After years of underfunding public education and diverting money to charters and vouchers, Arizona is coping with an acute teacher shortage.
“On a Saturday in late April, Principal Theresa Nickolich gave her best recruiting pitch to every person who walked in the door.
“Come teach at Clarendon Elementary School in the Osborn School District, she told the candidates at the job fair.
“You’ll be part of a system that will support you. You’ll feel like family in a professional environment built up over years of strong leadership. You will be an anchor of stability for children in need, many of them poor.
“You will have a rewarding career. You will change lives.
“But across from Nickolich stood both her biggest recruiting challenge and an emblem of one of the biggest crises facing public education in Arizona.
“Almost no qualified applicants walked in.
“It was the last job fair of the year in the Osborn district before the quiet summer months. In a school of about two dozen classroom teachers, Nickolich still had five jobs to fill for the fall.
“If Nickolich couldn’t fill her spots with qualified teachers, she would have to turn to teaching interns. Maybe somebody with an emergency teaching credential, maybe somebody who didn’t yet have a teaching certificate. In a dire situation the state could even let her employ a temporary teacher without a college degree.
“The recruiting challenge Nickolich faced that day in April isn’t unique to Osborn, or even to her region. It’s a crisis that school administrators recognize statewide:
“Every spring, thousands of teaching positions open across the state.
“Every spring, fewer qualified people apply to fill them.”
How can “reformers” expect to improve education if they drive people away from teaching?
Of the state’s, 22 percent lacked full qualifications.
“Many in that 22 percent did have a college education and teacher training, but had less than two years in the classroom, a time frame when they don’t qualify for the state’s full credential — a standard certificate.
“Many others lacked even more basic qualifications. Nearly 2,000 had no formal teacher training. Dozens lacked a college degree.
“Parents, educators and advocates argue the proliferation of teachers with less than full credentials harms student performance.”
No kidding.
“Experts frequently place poor teacher pay and low education funding among the primary causes of the shortage. Median pay for Arizona elementary teachers is $40,590 per year, compared with $54,120 nationally. In 2014, Arizona ranked 48th in average per-pupil spending at $7,457, compared with $11,066 nationally.
“For years, state finances reeled from deficits that resulted in cuts to education. Gov. Doug Ducey calls teachers and public schools “winners” in his most recent budget, which allocated $167 million in new money for education and 2 percent teacher raises spread across two years.
“Other factors driving the shortage include stressful working conditions and diminished respect for the profession. The problem has grown as older teachers retire; among the flood of newcomers, many try the profession, then leave shortly after.”
Obviously, Arizona doesn’t care about educating its children. They don’t care about having qualified teachers. They aren’t willing to pay professional salaries. Very sad.
Arizona has placed its bets on choice as a substitute for funding its schools and attracting qualified teachers.
A bad bet.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Just north of Arizona in Nevada, they have had the same problem for years, so much so that in 2014, the state commissioned researchers at The University of Nevada – Los Angeles (UNLV) to commence a multi-year, expensive study analyzing Nevada’s teacher shortage, and identify its causes and remedies.
This month, three years later, UNLV released the study. Here’s a quick take:
MAJOR CAUSE: low pay.
RECOMMENDATION: raise pay.
Did we really need a study for that? (Though now that it’s done, I’m still glad they did it, as it’s more authoritative proof to which one can point.)
That’s sort of like the revelation that … oh, I dunno …
Amelia Earhart’s missing.
And sugar is sweet.
And water is wet.
And professional wrestling is staged.
Seriously,, though, while there are other factors involved, of course — huge class size, poor job conditions, less respect, major public attacks and scapegoating of teachers, etc. — low pay seems to be the biggie, leading to a massive drop in enrollment of university education departments which train teachers.
