THE TEACHER SHORTAGE: Is It Real, Or Is It Hype?

MYTH: There is in this country, a huge shortage of qualified teachers. Every year, teaching positions go unfilled and students are forced into overcrowded classrooms. Over the next ten years, over 2 million new teachers will need to be hired to solve the teacher shortage crisis.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), there were 48.6 million students enrolled in grades K-12 in US public schools in 2006. That same year, there were about 3.161 million teachers working to educate them. According to the NCES, the national ratio is 15.4 to one. Not bad when you consider that in the 1950s the student-teacher ratio was more than 30 to one.[1]
Your diligent education reporter began his teaching career in 1975. His very first class consisted of 42 students! The room only had 40 chairs, so he sent a student to the office to get two more chairs. Instead, the student came back with two more students! So his student-teacher ratio that year was 44 to one. Thirteen years later, he had changed districts, going from an inner-city school to a rural one. His first class in the rural school had 28 students. After having spent several years working in a junior high with class sizes averaging 32 to 34, he was in hog heaven. Nevertheless, the teachers at the new school were complaining about the large numbers of students in their classes.
In the Fall, 2005 issue of Traditional Parent, it was reported in some detail that the National Education Association called for a student-teacher ratio of 15 to one. It was also reported that, according to the NEA, to achieve this optimum ratio would require the hiring of only 100,000 new teachers. And it’s true! If one does the math, 100,000 does represent the number of teachers needed to reduce the student-teacher ration from the current 15.4 to one ration to the desired 15 to one. Well, that’s only one number the NEA uses to justify what ever exigency is at hand.
For some time now, the National Teacher Shortage has been receiving attention from the NEA, the media, and other left-leaning organizations. They produce constant paroxysms of anguish about how America’s children will not be properly educated unless more, millions more, teachers are hired.
Why does the NEA, along with other liberal groups, pound the teacher shortage drum? First, in the Chicken Little world of the left, the sky is always falling. Leftist liberals live in a world of perpetual panic and paranoia that they ardently strive to share with the rest of us. They can’t get up in the morning unless there’s a crisis, and their crises seem never-ending. The earth is burning up, famine is about to sweep the globe, the air is poisoning us, the two-legged, six-fingered burrowing salamander is disappearing from its only known habitat in a one-square mile area of Arctic tundra, and so on. But in recent years, the Left has become particularly obsessed with the supposed teacher shortage. They weep and wail and slobber all over themselves as they describe the terrible conditions in today’s classrooms because there aren’t enough teachers to fill the need.
What really upsets them, however, is that without more teachers, the NEA, which is America’s largest and most powerful political action committee (PAC), won’t be able to retain its influence with the Democrat Party, to which almost all of its political contributions go. The NEA’s track record with regard to teaching the kids is pretty bleak. But for promoting itself, give it a big fat A+. It has endorsed social engineering on a vast scale, introduced the idea of self-esteem, eliminated discipline from the schools, and forced teachers to implement individual learning programs for each of their students. The schools are stifling under the weight of the No Child Left Behind legislation and standardized testing is replacing learning. The NEA creates imagined shortages and shortfalls while ignoring the kids.
Frantic to increase the numbers of dues paying members, the NEA desperately promotes shortages of all kinds: "The greatest teaching shortages are in bilingual and special education,"[2] they declare. Minority teachers make up "just 13.5 percent"[3] of the teachers within US schools, while minority students comprise 33 percent of enrollment nationally. Forty-two percent of US public schools have no minority teachers at all.[4] These numbers are tossed out without reference or regard to demographics which impact ethnic and cultural considerations. Truth is that some districts do have difficulties staffing some classes, while others turn applicants away. Despite what the NEA wants, there is no balance or fairness in reality. Reality is what the NEA fears most and prefers to avoid.
