Teacher Shortage-What Can Be Done?
For today’s topic I want to talk about the teacher shortage. There are many states in the United States that are facing a severe shortage of teachers, for whatever reason. In particular, my state, Oklahoma is in crisis mode when it comes to finding qualified certified staff to fill classrooms. Just to give you some background knowledge. I have been an educator for almost 20 years. When I first entered the profession, it was difficult to find a job. For nearly every position, there was easily a stack of 20 applications and in most cases it was much higher. Understand that this was a time when applicants couldn’t fill out the application online, but instead often had to go pick up an application packet and deliver a resume in person or mail it in. Now you fill out an online form, sometimes you attach your documentation or email it to several parties at once. The process has become much easier on the applicant, so one would think that there would be more people applying.
Gradually we started seeing shortages in particular areas like special education, so incentives were offered like a 5% pay increase to compensate some of the extra paperwork associated with the position. Then we started seeing shortages in Math and Science fields so loan repayment incentives were offered to encourage more people to go into those fields.
Now we have shortages in every area. It used to be that some of the largest districts couldn’t fill all their positions so they would have to request the state to provide exceptions to the rule and provide emergency certification to a few individuals. For the school year we just completed, Oklahoma emergency certified over 1700 individuals and this didn’t even fill all classrooms.
This isn’t just a problem in Oklahoma. There are estimates that indicate the nations schools were 112,000 teachers short for the 17-18 school year.
How do we correct the problem?
Make education a desirable field for high school graduates. This looks a little different depending on which state you live in. But in general there are a few categories that can increase the appeal of this field.
Pay. Regardless of the amount teachers are paid in your state you have to ask yourself, “Is pay enough that it competes with other professional fields?” If not, then there need to be some changes to the system. In many states, the answer is “No.” So making pay competitive with other professions, or surrounding states is one step.
Training and Support. One alarming statistic is not the decrease in number of teachers going into the field, but the increase in teachers leaving the field. Some sources indicate that nearly 50% of teachers leave the profession in the first 5 years. Other studies indicate closer to 20%, which is still a very large percentage. Probably one thing causing the difference between these two numbers is teacher mobility vs. teachers leaving the profession. Some of these studies may not have closely tracked teachers moving to other districts. Either way, these numbers are staggering to me.
We need to offer more training and support to those teachers and provide them with what they need to be successful and stay in the profession. This is probably the biggest reason there is a teacher shortage across the country. In some states, nearly 90% of the new hires each year are filling positions of teachers that have left the profession in the first 5 years. It isn’t because of retiring teachers or new positions being created. These two groups are obviously a very small percentage of the cause of the annual shortage.
Many of these teachers abandoning the field in the first five years is do so for a variety of reasons. But studies have indicated that 92% of teachers assigned a mentor their first year returned and 86% were still on the job in the fifth year. Conversely only 84% of those without a mentor returned after year one and it drops to 71% by the fifth year. There is an 8% difference in the first year and 13% difference by the fifth year.
Pay and mentoring are some of the biggest contributors to retaining high quality personnel.
Bottom line, to help with the shortage we have to stop the exodus of teachers from the profession. If we can do this successfully our next step would be much less monumental. We would be able to focus on finding the best people for the job rather than just trying to put a warm body in the position.
Teacher Training-Another side of this issue is the preparation level of educators entering the field. If teachers come in better prepared for teaching, they are much less likely to leave the profession. This relates back to the mentoring mentioned earlier, but it also has to do with the training they receive in their teacher prep classes. Content and classroom management are two areas that are focused on during teacher prep, but which one is most important? If classroom management is lacking, then the content will never be successful. But you can’t really teach classroom management from a textbook. The best teacher is experience. That is why it may be more beneficial to move away from a semester long internship or student teaching experience and shift to a year long paid internship.
It is important to have the content knowledge, but there needs to be greater emphasis on the experiential side of the teacher prep courses. This is attempted through various observations, but just simply observing a good classroom “manager” has little benefit unless you can put it into practice.
There are a multitude of books that offer tips and tricks for being a successful classroom manager. Most focus on establishing procedures and sticking to them, this is something that often develops over time, but how do we make sure that those entering the profession are adequately prepared?
When you look at other professions there are internships and apprenticeships. There are certification tests and degree requirements. Education has all of these already in some form or fashion. One big difference, in education there are other somewhat unknown variables. Every teacher is working with approximately 25 other individuals at once and many of those individuals have little desire to be there. The teacher has to gain their interest, purvey the content, maintain order, and assess the learning all at once. This is extremely difficult when you may have three different native languages in the classroom, 40% of the students don’t get three meals a day, 10% of the students don’t know where they are going to sleep at night and 20% are not living with either parent.