Here’s a radio interview with lead UNLV researcher, Dr. Kim Metcalf (a man, btw, as you’ll discover if you listen):
https://knpr.org/knpr/2017-06/teacher-shortage-it-cool-teach
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
DR. KIM METCALF:
“Until we are able to compensate people for the work because it is substantively and fiscally beneficial to them instead of relying on what I’ll call a ‘missionary’ perspective to this work…I don’t think it is reasonable to expect that we’ll be able to fill what are approximately 3.2 million teacher jobs throughout the country with folks that are in the upper quartile academically.”
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And the Utah state legislature has just commissioned a similar “study.” I’m sure that they will have similar findings. Why not put that study money, as well as more funding, into actually raising salaries??
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That’s hilarious. I worked on a study for the Utah legislature on teacher recruitment & teacher retention a few years ago and we told them – teacher pay, autonomy, workload (inc class size & lack of subs/covering others during planning periods). They didn’t like that report & pretty much shelved it.
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The district I work in (in Utah) and the one my kids went to have both increased teacher pay significantly. I know of at least 3 other districts in the state who have increased teacher pay also. Let’s hope the rest of the state follows suit. It will also be interesting if it’s enough to alleviate teacher shortages.
I never thought I would see this day in this state. It is encouraging. I hope Arizona and Nevada will also see the need to increase teacher pay. It’s really a no brainer.
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Glad your district raised pay. Mine did, but only by 3%. It doesn’t make up for the seven years where our pay stayed stagnant or went down.
And what are the odds that pay will increase next year? Slim. That’s the problem.
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I believe that the teacher shortage is nationwide problem. It was a contrived shortage from all the reform actions. As a teacher, I discourage others from considering the field of education right now. What’s more, in Florida the newest legislation is giving 50% of the state funding for construction to charter schools and charter schools currently teach only 10% of the student population. Hummm, so get rid of teachers because they cost too much and get rid of buildings too for the same reason. What then? Teacher everyone from a cell phone? Then what will happen? Will a new institution have to be created to socialize people by helping them practice face to face conversation, how to work/play together and so on? I bet that too will be a big, fat commercial venture that only the billionaires will have a crack at regulating and making money from but everyone else will have to deal with as in working for peanuts or paying fees to use.
I only hope when I’m of a certain age this next generation can think, function, and deal with the challenges the world proposes. With that in mind. I have to laugh at the proposed health care legislation. It’s someone’s right not to pay for insurance but they are required treatment in a hospital. Their treatment will make my insurance costs go up and if I use the hospital, my bill will be higher too. Where are my rights? I was an Italian citizen and thought universal health care was great even if the very old weren’t given certain treatments due to their advanced age. I guess hospitals there didn’t pad their bills with things that weren’t sure to add to the quality of one’s life.
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You state:”I believe that the teacher shortage is nationwide problem.”
You think?
It is a disaster that began in the late eighties. Three decades of the war on teachers have moved the real educators and replaced them with novices.
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Did you hear that Amazon is buying Whole Foods, so it can get a brick and mortar presence? The tech folks, who love to work in cyberspace, are now coming for our brick and mortar spaces too. The wealthy won’t be happy until we’re all lock stepping, buying what they allow us to buy, eating what they allow us to eat, reading what they allow us to read, teaching our kids what they want them to learn.
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Think “Buy and Large” from WALL-E.
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Amazon will own everything, and there won’t be any brick and mortar stores.
The malls will close down. The shops in town will die.
Hopefully Walmart will die, but that’s the best only silver lining. And the Waltons will still be billionaires.
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Some choice.
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What a surprise. The fake media owned by the very folks who want to privatize the schools, sell the ” bad teacher’ story, and testing and teaching become a national conversation instead OF TALKING ABOUT LEARNING.
They turned the profession into a joke, where anybody with a little training could go into a classroom, and follow Mr. Gates common crap, and use computers to ‘teach’.
