Two articles have appeared recently that highlight a growing teacher shortage in the United States. Aside from fault-finding, the pieces are noteworthy in their consistency: We are preparing far fewer teachers in America than we will need in the coming years.
Some will point to the depressed teacher salaries as the reason students aren’t deciding for a career in teaching. Others point to the rather hostile environment in most schools and ask why anyone would want to enter a profession where the teacher is always at fault and never the student. Others cite the increased emphasis on assessment and standardized testing. Still others point to the relatively high focus placed on other professions such as engineering and financial management (which belies the ability of graduates to earn more in those fields than in teaching).
There are other reasons, but no matter the reason, we have reason to be concerned.
The first article below appeared on Monday October 22, 2018 in the Laramie, Wyoming Boomerang, the city’s daily newspaper that focuses for the most part on stories in and around the high plains of the Laramie Region. The second article appeared at the Fox Business Channel on Thursday October 25, 2018.
UW Official Warns of Looming Teacher Shortage
Enrollment at the University of Wyoming’s College of Education has fallen by a quarter in recent years, its top administrator warned lawmakers recently as he sought to ring the bell about a looming teacher shortage that some districts are already feeling.
Nationally, enrollment in teacher education programs fell about 35 percent between 2009 and 2014, according to a study by the Learning Policy Institute. Wyoming’s has been smaller, at 25 percent, but it’s still a surprising and sobering number, UW College of Education Dean Ray Reutzel said.
“Think about the unrelenting criticism of the education system in the public press,” Reutzel told the Star-Tribune last week, less than a month after he briefly spoke to the Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Education Committee. “The press has not been kind to teachers and schools. Forty-five, 50 years ago, teachers were some of the most venerated people in the community. Now they’re bloodsucking tics on the body politic. That’s about how they’re represented.”
Reutzel said the only talk in the Wyoming Legislature is about “cut, cut, cut,” which doesn’t help the situation, either.
“You never cut your way to prosperity” he said.
He noted Wyoming teacher salaries, which average about $58,000, are above the national average but have remained stagnant in recent years. States such as Colorado and Utah have been public in their desire to increase teacher salaries.
Other states, like Arizona and West Virginia, were home to high-profile strikes and showdowns between teachers’ unions and statehouses earlier this year.
The problem isn’t just on the enrollment side. Once teachers enter the classroom, they’re spending less time there. Reutzel cited a national study that found that four years after graduation, only 10 percent of degree participants were teaching. The Learning Policy Institute found national teacher attrition at 8 percent — double the rate of places like Singapore and areas of Canada.
Then there are the retirements, as the baby-boomers leave he workforce across all sectors. The result, Reutzel said, is that by 2025, the nation would hire just half of the needed teachers annually.
“We could be staffing classrooms in schools where maybe half are real, “prepared” teachers,” he said.
“Everything points to a massive prolonged, protracted teacher shortage in the country, and Wyoming is positioning itself to be in a very bad place by not raising salaries and staying ahead of that like they were 10 years ago in order to have hat competitive advantage,” he continued.
“Then there’s the disadvantage of having few communities with amenities. So, Wyoming has to really decide how bad they want this to be.”
Some top administrators have been warning that they’re already feeling the effect. Donna Little-Kaumo, the superintendent in Sweetwater County School District No. 2, has testified in front of the Education Committee repeatedly over the past 18 months and warning that competition from Utah has her scrambling to fill spots.
Reutzel said that open positions used to have dozens of candidates, and now it’s down to a handful. He warned of letting the looming national crisis drag Wyoming into a cycle of “boom and bust education,” where, to cope with a shortage, the Legislature lowers the bar for who can be a teacher. Then, performance may dip, and lawmakers — some of whom are already critical of students’ scores would turn around and cut because the results are poor.
Reutzel said he was willing and eager to sit at the table with lawmakers and educators. He ticked off a handful of possible solutions — putting teacher interns into the classroom, moving away from a near-complete reliance on fossil fuels — that could help moving forward.
Otherwise, Wyoming could see the teaching population in the western half of the state “emptied out,” as Kaumo-Little has been warning.
“From a (college) student’s perspective, why would I do this? I don’t get paid much, I get badmouthed, and whenever we get in a hard spot in the state with tax revenues, my job’s imperiled,” the dean said. “There’s no good insensitive [sic] to want to go into the education system.”
Russo Note: The word above should read “incentive.” I doubt that Dean Ray would make an error like that!
High school teacher shortage forcing schools to go digital
By Jade Scipioni, Fox Business Channel
Teacher shortages across the country are getting so dire that they’re forcing some school districts to live stream lessons, replacing educators in many classrooms.
According to The Wall Street Journal, tens of thousands of high school students nationwide are now getting lessons taught by a remote teacher to occupy many hard-to-fill positions in areas like science, math and special education.
All 50 states and Washington D.C. have reported teacher shortages over the last few years. The U.S. Department of Education said the number of people completing teacher programs has dropped from 217,506 in 2011 to 159,598 in 2016.
Colin Sharkey, executive vice president of the Association of American Educators, a California-based nonunion professional organization, told FOX Business that he isn’t surprised that more and more districts are leveraging online education tools.
“School leaders are forced to get creative about hiring decisions when their hands are tied when it comes to attracting talent and filling critical vacancies,” Sharkey said, adding that for some students and teachers, online education can actually be an effective method of instruction.
“There is certainly a role for screen-based teaching in traditional school environments, especially for a generation of students who will likely learn how to change a tire by watching a video on YouTube,” he added.
However, Sharkey warns that school leaders need to do their research before implementing it to fully understand “all of the tradeoffs,” adding that the method would only work if the remote teacher is fully supported in that role.
He noted that many of today’s educators are becoming increasingly frustrated over how little autonomy they enjoy in their own classroom to prepare the next generation and how political and ineffective their unions have become at ensuring student success.
“Even our members who report high levels of satisfaction with teaching and plan to stay through retirement understand why the allure of teaching is declining—and they want to reverse the trend,” Sharkey said. “If teaching can again be well-respected, student-oriented, and personally fulfilling, there will not be any shortages.”
Concluding Note: Here’s the deal. If you are called to teaching, you will ignore all of the above. It won’t matter what you are paid. Your “calling” trumps lower wages. However, if you are somewhat business-astute, you will realize that worker shortages in virtually any industry usually lead to higher wages. I sense change’a’comin.
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