It has been said that the majority of all statistics are made up to accommodate some expediency. Facts notwithstanding, NEA statistics should be viewed with a bit of skepticism because they are often used to support their favorite “crisis of the moment.” For example, they use the 100,000 needed-teachers number with regard to class size reduction. Yet, in 2000 the NEA breathlessly announced that 2.2 million teachers would be needed in the following ten years to solve the current school crisis.[5] By 2002, they had increased that number to 2.4 million. Later on, they argued hysterically that "the projection jumps as high as 2.7 million when researchers factor in declining student/teacher ratios based on class size reduction" [6](emphasis added). The actual number, when one considers normal attrition through resignations, retirements and other factors, is 980,000 teachers needed immediately to achieve the 15 to one ratio. That’s the 100,000 plus 880,000 new teachers to replace those leaving the profession. Apparently, the NEA is counting on no one checking their math.
Characteristic of social activists pandering to the public’s paranoia, the NEA wails that "by 2008, public school enrollment will exceed 54 million, an increase of nearly 2 million children." Where did they get those numbers?[7] According to the NCES, by 2008 public school enrollment will be 48.7 million. At Apparently the NEA has tossed in private and home schooled enrollment to justify their numbers. Total student enrollment in both public and private schools was 54.6 million in 2001 and total enrollment is project to be 55.2 million by 2008.[8] Who are you going to believe?
Nationally, student enrollment in public schools increased 19 percent between 1988 and 2001.[9] There were 47.7 million students enrolled in public schools in 2001. NCES projections indicate that by 2013 public school student enrollment will increase less than 4 percent from that of 2001, and will actually decrease in 20 states.[10] A 4% increase means that by 2013 enrollment will be 49.6 million. If teachers are hired at the same rate that would mean that only 104,000 more teachers are needed to keep pace. Factor in teacher attrition and the number of new teachers needed to be hired will be 650,000 by 2013 to accommodate the increase in student enrollment. That’s a far smaller number than 2.2 or 2.4, or 2.7 million claimed by the NEA.
As to teacher attrition, it is true that teachers leave the profession in huge numbers. Teachers walk away from the classroom for various reasons. Sources of teacher discontent range from lack of administrative support, poor salaries, student discipline problems, poor classroom conditions, to difficult parents, and accountability with innovative curricula without time or support to implement them. But is there a crisis with teacher retention? Over 20 percent of new teachers quit within their first three years. After five years, that number increases to 50 percent. Up to 30 percent of those left opt for early retirement every year. This leaves a cadre of hardened, burnt-out, dedicated, or stubborn (you decide) professionals that will hang in there tenaciously. God bless them. So, there is a constant attrition of teachers at all levels of experience.
On the other hand, in 2001 there were six million people in the US with teaching credentials.[11] Of those, 2.2 million were teaching. US colleges graduate 100,000 new teachers every year.[12] And every year, school districts hire about 45,000 new teachers leaving 55,000 new teachers looking for other work. These numbers vary according to the source. For example, USA Today reported in 2001 that colleges graduate 150,000 new teachers every year to fill about 200,000 teacher vacancies.[13] This represents 50,000 unfilled teacher positions and thus adds to the teacher shortage hysteria. So, either we have 55,000 teachers looking for work, or we have 50,000 unfilled openings. Apparently, the bias of the source of statistics determines the depth of the problem.
With 6 million people holding teaching credentials in the US, there appears to be an adequate pool of available, qualified personnel to fill teaching jobs. Yet some positions still go unfilled. In some high poverty districts, teacher recruitment and retention are critical. Some subject areas, such as math and science, find qualified teachers scarce due to the high demand for their skills in industry. (Recently, bilingual education and English as a second language have become critical subject areas.) These deficiencies have forced some districts and schools to explore alternative certification plans to get warm bodies in front of classrooms. As recently as 1997, as many as 50,000 special education positions either remained vacant or were filled by unqualified people.[14]
In 2001, New York City had close to 10,000 teachers holding emergency credentials.[15] Oakland, California schools claimed as many as 50 percent of its faculty were on temporary credentials.[16] One estimate claimed up to 4 million students in the US are being taught by unqualified teachers.[17] Thirteen percent of teachers in high-poverty Chicago schools failed the test of basic skills.[18] The same percentage of teachers in high-minority Ohio elementary schools were not highly qualified.[19] In June, 2006, the Education Trust reported that “districts with high percentages of low-income and minority students are more likely to have teachers who are inexperienced, have lower basic academic skills or are not highly qualified.”[20] This is due in part to state and district recruitment programs that offer student loan forgiveness for inexperienced recent graduates who sign on to teach in these schools for a specified number of years. What heavily indebted grad wouldn’t want to sign up for that deal?