Now creeps like this tell our citizens that teachers do not need any protections in their job. They should educate themselves for years, and work in terrible conditions with no support, for ridiculous wages, and be fired at will.In this post, Chester (Checker) Finn Jr. questions the need for teacher tenure. Getting rid of tenure, he says, will save money, as it has in higher education, where money is lavished on administrators’ salaries and facilities, but not faculty (except for the Big Names).
Seriously WHO WOULD WANT TO TEACH?
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HERE IS THE POST https://dianeravitch.net/2017/04/20/chester-finn-jr-calls-for-an-end-to-teacher-tenure/
AND LOOK AT
Massachusetts: WHERE THE Commissioner Seeks Power to Remove Teachers Unilaterally https://dianeravitch.net/2017/04/23/massachusetts-commissioner-seeks-power-to-remove-teachers-unilaterally/
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FARTHERMORE:
How the human brain learns, the strategies and knowledge that the profession teacher- practitioner brings to a room filled with children, was NEVER THE CONVERSATION, and nowhere do we read an article, or hear a conversation that INFORMS our ignorant citizenry what GENUINE LEARNING REALLY LOOKS LIKE.
After all EVERYONE went to school, and has an OPINION of what is needed.
SHOW the average Jack & Jill, a room with pretty bulletin boards, rows of computers, and QUEIT, ORDERLY ROOMS with children busy ‘doing something’ and they leave thinking “WOW!”
TO ADD TO THE PLOT, there are almost SIXTEEN THOUSAND separate school systems in 50 states and no one knows WTF is happening in the district next door, let alone in the schools across the nation, like LA, which experienced the war on teachers 2 decades ago: https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/LAUSD-THE-BUCK-STOPS-WHER-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Fired_Stop-Harassment_TEACHER-150224-973.html?f=LAUSD-THE-BUCK-STOPS-WHER-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Fired_Stop-Harassment_TEACHER-150224-973.html#comment534880 as the unions looked the other way http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/former-ctc-attorney-kathleen-carroll-lays-out-unholy-alliance-between-union-and-public-education-pri.html.
In NYC I and tens of thousands of the top tenured, experienced teachers experienced this (which I wrote 2 decades ago ) http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html so it was no surprise when NYC schools tanked, http://gemnyc.org/2012/05/20/the-inconvenient-truth-behind-waiting-for-superman-now-online/ and are now being replaced by charters as the state legislature.
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David Greene is a teacher, mentor, coach, the whole 100 yards. He also blogs about education, and in this post he describes what great teaching is, and gives us hope that it may survive even the current tsunami of bad ideas. https://dcgmentor.wordpress.com/2017/04/13/the-slow-erosion-of-american-education-has-become-a-mudslide/
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and in case you re new to this wonderful site, here is a post
Stephen Mucher: The Collapse of the Teaching Profession? | Diane Ravitch’s blog
“Michigan Superintendent: How to Kill a Profession”
Steve Matthews, superintendent of the Novi school district, here explains how the education profession has been attacked and demonized, with premeditation.
He begins: So you want to kill a profession. It’s easy.
First you demonize the profession. To do this you will need a well-organized, broad-based public relations campaign that casts everyone associated with the profession as incompetent and doing harm. As an example, a well-orchestrated public relations campaign could get the front cover of a historically influential magazine to invoke an image that those associated with the profession are “rotten apples.”
Then you remove revenue control from the budget responsibilities of those at the local level. Then you tell the organization to run like a business which they clearly cannot do because they no longer have control of the revenue. As an example, you could create a system that places the control for revenue in the hands of the state legislature instead of with the local school board or local community.
Then you provide revenue that gives a local agency two choices: Give raises and go into deficit or don’t give raises so that you can maintain a fund balance but in the process demoralize employees. As an example, in Michigan there are school districts that have little to no fund balance who have continued to give raises to employees and you have school districts that have relatively healthy fund balances that have not given employees raises for several years.