With all these issues, it is no wonder that teachers struggle during the first 5 years and often leave the profession.
This information doesn’t help us solve the teacher shortage, but it does give insight into the problem. It helps explain why it is so difficult to retain teachers.
We can do everything in our power to stem the tide, but we also have a more monumental task to deal with. We have several societal issues that contribute to the problem and alleviating those problems will help with the teacher shortage crisis. But those issues are better handled in another episode.
Gradually we started seeing shortages in particular areas like special education, so incentives were offered like a 5% pay increase to compensate some of the extra paperwork associated with the position. Then we started seeing shortages in Math and Science fields so loan repayment incentives were offered to encourage more people to go into those fields.
Now we have shortages in every area. It used to be that some of the largest districts couldn’t fill all their positions so they would have to request the state to provide exceptions to the rule and provide emergency certification to a few individuals. For the school year we just completed, Oklahoma emergency certified over 1700 individuals and this didn’t even fill all classrooms.
This isn’t just a problem in Oklahoma. There are estimates that indicate the nations schools were 112,000 teachers short for the 17-18 school year.
How do we correct the problem?
Make education a desirable field for high school graduates. This looks a little different depending on which state you live in. But in general there are a few categories that can increase the appeal of this field.
Pay. Regardless of the amount teachers are paid in your state you have to ask yourself, “Is pay enough that it competes with other professional fields?” If not, then there need to be some changes to the system. In many states, the answer is “No.” So making pay competitive with other professions, or surrounding states is one step.
Training and Support. One alarming statistic is not the decrease in number of teachers going into the field, but the increase in teachers leaving the field. Some sources indicate that nearly 50% of teachers leave the profession in the first 5 years. Other studies indicate closer to 20%, which is still a very large percentage. Probably one thing causing the difference between these two numbers is teacher mobility vs. teachers leaving the profession. Some of these studies may not have closely tracked teachers moving to other districts. Either way, these numbers are staggering to me.
We need to offer more training and support to those teachers and provide them with what they need to be successful and stay in the profession. This is probably the biggest reason there is a teacher shortage across the country. In some states, nearly 90% of the new hires each year are filling positions of teachers that have left the profession in the first 5 years. It isn’t because of retiring teachers or new positions being created. These two groups are obviously a very small percentage of the cause of the annual shortage.
Many of these teachers abandoning the field in the first five years is do so for a variety of reasons. But studies have indicated that 92% of teachers assigned a mentor their first year returned and 86% were still on the job in the fifth year. Conversely only 84% of those without a mentor returned after year one and it drops to 71% by the fifth year. There is an 8% difference in the first year and 13% difference by the fifth year.
Pay and mentoring are some of the biggest contributors to retaining high quality personnel.
Bottom line, to help with the shortage we have to stop the exodus of teachers from the profession. If we can do this successfully our next step would be much less monumental. We would be able to focus on finding the best people for the job rather than just trying to put a warm body in the position.
Teacher Training-Another side of this issue is the preparation level of educators entering the field. If teachers come in better prepared for teaching, they are much less likely to leave the profession. This relates back to the mentoring mentioned earlier, but it also has to do with the training they receive in their teacher prep classes. Content and classroom management are two areas that are focused on during teacher prep, but which one is most important? If classroom management is lacking, then the content will never be successful. But you can’t really teach classroom management from a textbook. The best teacher is experience. That is why it may be more beneficial to move away from a semester long internship or student teaching experience and shift to a year long paid internship.
It is important to have the content knowledge, but there needs to be greater emphasis on the experiential side of the teacher prep courses. This is attempted through various observations, but just simply observing a good classroom “manager” has little benefit unless you can put it into practice.
There are a multitude of books that offer tips and tricks for being a successful classroom manager. Most focus on establishing procedures and sticking to them, this is something that often develops over time, but how do we make sure that those entering the profession are adequately prepared?
When you look at other professions there are internships and apprenticeships. There are certification tests and degree requirements. Education has all of these already in some form or fashion. One big difference, in education there are other somewhat unknown variables. Every teacher is working with approximately 25 other individuals at once and many of those individuals have little desire to be there. The teacher has to gain their interest, purvey the content, maintain order, and assess the learning all at once. This is extremely difficult when you may have three different native languages in the classroom, 40% of the students don’t get three meals a day, 10% of the students don’t know where they are going to sleep at night and 20% are not living with either parent.
With all these issues, it is no wonder that teachers struggle during the first 5 years and often leave the profession.
This information doesn’t help us solve the teacher shortage, but it does give insight into the problem. It helps explain why it is so difficult to retain teachers.
We can do everything in our power to stem the tide, but we also have a more monumental task to deal with. We have several societal issues that contribute to the problem and alleviating those problems will help with the teacher shortage crisis. But those issues are better handled in another episode.
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