Nancy Flanagan is a retired educator who taugh in the schools of Michigan for many years. Her post was reprinted by the Network for Public Education.
She writes:
We need more teachers.
Good teachers. Well-trained and seasoned teachers. Teachers who are in it for the long haul.
Many of the articles floating around about the teacher shortage focus on data—What percentage of teachers really quit, when the data is impenetrably murky at best? And how does that compare with other professions?
In other words, how bad is it? Really?
These articles often miss the truth: Some districts will get through the teacher shortage OK. And most districts will suffer on a sliding scale of disruption and frustration, from calling on teachers to give up their prep time to putting unqualified bodies in classrooms for a whole year, sometimes even expecting the real teachers to keep an eye on the newbies.
The shortage will look different everyplace, but one point is universal: it’s not getting better.
Teachers are not just retiring and leaving for good. They’re part of the great occupational heave happening because of the COVID pandemic—people looking for better jobs, demanding more pay, in a tight labor market.
Public schools are now competing to hire smart and dedicated young people who want to be professionally paid and supported, especially in their early careers. When you’ve got student loans, higher starting pay is a big deal. And loan forgiveness if you teach for a specified number of years might make a huge difference.
Before anybody starts telling us how to make more teachers, as fast and cheaply as possible, to prevent “learning loss,” we should think about Peter Greene’s cynical but spot-on assessment of the underlying goals of folks pushing for a New Concept of who can teach:
Once you’ve filled classrooms with untrained non-professionals, you can cut pay like a hot knife through cheap margarine. It’s really a two-fer–you both erode the power of teachers unions and your Teacher Lite staff cost you less, boosting your profit margin for the education-flavored business that you started to grab some of those sweet, sweet tax dollars. And as an added bonus, filling up public schools with a Teacher Lite staff means you can keep taxes low (why hand over your hard-earned money just to educate Those Peoples’ children).
Several states (and Florida springs to mind here) almost seem to be competing for the best ways to reduce public school teacher quality, thus reducing public school quality in the process. In addition to offering full-time, teacher-of-record jobs to folks without college degrees, they’re trying to brainwash the ones they already have by offering them $700 to be, well, voluntarily indoctrinated about another New Concept around what the Founders really meant in the Constitution.
Attention MUST turn to an overhaul of how we recruit, train and sustain a teaching force.
All three are important—and have been so for decades. We’ve been talking about improving the teacher force, from selection of candidates to effective professional learning, for decades. As Ann Lutz Fernandez notes, in an outstanding piece at the Hechinger Report, there is a surfeit of bad ideas for re-building the teacher workforce, and not enough coherent, over-time plans to put well-prepared teachers into classrooms, and keep them there.
I have worked on a number of projects to assist beginning teachers using alternative routes into teaching. And while there are problems, there’s something to be said for teaching as a second (or fourth) career,with the right candidates and pre-conceptions, and the right professional learning.
That professional learning has to include a college degree, and field experience. Many high-profile charters advertise the percentage of students who are accepted into colleges. There’s been a longtime push to mandate challenging, college-prep courses at public high schools, and send larger numbers of students to post-secondary education.
Teachers need to be credentialed to demand respect from the education community, plain and simple, no matter what Ron DeSantis says. It’s past 50 years since bachelors degrees were the required norm for teachers in all states. Backing away from that is egregiously foolish—and almost certainly politically motivated.
If we were serious about making more *good* teachers, we’d need two core resources: money and time. Money to effect a significant nationwide boost in salaries, loan forgiveness programs, student teaching stipends, scholarships, plus the development of more alternate-entry and Masters in Teaching programs that include both coursework and an authentic, mentored student teaching experience.
This would also take time—but it absolutely could be done. Would-be teachers should have to invest some skin in the game—not because traditionally trained teachers had to jump through hoops, but because teaching involves commitment to an important mission. Done well, it’s professional work. We can argue about teacher preparation programs, but nobody should be going into a classroom, alone, without training and support. It’s bad for everyone—teachers, communities and especially kids.
What are we going to do in the meantime?
Alternative routes have sprung up all over the country, some unworthy, others better. All are stopgaps, but some of those teachers will continue to grow and excel in the classroom. And I agree with Michael Rice, MI State Superintendent of Schools:
“If the question is whether we have a teacher that is certified through (an alternative route) or have Mikey from the curb teaching a child — a person who has no experience whatsoever and is simply an adult substituting in a classroom for a long period of time because there isn’t a math teacher, there isn’t a social studies teacher, there isn’t a science teacher — the teacher that is developed through an alternative route program or expedited program is going to be preferable.”
It’s worth mentioning that this shortage has been visible, coming down the road, for years. The pandemic and that great occupational upheaval have merely brought it into focus.