Then have the state tell the local agency that it must tighten its belt to balance revenue and expenses. The underlying, unspoken assumption being that the employees will take up the slack and pay for needed supplies out of their own pockets.
Additionally , introduce “independent” charters so that “competition” and “market-forces” will “drive” the industry. However, many of these charters, when examined, give the illusion of a better environment but when examined show no improvement in service. The charters also offer no comprehensive benefits or significantly fewer benefits for employees. So the charters offer no better quality for “customers” and no security for employees but they ravage the local environment.
Then create a state-mandated evaluation system in an effort to improve quality…..
That is how it begins.
For his willingness to speak out honestly and courageously, I add Steve Matthews to the blog’s honor roll as a hero of public education.
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and if you want a closer look at the WAR ON TEACHERS for the past decades, go to NAPTA http://endteacherabuse.org and see the stories of teachers who have been thrown to the dogs.
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YES. We must always remember that this has been a carefully manufactured teacher “shortage.”
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wanna talk $$$$> here is the COST , of the war on teachers ”
Steve Matthews, superintendent of the Novi school district, here explains how the education profession has been attacked and demonized, with premeditation. He begins: “So you want to kill a profession. It’s easy.” Quicklink/Revolving-Door-Of-Teachers-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Decision_Force_Frustration_Reason-150402-14.html?f=Revolving-Door-Of-Teachers-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Decision_Force_Frustration_Reason-150402-14.html#comment539682
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This is precisely the point of all “school reform.” Break the system and the. Corporations will be the saviors. This isn’t an “unintended consequence” that we should be pointing to as a flaw in their vision. It is their vision!
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Sorry here is the link to “So, you want to kill the profession”
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/03/30/395322012/the-hidden-costs-of-teacher-turnover
and while you are looking for the FACTS as to WHY THERE ARE NO APPLICANTS read this , which appeared here at Diane’s site,, by Stephen Mucher, director of the Bard Master of Arts Teaching program in Los Angeles, warns about the precipitous decline in enrollments in teacher preparation programs. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-mucher-future-teachers-20150319-story.html
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Did you miss this by Gene V Glass, which Diane posted in 2014
http://ed2worlds.blogspot.com/2015/04/david-berliners-views-on-teaching.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+EducationInTwoWorlds+(Education+in+Two+Worlds)
Or, this BRILLIANT essay “ARE WE STILL MAKING CITIZENS?”B y Bard College President Leon Botstein about the democratic and civic purposes of education. http://democracyjournal.org/magazine/36/are-we-still-making-citizens/2/
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Reblogged this on NANMYKEL.COM and commented:
Getting worse under DeVos
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There’s a genre of corporate ed. reform pieces that one can call “teacher shortage denial” — along the lines of “Holocaust denial” and “global warming denial.”
Deniers include the corporate ed. reform-funded National Council on Teacher Quality, (NCTQ), a group devoted to proving that college ed programs stink, and that they need to be replaced by Relay Education, the Success Academy Institute, and Doug Lemov’s “TEACH LIKE A CHAMPION-based probramrs.
Here’s some vintage NCTQ, with spokes-hole Kate Walsh talking out of both sides of her mouth.
http://www.nctq.org/commentary/article.do?id=293
On the one hand, NCTQ’s Kate Walsh celebrates the following: (CAPS mine)
“Finally, as the Las Vegas Sun reports, state efforts to EASE CERTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS and improve certification reciprocity have supported the work of the Clark County team. This is an APPROACH EMINENTLY EMPLOYABLE elsewhere.”
As in, that’s a good thing,— “an approach eminently employable” — but then, in the VERY NEXT paragraph, Katie says:
“The fall out of faux teacher shortages is OF TREMENDOUS (negative) CONSEQUENCE. They routinely result in both states and school districts LOWERING STANDARDS FOR WHO IS LICENSED AND HIRED.”
