A Background on Potential Teacher Shortages in the United States Peer Review
What do nosotros know about teacher shortages in each state and beyond the country? How astringent are they? What has caused the shortages — and how can leaders help solve them?
SREB joined leaders from EducationCounsel, FutureEd at Georgetown Academy, and state and local schoolhouse systems for an online event Nov. 8 to reply these important questions. (See the video of the issue at the terminate of this story.)
Teacher shortages in the South are nothing brusk of alarming, said SREB'south Megan Boren, who has worked directly with roundtables of education leaders in iv states to address teacher shortages.
Most of the sixteen SREB states study shortages in math, scientific discipline, special education, and career-and-technical education teachers, as well as a worsening shortage of world language teachers. Many school districts are fifty-fifty having difficulty finding English language-language arts and simple-grades teachers.
"These shortages are more than severe in high-poverty districts or those hard-to-staff districts," Boren said.
The shortages landscape
There'southward as well a lack of variety in teachers' backgrounds.
Teachers are about 80% white and female, Boren said. In the SREB states, teachers of colour range from almost 3% of the workforce in Due west Virginia to almost 40% in Texas and Florida.
Many school systems written report fewer applicants for teacher openings and accept go increasingly dependent on uncertified teachers and long-term substitutes to make full school vacancies, said Boren. The number of inexperienced teachers is rising in many states and districts, she said.
"For us, this is non just an education issue. This is an actual workforce issue," SREB President Stephen Pruitt said. "Without great teachers, we are not going to have a great workforce."
COVID-19 could make shortages worse moving forward, but the master reasons behind the shortages are clear: relatively depression pay, trivial professional support or respect, few opportunities for career advocacy and autonomy, and the lack of teacher incentives and leadership roles.
"Ultimately, we really accept to exist looking at elevating the profession overall," she said.
Getting specific nearly the challenge
Sandi Jacobs, a main partner at EducationCounsel and author of a new written report on teacher shortages with FutureEd, urged researchers and state leaders to analyze information on teacher workforce needs more carefully beyond states and districts, and within districts, too.
The pipeline of higher students entering instructor-prep programs — and those who really enter the profession — has always been leaky, Jacobs said.
"The leakiest spots are starting to change," she said. "We need sure kinds of teachers in certain places, with certain skill-sets — and we too demand more variety."
Tuition aid and loan forgiveness for teachers in high-need areas have landed states more elementary-grades and social studies teachers, but not plenty special teaching and STEM teachers.
"Ultimately, we really have to be looking at elevating the profession overall," SREB's Megan Boren said.
The state of affairs has had a compounding impact on specific geographic areas and subjects and has allowed a continued lack of diversity among teachers to persist — which leaves a substantial talent pool untapped, Jacobs said.
In fact, electric current approaches may benefit more affluent districts the nigh. "We actually have to think about the equity consequences," she said.
Bringing the result home
Tequilla Brownie, the executive vice president of strategy, policy and community coalitions for TNTP, added during the Nov. eight event that government leaders at the state, federal and local levels besides need to encounter quality teaching as a workforce issue.
States bound into action when a big industry opens, "to make sure there is a viable, trained workforce" and an acceptable supply of welders, electricians or other workers, she said. Why can't the aforementioned be true of improving the didactics system?
"The Thousand-12 sector is trying to solve this trouble on its ain," she said.
While the pandemic may end up aggravating teacher shortages, the data don't evidence that yet, said Brownie. Based in Arkansas, she formerly led instructor recruitment and support for the Memphis schools.
Even before COVID-nineteen, colleges of teaching were reporting fewer graduates. Some states have issued waivers for teacher certification and licenses during the pandemic, Credibility said.
"Did that help with quantity? Quality and diversity?" she asked.
In Arkansas, allowing waivers for schools to rent uncredentialled teachers has boosted the numbers of candidates for open up positions, Brownie said, but information technology is having the unintended consequence of allowing more unlicensed teachers to disproportionately state in schools where students may demand the best-prepared educators possible.
"It'southward only exacerbating some of the equity challenges that we've seen for decades," she said.
Pursuing new solutions
Due north Carolina is studying why only about half of its students admitted to education colleges' teacher-prep programs terminate up in the profession, said Thomas Tomberlin, the director of educator recruitment and back up for the state Department of Public Instruction.
The state once drew about 70% of its teachers from those traditional instructor-prep programs. Now, only ane-third come from those colleges. Another one-third enter teaching by switching careers or culling credentialing, and the remaining third are recruited from outside places such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Tomberlin said.