It’s past time to get the teacher pipeline under control. This will take good policy.
The teacher shortage is the result of years of mistreating and blaming teachers and systematically under funding public education. It is a man made crisis.
When I was hired in New York in the 1970s, I was told there were over 300 applicants for the position. When I later sat on hiring committees, I reviewed lots of job applications. We had bundles to review for each candidate in teaching and administration. We also had at least 25 fully qualified applicants for each position. The reason for the numbers of applicants was the positions paid decently and also came with good benefits. Teachers worked under supervision, but they also had a relatively high level of autonomy and respect. That is not to say that the job had no challenges. There were plenty of challenges, but teachers felt respected and heard. Today in some districts too many teachers are not being heard, and problems in the system are often ignored and not addressed by hostile administrators.
The revision to student loan program should benefit teachers. “A typical single public school teacher with an undergraduate degree (making $44,000 a year) would pay only $56 a month on their loans, compared to the $197 they pay now under the most recent income-driven repayment plan, for annual savings of nearly $1,700.” Years ago the federal government sometimes paid for master’s degree programs in areas in which teachers were needed. Some of my colleagues received a master’s degree through the Title VII grant available at that time. They did not eliminate or reduce credentials and requirements. They helped aspiring educators become well prepared in order to fully be professional teachers.
saddest word: YEARS. Literally, YEARS.
Whether it is true or not, the claim that “there is no national teacher shortage” largely misses the critical issue: there ARE shortages in many areas and no teacher wants to teach in those areas precisely because teachers are treated so poorly — which us often the very reason behind the shortage in such places.
And one would have to be a complete idiot to claim that teaching has not become a significantly less attractive profession in recent years as a result of many different factors, not least of all the teacher bashing by politicians like DeSantis.
Back in the day teaching was viewed as a relative stable career, but that was before the disrupters entered the scene to destabilize and destroy the profession. Nobody claimed it was easy, and it wasn’t. At least, at that time teachers could expect some level of respect, and it felt rewarding when teachers knew they were making a significant, positive difference. Teachers are tired of being the nation’s punching bags.
Peter Greene nailed it, as usual. The endgame for the elimination of the teaching profession is a multi-pronged effort. First, force out professionally trained teachers purposefully (we are looking at you, Florida and Texas). Next, send I-Ready data to eduflavored think tanks like Johns Hopkins, who are using it to design AI programs that would eliminate the need for human teachers (we are looking at you, Oakland). Finally, steer families away from brick and mortar schools altogether by using SM/Facebook advertising for online school, using words like “Inexperienced” to describe public school teachers. That’s rich. They purposely create the “inexperience” and then use it against the entire public school community to advertise and enrich cheap, poor-quality online programs like K12.
This is nothing new, but exacerbated by misguided agendas and voter apathy and exacerbated on steroids by covid.
“This unity (leaders from all sectors), however, can be achieved only if we avoid the unproductive tendency of some to search for scapegoats among the victims, such as the beleaguered teachers.”
Source? A Nation at Risk
The majority support public schools – but how do these crazy people keep getting elected to local boards (dark money is one answer). Short answer? Vote. (Another “majority of republicans support schools but their candidates ignore that).
As for covid – the shortage skyrocketed with no warning. Rooms had to be filled and “regular” subs were not to be found… so “account-temps” of teachers popped up.
It exposed that non-traditional teachers are either 1) good or have potential to be good if they are supported and in a credentialing program or 2) they should not be around children no fault of their own – they just can get past the first 5 minutes of class to start a lesson.
Some districts have stepped on #1. They are watching and encouraging the potential bona fide teachers to enroll in certification programs. There are teachers “inside” people who never thought of teaching including college students.
Both groups, however, have one common cry: Support! The ones that survive get it. The ones who ghost or run out crying or those who really tried but were in a vacuum – #1 exit response: I just needed some support.
The first step in turning teaching back into a rewarding career is to vote the theofasicst RINO Republican Party out of office.
I wish that the US Department of Education was more aggressive in this regard. To improve training, increase teacher pay, and provide greater than nominal resources for the classroom a funding arm that has the girth of the Federal Government is required. Also, a key component to re-vitalizing the teaching profession is a meaningful dialogue among Colleges of Education and school districts. I have served in two districts where the relationship between regional Colleges of Education and the school district were tepid at best where the priorities often projected conflicting visions. Another factor is including current teachers in the process of this reform. Too often I have witnessed members of the education establishment ignore the teachers when attempting to identify classroom problems and how to solve them. I used to cringe at conferences when superintendents and others would downplay the significance of teacher working conditions and morale in regard to instructional practice. To those of us who have worked in schools, a Marshall Plan size initiative is needed to develop a vigorous teacher force. We have to convince politicians and the general populace that anything less is a threat to the health of our democracy.