So, Katie, let me get this straight: you’re saying that the “teacher shortages” are all myth — faux teacher shortages? And that it’s talking about or claiming the existence of teacher shortages — not any real such shortages — that’s leading to lowering of standards or requirements for teachers?
Also, which is it, Katie? Is lowering requirements and standards for teachers a good thing — “an approach eminently employable” — or is it a bad thing? You’re coming off a little confused here.
Back here on Plant Earth, it’s not “faux teacher shortages” — or NOT ONLY the “faux teacher shortages” — that lead to lowering of requirements. It’s also and overwhelmingly the “REAL teacher shortages” that lead to lowering of requirements, as in the districts and states where the shortage is real, VERY REAL. (Check out the UNLV teacher shortage study just released this month, and discussed in earlier in this thread.)
It’s so real, in fact, that, without that lowering, there will be NO ONE teaching their children. Thus, they then have to get somebody … ANYBODY actually … standing in front of the classroom at least acting in the role of teacher.
I could link to a half-dozen more “teacher shortage claims are all hoaxes” articles written by disparate corporate ed. reformers (Kevin Huffman, anyone?). Therefore, it appears that the corporate reform leadership has established this as a new party line of sorts, one that needs to be proliferated … but WHY?
I mean, what do you tell a parent in a state/district where the allegedly “faux” shortage has nevertheless led to their children being taught by a bunch of Goober Pyle’s (60’s reference shows my age)?
“Oh no. There’s no shortage. Kate Walsh over a NCTQ says so. Goober’s gonna work out fine as your kid’s teacher.”
And Katie doesn’t forget to throw in a dig at unions:
“One of the answers is to pay such teachers more than other teachers are paid, but most districts continue to reject that solution because it is untenable with their unions. For STEM teachers we could ramp up the availability of part-time teaching positions, but again few districts and states embrace this option–also because unions worry that districts will begin replacing full-time employees and their costly benefits with part-timers.”
If Katie has kids of her own — or if she someday has them in the future — will she want them taught by minimally trained “short-timers” brand new to teaching, and who leave within two years (to be replaced by more of the same), or with fully-trained full-timers with years of experience — even if those vets do come with those “costly benefits” that fully trained full-timers veterans require and demand.
Walsh surprisingly does deride TFA as just “a bandaid” on the problem, though she didn’t mean “bandaid” in the negative connotation that should be applied to it.
Here’s more “teacher shortage denial” from perennial union-basher Mike Antonucci:
https://www.the74million.org/article/analysis-there-still-isnt-a-teacher-shortage-again
What’s the logic behind this campaign? It’s sort of like everyone sees a terrifying tornado funnel cloud approaching, and run like Helll, while other just stand there and insist on saying, “Oh that’s nothing.” (Or in NCTQ’s and Kate Walsh’s opinion, “Hey, it we stop paying attention to or talking out it, the tornado will just disappear. It’s giving attention to it that’s causing it to be there.”)
Is this the corporate ed. reform strategy?
the more we convince folks there’s no shortage, the more schools get will then destroyed or the more schools that will “fail”, then the easier they are to privatize — close ’em, them re-open them under charter management
I keep finding more of these corporate reformer-written “teacher shortage denial” articles that have been recently posted. It’s reasonable to conclude that this whole campaign is being coordinated.
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Don’t forgot Time magazine October 2014. The cover: “Rotten Apples” pictured a gavel aiming a blow to a red apple. On the cover were two other headlines: “Its really impossible to fire a bad teacher” and “Some tech millionaires may have found a way to change that.”
Well, the tech millionaires really are hell-bent on making teachers obsolete, and with all deliberate speed. Who needs teachers when algorithms loaded into a computer can do the job?
And don’t forget the proclamation of Trump in his inaugural address portraying America with (among other disasters) –“an education system flush with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge.”
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No TFA to the rescue? Isn’t this the exact scenario TFA and charters have created across the USA?