The instructor-recruitment crunch has raised questions well-nigh the quality of educators the state is able to recruit, leading a statewide roundtable of leaders to recommend a major overhaul of the teaching profession in North Carolina.
The roundtable's plan includes an entirely new approach to teacher licensing, focusing on supporting teachers' bear on on students and their professional growth and leadership roles, Tomberlin said.
"Is the teacher doing great things with kids that nosotros can mensurate?" he asked.
Due north Carolina aims to build an "authentic career path allowing teachers to advance, based on demonstrated skill," he said. The electric current system relies mainly on teachers' years of feel and their academic credentials.
New partnerships, bonuses that work
Nancy Wright, the District of Columbia Public Schools' managing director of instructional talent acquisition and memory, said her school organization has been addressing shortages in existent time.
Through a partnership with American University, the D.C. schools offer dual-enrollment courses in didactics to loftier school students — and full college scholarships for those who commit to teach in the city for five years. Future teachers practise their practicum in the city and continue to receive coaching and professional evolution from the academy.
The D.C. schools also take built up the numbers of teachers of color, establishing a teacher-residency program with Howard University for male teachers. The school district as well has recruited school staff members such as teacher-assistants and athletics coaches to consummate their degrees and go teachers, Wright said.
A 10-yr review of teacher retentiveness strategies in Washington, D.C., shows that hiring bonuses have helped ship some of the metropolis's best educators to work in loftier-needs schools, she said.
The schoolhouse system is partnering with the Urban Teachers to certify more teachers in special education across many different subjects, and now has a residency program with Georgetown University on dual languages and English equally a second linguistic communication.
"Nosotros've been thinking about specifically how to get and keep our educators in the schools where nosotros need them," Wright said, pointing to signing bonuses of up to $25,000 for teachers in high-need subjects and schools.
Even teachers who decide to leave the D.C. schools can receive a $ane,000 bonus if they notify the district by April 1 of their final year, helping schools know where vacancies will occur so they can search for new teachers correct abroad.
Teacher bonuses may not e'er piece of work, however, said Jacobs, the researcher for EducationCounsel.
Bonuses can be constructive for teacher recruitment, just less so for teacher retentivity, she said. Bonuses in lieu of permanent raises for teachers are "hither today, gone tomorrow."
"I can't put (that) I'k expecting to get a bonus on my mortgage application," Jacobs said.
North Carolina has a new program to increment pay past the equivalent of three years for new teachers who score high enough on instructor exams. Teachers of exceptional children (with disabilities and other needs) and Stalk teachers can earn even more than, Tomberlin said. The program is new, so the results aren't available yet, he added.
Identifying candidates at home
Some other potential strategy for catastrophe shortages: growing more teachers right in your community.
Inquiry suggests that instructor administration and other school staff members who cease their degrees and enter the profession are more ofttimes invested in their local schools already, have more than diverse backgrounds and are more decumbent to stay in those schools for the long term, said Brownie of TNTP.
Career-tech and dual enrollment courses in instruction can introduce more students to the field and requite them a head beginning in college, added Jacobs of EducationCounsel.
She encouraged states and colleges to examine the content and structure of teacher-prep programs, including whether prospective teachers spend enough time working in existent classrooms and learning the joy and value of teaching.
"Is there enough focus on clinical preparation? Exposure to rural communities and urban communities? New York State requires every teacher to accept a practicum experience in the special ed population," which may encourage more teachers to pursue that area of work, Jacobs said.
Schools also should consider ways to help more than teachers of colour succeed, Brownie said. Research indicates that cohorts of teachers practise better than individuals, for example.
Historically Black and other minority-serving colleges and universities can be key partners in preparing more various teachers, she said, "but by no ways are they at the scale to solve the problem."
Many college students may non be enlightened of how meaningful a career in teaching tin exist, Brownie said.
TNTP found that at Xavier University in New Orleans, which specializes in preparing students of color for medical school and science-related fields, many students didn't even know an education major was an pick.
Some states and school systems are providing scholarships and support to identify potential teachers "from the communities our students are coming from, raising the prospects for the families and caregivers of our students," Brownie said. "That may help us brainstorm to prioritize this as a community, rather than only as a M-12 issue."
Source: https://www.sreb.org/blog-post/what-we-know-about-teacher-shortages-and-how-states-districts-can-respond