 |
| Photo Credit: AP. |
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Everywhere, it seems, back-to-school has been shadowed by worries of a teacher shortage.
The U.S.
education secretary has called for investment to keep teachers from quitting. A
teachers union leader has described it as a five-alarm emergency. News coverage
has warned of a crisis in teaching.
In reality,
there is little evidence to suggest teacher turnover has increased nationwide
or educators are leaving in droves.
Certainly,
many schools have struggled to find enough educators. But the challenges are
related more to hiring, especially for non-teaching staff positions. Schools
flush with federal pandemic relief money are creating new positions and
struggling to fill them at a time of low unemployment and stiff competition for
workers of all kinds.
Since well
before the COVID-19 pandemic, schools have had difficulty recruiting enough
teachers in some regions, particularly in parts of the South. Fields like
special education and bilingual education also have been critically short on
teachers nationwide.
For some
districts, shortages have meant children have fewer or less qualified
instructors.
In rural
Alabama’s Black Belt, there were no certified math teachers last year in
Bullock County’s public middle school.
“It really
impacts the children because they’re not learning what they need to learn,”
said Christopher Blair, the county’s former superintendent. “When you have
these uncertified, emergency or inexperienced teachers, students are in
classrooms where they’re not going to get the level of rigor and classroom
experiences.”
While the
nation lacks vacancy data in several states, national pain points are obvious.
For
starters, the pandemic kicked off the largest drop in education employment
ever. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of people
employed in public schools dropped from almost 8.1 million in March 2020 to 7.3
million in May. Employment has grown back to 7.7 million since then, but that
still leaves schools short around 360,000 positions.
“We’re still
trying to dig out of that hole,” said Chad Aldeman, policy director at the
Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University.
It’s unknown
how many of those positions lost were teaching jobs, or other staff members
like bus drivers — support positions that schools are having an especially hard
time filling. A RAND survey of school leaders this year found that around
three-fourths of school leaders say they are trying to hire more substitutes,
58% are trying to hire more bus drivers and 43% are trying to hire more tutors.
Still, the
problems are not as tied to teachers quitting as many have suggested.
Teacher
surveys have indicated many considered leaving their jobs. They’re under
pressure to keep kids safe from guns, catch them up academically and deal with
pandemic challenges with mental health and behavior.
National
Education Association union leader Becky Pringle tweeted in April: “The
educator shortage is a five-alarm crisis.” But a Brown University study found turnover
largely unchanged among states that had data.
Quit rates
in education rose slightly this year, but that’s true for the nation as a
whole, and teachers remain far more likely to stay in their job than a typical
worker.
Hiring has
been so difficult largely because of an increase in the number of open
positions. Many schools indicated plans to use federal relief money to create
new jobs, in some cases looking to hire even more people than they had
pre-pandemic. Some neighboring schools are competing for fewer applicants, as
enrollment in teacher prep programs colleges has declined.
The Upper
Darby School District in Pennsylvania has around 70 positions it is trying to
fill, especially bus drivers, lunch aides and substitute teachers. But it
cannot find enough applicants. The district has warned families it may have to
cancel school or switch to remote learning on days when it lacks subs.
“It’s become
a financial competition from district to district to do that, and that’s unfortunate
for children in communities who deserve the same opportunities everywhere in
the state,” Superintendent Daniel McGarry said.
The number
of unfilled vacancies has led some states and school systems to ease credential
requirements, in order to expand the pool of applicants. U.S. Education
Secretary Miguel Cardona told reporters last week that creative approaches are
needed to bring in more teachers, such as retired educators, but schools must
not lower standards.
Schools in
the South are more likely to struggle with teacher vacancies. A federal survey
found an average of 3.4 teaching vacancies per school as of this summer; that
number was lowest in the West, with 2.7 vacancies on average, and highest in
the South, with 4.2 vacancies.
In
Birmingham, the school district is struggling to fill around 50 teaching spots,
including 15 in special education, despite $10,000 signing bonuses for special
ed teachers. Jenikka Oglesby, a human resources officer for the district, says
the problem owes in part to low salaries in the South that don’t always offset
a lower cost of living.
Timothy
Allison, a collaborative special education teacher in Birmingham, Ala., teaches
a class at Sun Valley Elementary School on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2022. The school
district is struggling to fill around 50 teaching spots, including 15 in
special education, despite $10,000 signing bonuses for special education
teachers. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves)
Timothy
Allison, a collaborative special education teacher in Birmingham, Ala., teaches
a class at Sun Valley Elementary School on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2022. The school
district is struggling to fill around 50 teaching spots, including 15 in
special education, despite $10,000 signing bonuses for special education
teachers. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves)
The school
system in Moss Point, a small town near the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, has
increased wages to entice more applicants. But other districts nearby have done
the same. Some teachers realized they could make $30,000 more by working 30 minutes
away in Mobile, Alabama.
“I
personally lost some really good teachers to Mobile County Schools,” said
Tenesha Batiste, human resources director for the Moss Point district. And she
also lost some not-so-great teachers, she added — people who broke their
contracts and quit three days before the school year started.
“It’s the
job that makes all others possible, yet they get paid once a month, and they
can go to Chick-fil-A in some places and make more money,” Batiste said.
A bright
spot for Moss Point this year is four student teachers from the University of
Southern Mississippi. They will spend the school year working with children as
part of a residency program for aspiring educators. The state has invested
almost $10 million of federal relief money into residency programs, with the
hope the residents will stay and become teachers in their assigned districts.
Michelle
Dallas, a teacher resident in a Moss Point first-grade classroom, recently
switched from a career in mental health and is confident she is meant to be a
teacher.
“That’s why
I’m here,” she said, “to fulfill my calling.”
This story
is part of an Associated Press collaboration with AL.com, The Christian Science
Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Fresno Bee in California, The Hechinger
Report, The Seattle Times and The Post and Courier in Charleston, South
Carolina.
Associated
Press writers Brooke Schultz in Harrisburg, Pa., Collin Binkley in Washington,
D.C., and Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, N.Y. contributed to this report. Rebecca
Griesbach is a member of The Alabama Education Lab team at AL.com. She is
supported through a partnership with Report for America. AP journalist Sharon
Lurye reported from New Orleans. Schultz is a corps member for the Associated
Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a
nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms
to report on undercovered issues.
The
Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation
of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
For more back-to-school coverage, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/back-to-school