It has always amazed me how traditional route teachers have so many hurdles to jump though, but the TFAers with 5 wks training waltz right in, get preferential hiring, get many perks that real teachers do not, and walk way after their stint with a masters degree (bogus of course) and get appointed head of a charter school or Superintendent, without the proper certifications, without the work history or experience, etc.
Arizona is ripe for the picking by TFA and Kopp and Kipp and Gulan and Rocketship and …. and…. and.
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Not only do TFA teachers waltz out with a pseudo master’s degree, but their student loans are paid off, while traditional teachers have to spend decades paying off student loans on cruddy teacher salaries that never (or barely) increase.
Yet ANOTHER reason to not go into teaching.
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We have a charter-loving ex-TFA-er who “taught” in Arizona running for Seattle School Board. Not getting very far with the general populace, but the Ed Reform/Deform crowd up here loves him.
Meanwhile, WA’s GOP legislators want to copy Arizona’s “model”. Cut our pay, eliminate collective bargaining, open teaching up to anyone who can pass a background check…
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Vote, vote, vote. Never elect a TFA temp. They are programmed to support DeVos ideas.
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Here’s a 2-year-old piece from Peter “Curmudgucation” Greene;
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/08/why-teacher-shortage.html
He states that there’s not a teacher shortage, but “not a teacher shortage, but a teacher pay gap. When National Widget Works can’t hire all the widget engineers it needs, it takes steps to make the job more attractive by improving pay, benefits and work conditions. Is it possible that the only real shortage is a shortage of willingness to do (pay) what it takes to recruit?”
He also goes after the “lower the bar” approach to solving the teacher shortage:
“Some places ;solve; their problem of a teacher shortage by simply redefining ‘teacher’ as ‘a sentient human able to occupy a classroom.’ By this definition, there are hundreds of millions of teachers in this country. See? No shortage at all.”
He concludes his piece:
“It’s true that rhetoric about teacher shortages serve the interests of both reformsters (We need more alt cert and TFA) and the resistance (Look what they’re doing to our profession). But just a look at the numbers shows us that some regions are looking at empty jobs they are having trouble filling.
“But does that mean (there is) a shortage? Nope. It’s one more version of the widespread corporate refusal to deal with demands of the invisible hand. We didn’t send jobs to China because we couldn’t find the workers in the US, but because we couldn’t find them for what corporations wanted to pay. ( Tech companies have yelled “shortage” in order to import cheaper labor.)
“The invisible hand is very clear. When you can’t get what you want for X dollars, you need to offer more. The world is filled with human beings who have the ability to morph into any kind of worker you want– if you offer them motivation. Good lord, even Frank Bruni, not exactly a whiz on the topic of education, gets it at least a little (even if he doesn’t understand why he’s part of the problem).
“If you’re having trouble filling a teaching position, make a better offer. It really doesn’t get any more complicated than that.”
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I’m sure you’ve read that in the Bay Area, teachers can’t afford to live in the area. As a retired teacher, I never expected to be wealthy, but did expect I would be able to pay the rent.
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Cheer up. Just the beginning – of the end for the U. S. When there is a shortage of educated people, so long any semblance of democracy.
What an “enlightened” political scene we have now.
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Don’t worry… Bill Gates will save the day and create schools that only need to employ low paid guards – 1 per classroom. There will be oversized computer screens with simultaneous instruction round the nation. Cousin Jimmy in Tulsa will have the same first grade teacher as his cousin Juan in Memphis! The only physically real part of a student’s day will be getting up out of their chair for lunch and to go home! No fear Arizona … have no doubt that Bill Gates is seeing to the final details of his master plans and oh boy how the testing industry is drooling while preparing for their profits to soar.
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Gates never did anything of value except USE others for his own profits. Gates is a billionaire, because he purchased his operating system and made the sales people SELL ONLY HIS purchased operating system. His father is a lawyer.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2004-10-24/the-man-who-could-have-been-bill-gates
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