The Auburn School Department appears to have a serious problem that goes beyond inadequate funding or aging buildings — low teacher morale.

I’ll admit I don’t have rigorous empirical evidence to substantiate this hypothesis. Auburn’s school system is rather opaque to me, as I neither work for nor have children still enrolled in it, and I find School Committee meetings about as enlightening as North Korea’s official news service.

The evidence I do possess consists of a recent teacher survey, anecdotes from acquaintances within the department and public decisions of the superintendent and school board on major planning and policy issues.

The Auburn Education Association’s teacher survey, conducted in January and February and presented to the Auburn School Committee this month, is certainly a red flag. Approximately a third of Auburn’s 300-plus teachers responded, and their answers were shocking.

About 71 percent of respondents said the administration didn’t understand or appreciate the work they do; 61 percent felt they couldn’t voice their opinion about a new program without fear of being labeled a malcontent; 61 percent rated morale at 4 or less on a scale of 1 to 10; and 55 percent said they’d take a job in another school department if given the opportunity.

That’s not exactly a testimonial for good morale, even if one partially discounts the survey to factor in the impasse between the teachers and School Committee over collective bargaining. (Teachers have been working without a new contract since last June and the phrase “We’re not appreciated” has historically been the Auburn Education Association’s mantra when the other side refuses to meet its contract demands).

But I don’t think frustration over contract talks entirely explains current teacher discontent. A combination of poor leadership and the blitzkrieg introduction of new instructional and testing methods (notably Common Core curriculum, standardized testing and Mass Customized Learning) without adequate experimentation, training or feedback may be closer to the mark.

The emphasis on Common Core and standardized testing is a complex and controversial subject, which is beyond the scope of this column. Suffice it to say that I’m having second thoughts about the validity of these tools after reading a persuasive critique by Andrew Hacker entitled “The Math Myth and Other STEM Delusions.”

Mass Customized Learning has also spawned a lot of teacher dissatisfaction. MCL makes heavy use of individualized computer instruction, which allows each student to progress at his or her own pace through a series of instructional modules.

MCL has been billed as the sure-fire solution to the longstanding problem of how to tailor education to the disparate needs of students with varied levels of academic ability and preparedness in a single classroom. Instead of classroom teachers providing group instruction on the same topic to 20 to 30 students over a defined time period, MCL lets every student learn and test at a pace that is comfortable for that individual. The teacher, in effect, becomes an adjunct to the computer, an aide who helps students navigate the MCL modules (a bit like the voice at the end of a computer help line).

If it were only that simple! The anecdotal evidence I’ve heard is that MCL leaves many students adrift, especially those who need the overview, structure and motivation of a classroom teacher. Much as our mass-production society would like to believe in the efficacy of uniform educational methods, everyone’s brain, intellectual capacity, learning style and emotional makeup is different. As a result, one pedagogical approach is unlikely to work for all.

If MCL becomes a substitute for, instead of an adjunct to, traditional classroom teaching, we run the risk of trading one orthodoxy for another — shifting from over-reliance on strait-jacketed timelines, courses, classes and grades to over-reliance on an impersonal computerized teaching methodology.

At the end of a 90-minute public hearing before the school committee on April 6, at which teachers presented the survey and aired their grievances, Committee Chair Thomas Kendall thanked them for sharing their views, then promptly trashed them the next day in an interview with a Sun Journal reporter. The teachers’ complaints, Kendall said, “were not entirely factual nor based on complete information.”

Kendall described MCL and other new initiatives as “completely research-based and best practice” and proclaimed, “Change is necessary to meet the demands of a 21st-century education.”

Does Kendall really think that a large chunk of the teaching staff has got it all wrong, while the administration is spot on? Probably so! After serving on the Edward Little School Building Committee in 2012-13, I formed my own impressions of Kendall and Superintendent KatyGrondin, who seem to believe they are boldly leading Auburn schools into the 21st century while viewing skeptics as shortsighted and a nuisance.

In any institution or corporation, the organizational “culture” is established at the top. Good leaders inspire their employees to work harder and smarter, while poor leaders demoralize them and cause them to be less productive. Poor employee morale, therefore, is often a symptom of poor leadership and organizational dysfunction.

Perhaps the Auburn School Committee should be looking more critically at the school system’s leadership and the soundness of its initiatives as a source of low teacher morale instead of blaming it all on teacher resistance to the initiation of 21st-century educational strategies.

Elliott L. Epstein,a local attorney, is founder of Museum L-Aand an adjunct history instructor at Central Maine Community College. He is the author of “Lucifer’s Child,”a recently published book about the 1984 oven-death murder of Angela Palmer.Hemay be reached [email protected].