What Happened To All The Teachers?

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: August 25, 2017 at 11:25:02 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] What Happened To All The Teachers?
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> What Happened To All The Teachers?
> By Jeff Bryant
> Aug 24 2017
> <https://ourfuture.org/20170824/what-happened-to-all-the-teachers>
>
> A recent headline from CNN that declares “schools throughout the country are grappling with teacher shortages” may 
> seem like a rerun to anyone who’s been paying attention to news about public schools over recent years.
>
> “A perennial issue,” an article in Education Week calls it, and points out most states have had chronic teacher 
> shortages “for years, if not decades,” particularly in staffing positions in special education, math, science, and 
> foreign-language instruction.
>
> But this year’s reports of teacher shortages seem different. Indeed, mounting evidence should convince anyone who 
> cares that providing students a guaranteed access to highly qualified teachers, no matter where they live – an ideal 
> that’s never been a well-kept promise to begin with – is weakening even further.
>
> CNN reporter Caitlin Ostroff cites evidence of teacher shortages in school districts as diverse as rural Maryland and 
> New York City, but the evidence is even more widespread.
>
> State officials in Colorado are estimating a shortfall of 3,000 teachers statewide this school year.
>
> In Detroit, a shortage of teachers means classrooms are overcrowded and students won’t have music, art, and gym. 
> Looming teacher shortages in New Orleans are forcing the city to think of new and creative ways to hire more than 900 
> teachers annually, until 2020.
>
> Rural school districts have it particularly tough.
>
> In a Minnesota small town school district that has struggled with teacher shortages for years, the superintendent 
> tells a local reporter about advertising an opening for a fifth-grade teaching position and getting “zero applicants. 
> None.”
>
> A recent news story on teacher shortages in rural Texas schools finds, “Some districts without any takers for open 
> jobs have resorted to livestreaming instruction from other schools or having educators teach more than one grade.”
>
> To make up for the teacher drought, government officials in many places are resorting to drastic measures that can’t 
> be good for the quality of instruction in our schools.
>
> Indiana schools are using substitutes as a solution for its five-year dearth of first-year teachers entering the 
> system. In Oklahoma, school districts experiencing years of teacher shortages are resorting to “novice” hires with 
> little to no K-12 teaching experience. An investigation by an Arizona news outlet finds that chronic teacher 
> shortages in that state have led to districts hiring unqualified, inexperienced staff – as many as 22 percent of 
> teachers may now lack qualifications. An Arizona school district cited in the above Education Week article is filling 
> in the gaps with parents, much like they’d call for chaperones for a field trip. Utah’s State Board of Education has 
> responded to growing teacher shortages by letting schools hire teachers with zero teaching experience and no training.
>
> Causes for these widespread shortages vary. Education Week reporter Madeline Will links Oklahoma’s teacher shortfall 
> to the fact the state has “the lowest average teacher pay in the country.”
>
> Teacher pay is a serious problem for sure. Ostroff quotes from a study that finds, “Salaries for U.S. secondary 
> school teachers have largely remained the same over the past two decades.” Stagnant wages are particularly 
> detrimental to recruiting math and science teachers because potential employees with these skills can often find 
> higher paying work.
>
> Retaining current teachers is a problem too. Another study Ostroff references notes, “eight percent of teachers leave 
> teaching each year, with two-thirds quitting before retirement.”
>
> That study, published last year by the Learning Policy Institute, provides the most robust analysis to date of what’s 
> causing teacher shortages in many places. Among the factors analyzed include teacher working conditions, 
> compensation, turnover, preparation and certification, and the attractiveness of the positions that are available.
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/
> Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp



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