The Washington Post is anticipating the upcoming new school year with alarm. Today's headline warns us that "America faces catastrophic teacher shortage."
As usual, I'm suspicious of stories that are all anecdote and no data, so let's take a look at some basic data. This was released yesterday and takes us through June:
"Net hires" is the number of teachers who have been hired minus the number of teachers who leave (fired, quit, retired, furloughed, etc.). Oddly enough, that number has been about zero for years. At the same time, openings for new teachers have gone steadily up. This means that unfilled openings (shown as a trendline for ease of presentation) have also been rising for years. Let's zoom in on that:
There are a lot of unfilled openings, but the good news is that it's declined a little bit in the past few months. The number of unfilled openings is almost down to 2%, which is roughly what it was just before the pandemic.
I guess my conclusion is that the teacher situation is bleak but not catastrophic. But I suppose it all depends on where you live.
DeSantis is solving the shortage by fast-tracking a pathway for vets to become teachers.
It's this kind of outside-the-square thinking that has made DeSantis such a right-wing star.
It’s that kind of disrespect that makes people not want to be teachers in the first place.
The data is old, but I think it's probably worse now.
States in the south, like Florida, have a big majority of public school students who are poor. There is little for Republicans to gain by educating them properly. And no marine would ever teach elementary school. That would be silly.
https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/shameful-milestone-majority-public-school-students-live-poverty
Why would it be silly for a former Marine to be an elementary teacher?
I know a former marine who is a really good 4th grade teacher.
But he also went and got his teaching degree, so he learned about child development, pedagogy, etc.
The problem is not with marines, but with the idea that teaching children effectively does not involve some specialized knowledge.
+1
Wait. I heard that today's military is a bunch of woke weenies who spend basic training learning everyone's pronouns rather than doing pushups and shooting at shit. Do you really want these people pouring into the nation's classrooms?
Marine Todd (xe/they/its).
LOOK AT WHAT BIDEN TOOK FROM US!!! WE USED TO BE A PROPER COUNTRY!
Yeah, let's just see how much backup these vets get from the administration before anyone goes on about how 'effective' they are. Which, if they don't get any more backup than the certified teachers they're replacing, won't be very much. 'Effective', I mean.
Los Angeles schools seem to have more unfilled positions since COVID. More retirements, fewer new hires. I expect it will take some time to even it out.
The problem I've seen in 16 years has been retention. Salaries are not high enough to rent an apartment within reasonable commute distance.
Compensation is a big problem in expensive metro areas. Imagine teaching somewhere like Gunn High School in Palo Alto (avg home price $3 million). You'd have to commute from somewhere in the Central Valley if you wanted to own a home.
In rural areas, it's hard to attract highly-qualified teachers who weren't originally from that area. Most of the teachers in our district -- many of whom are excellent -- grew up around here, went to the local state college, and stuck around to teach in a local district. Nothing wrong with that, but it also tends to reinforce a certain kind of insularity and lack of worldliness that holds back rural communities a lot of times.
The obvious solution is to build housing for city workers. Palo Alto is a rich city. The is not a physical impossibility. It would make recruitment a lot easier, and surely save millions in payroll expense as time went by, which would mitigate the cost of building the housing. Also, given the fact it's an objectively nice place, housing for city workers would be a hugely attractive benefit that would only help the city maximize the quality of its workforce.
I’m confused about something. If “data” isn’t necessarily a compilation of “anecdotes,” of what exactly does it consist?
Is "data" measurements?
Is "anecdotes" just blah blah?
And _standardized_ measurments at that. Not vague quantitative modifiers like 'lots' and 'sometimes', the stuff of hearsay as much as anecdotes.
I guess my conclusion is that the teacher situation is bleak but not catastrophic.
Agreed. Also re: the lack of "net new teacher hiring" that we've seen in recent years: the US population has been experiencing some of the lowest rates of population growth in history, rivalled only by the 1930s. Given this factoid PLUS the aging of the population, it wouldn't surprise if the under 18 population has competed stagnated, and maybe even slightly shrunk (we'll see a pickup in births in the years ahead, I reckon, as the effects of the pandemic fade, and as millennials who've put off raising families start having more children*).
*Although not a very big baby surge: the youngest millennials are already in their late 20s.
Could be demographic disconnect, or a boomer-millennial problem. The boomers are retiring and the millennials have made their career and 'where-to-live' choices. They are not going to go back to school for a $40K job living someplace they hate.
Jvoe I think has gotten to the heart of the matter. I'm a Gen-Xer and I was laid off in 2005 in my late 30s. No way was I going to shift gears and become a history teacher for less pay than I was making in a very crappy contract position. I'm making THREE times what a teacher would make in some states plus I'd have to go back and take a boatload of education courses to add to my history degree.
I'd be a whole different ball game if teacher salaries were on par with being a lawyer or CPA.
From the way you’ve put it, it sounds like it would be a rather mercenary ball game.
I have no idea what you mean by that, and I suspect that was by intention on your part. So why don't you just come out and Say. What. You. Mean.
Well there are folks who go into Medicine for the $$$, also Law and Finance. Unlike the bad old days when Nuns were forced to be teachers high salary, if you gave teachers a true professional salary you'd attract a lot more of the "best and brightest" types to the profession. If someone was just in it for the $$$ but totally bad with students, they'd washout in the student teaching phase.
