private ownership of land. 该计划没有明确地支持土地私有制。
• SARA amended section 113 to provide explicitly for a right to contribution. 《最高基金修正与再授权法案》修正了第123条，清楚地规定了分配权。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法

18 intentionally   

ad.故意地，有意地

参考例句：

• I didn't say it intentionally. 我是无心说的。
• The local authority ruled that he had made himself intentionally homeless and was therefore not entitled to be rehoused. 当地政府裁定他是有意居无定所，因此没有资格再获得提供住房。

19 transformations   

n.变化( transformation的名词复数 )；转换；转换；变换

参考例句：

• Energy transformations go on constantly, all about us. 在我们周围，能量始终在不停地转换着。 来自辞典例句
• On the average, such transformations balance out. 平均起来，这种转化可以互相抵消。 来自辞典例句