Meh
It depends upon your location, I think
Birth rates are down substantially over the last 50 years so in theory those teachers who are 50 years old SHOULD Have fewer students to teach. This might be true in Kansas, and Nebraska but in areas that people are moving to it's an entirely different story.
"In the U.S., 127 million people live in coastal counties. That’s as much as the entire population of Japan. If they were their own nation, the coastal counties of the U.S. would rank third in the world in gross domestic product, beaten only by China and the U.S. as a whole. The outsize U.S. marine economy is fueled by tourism and recreation, offshore energy, shipbuilding, and aquaculture, to name just a few.
Though home to almost 40% of the U.S. population, coastal areas account for less than 10% of the total land in the contiguous United States. Coastal areas are also far more crowded than the U.S. as a whole; population density is over five times greater in coastal shoreline counties than the U.S. average. This means that issues that affect the coasts affect a large proportion of Americans. "
Keep in mind this NOAA article was talking about coastal COUNTIES not states in total. This explains Kevin Drums recent diatribes about rents, mortgages and so on. It's location based, there are so many people squeezed into such a small portion of the United States. It explains MUCH of the problem. Heck IIRC classroom size was a problem first noted in a coastal state. So that 7th grade history teacher in Boston struggled with upwards of 45 students per class while that teacher in Topeka struggled to keep her 18 students awake - hence the legislation proposed by the NEA to limit class sizes in many states
Its the great "divide"
People in the interior just don't get to experience this population density thing because it seems foreign to them - heck many of them moved there to escape it. Conversely the thought of "un-incorporated" land escapes many coastal dwellers. The thought of driving through areas that are not a named city, or town just seems odd
But yeh, teacher shortages are a thing
Husband to a teacher here. I also share your skepticism on this. But interestingly, the way our districts are coping is to increase class sizes and then declare they have enough teachers. So I think you need to consider the trend of class sizes to understand if there is a shortage or not.
Seems like a teacher per student metric is required with a geospatial component (as per Vog46).
It's a seasonal story. Like gas prices going up as they switch to summer blends, or the Bears are rebuilding this year...
I inherited an old Charlie Russel book of sketches. Here are two about teaching school./Users/mikeharper/Desktop/C.RUSSELL JPG0018.jpg
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Forgot can't post images here.
No find on Google.
My wife is a teacher in Hillsborough County Florida (Tampa) which is around the sixth largest school district in the country. They currently have over 1,200 unfilled teacher positions and the kids go back to school next Wednesday. My wife is the senior of the two special education teachers at her elementary school. Since some schools are without a special ed teacher the junior one at my wife's school is probably going to be transferred to a different school and my wife will be stuck doing twice the work.
For the third year in a row the teacher's union and the district are at an impasse with salary raises. Teachers are supposed to go up a rung on the scale each year and receive a small raise. For the third straight year that probably won't happen and they will instead get a smaller bonus which does not guarantee an increase in future earnings. My wife has a masters and is board certified. For her first 15 years or so of teaching she was paid a little more for each of those accomplishments. A few years ago they stopped that higher pay school so she is making less than before and on par with those that do not have masters and are not board certified.
Now they want to hire ex-military to fill the special ed positions. And they are going to get paid more than my wife. I'm all for helping our soldiers transition to civilian life but it's incredibly disrespectful to teachers like my wife who have dedicated their whole lives to teaching.
It would be great if this program was really to help the ex-military and the schools....but it's more likely meant to be for show, with few ex-military being helped and used to attach teachers' union.
Attack the teacher's union I assume? Yep I bet that's exactly what's going on.
Everyone who could left the Hillsborough School District over it being (too) Woke.
Your wife should follow them. Unless she's not a RILMURICAN or something.
There may be a two-way squeeze going on. In blue urban/suburban areas teachers get some respect and higher salaries, but the cost of living is very high, especially housing. In red areas the party line is that public schools are subversive and teach wokism and anybody can teach anyway, so teachers get no money or respect.
Sorry, don't have any real data on this - or even anecdotes.
A shortage can be because there isn't enough of something or because there is plenty of that something but it's in the wrong place. It's easy to dismiss a teacher shortage when only a small percentage of positions are unfilled, but if your school district doesn't have enough teachers, you have a shortage no matter how many are in the next county over. It's like wheat. If you are in a food importing country, a bumper crop in the Ukraine does you a fat lot of good if you can't get it shipped to you.
Well, you also have to think about what they mean by "teachers." Around here, there is a constant din about the need for science and math teachers when what they really mean is the need for CHEAP science and math teachers. At one point, I tried for two years to land a high school physics teaching job, trying both public and private schools. But I have a PhD. I'm too expensive. Nobody would give me the time of day. Being cheap is always more important than knowing what you're talking about as far as schools are concerned.
DeSantis hasc seen all those movies- he knows it just takes a (white) ex-Marine at an inner-city school to give them some military-style discipline; slap them up-side the head, teach the boys to pull up their pants and the girls not to be sluts. Problem solved.
One problem with a shortage of teachers in a district is that the immediate solutions put in place usually worsen the working conditions of the remaining teachers: Larger class sizes and pulling teachers out of their preparation time to cover classes. This significantly hurts morale, leading more to leave the district. It results in a cycle of demoralization and low retention.