So desperate are some districts to fill empty teaching slots with warm bodies that they have signed up for a program that recruits teachers from foreign countries. Under the guise of ‘cultural exchange,” the Visiting International Faculty (VIF) program has been used by districts unable to find qualified native-born teachers to fill open faculty slots. In 2001, 1300 elementary and high school teachers were brought to the US through the VIF program. Many VIF teachers complain that US students are unmotivated and undisciplined. Foreign teachers are getting a first hand look at why some US teachers are reluctant to persue a .teaching career.
Teacher shortages can not be blamed entirely on real teachers not seeking or keeping teaching jobs. It’s not like the jobs go without applicants. New York City recently drew 2300 applicants for 350 positions in high poverty schools that paid only $32,000 per year.[21]
Administrative incompetence can partly explain some of the shortages. Many qualified applicants simply never hear from school administrators or are put off until deadlines have passed. Administrators often overlook quality candidates in favor of those with proper disposition and attention to social justice issues.[22] In other words, candidates must be politically correct. This partly explains the results of the 2006 Education Trust report which said that minority students in low income schools are often short changed when it comes to access to qualified teachers.
Filling quotas also takes priority over qualifications. One district in the Midwest had failed to fill several openings by the start of school despite advertising for months prior. There was no shortage of applicants, but the district was hoping to fill openings with members of under-represented groups. Unfortunately, for the kids, there were simply not enough applicants from those groups to fill all the positions. Qualified non-member applicants were ignored. Even those members of under-represented groups who apply for vacant positions must demonstrate an appropriate sense of social justice. Political correctness rears its ugly head once more. Schools are tying themselves in knots trying to fill teaching positions with people who meet criteria that have little to do with teaching.
Many schemes have been offered to attract and retain qualified teachers. Most of them involve money. Some districts offer sign on bonuses for teachers in critical subject areas. But money is not what attracts people to teaching as exemplified by the New York City example. Nor is it what keeps teachers in the classroom. In August of 2000, the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) reported that teachers preferred administrative support over higher salaries. Of 914 teachers asked, 82% indicated that they would rather have strong, supportive leadership over higher pay. What’s more, new teachers said they would give up higher salaries “to work in a school with better student behavior and parental support.”[23]
What really drives teachers from the classroom or prevents others from seeking teaching jobs in the first place are lack of respect and support from parents and the public, lack of administrative support, and disrespectful, disobedient, undisciplined students (which takes us back to lack of support from parents). The NEA, in its zeal to increase numbers of potential union members, has actually abetted these circumstances. Instead of sustaining those conditions that prevent qualified teachers from seeking and keeping teaching positions, the NEA should begin to do what a real union would do. It should fight to create better working conditions for teachers, get out of bed with school administrators and force them to support faculty and implement appropriate discipline for students, and develop a more positive public opinion of the profession. In addition, it is essential for the survival of public education for those seeking teacher candidates to find those best qualified to teach and not those most politically correct.
Now back to the thesis of this article: Is there a teacher shortage? With 6 million potential teachers available the answer is obvious. There is no teacher shortage. There is, however, a shortage of people qualified to teach who are willing to put up with degraded social status, deteriorating classroom conditions, unruly students, and lack of parental and administrative support...no matter what the pay scale.In 2000, then President Bill Clinton, with typical lip biting solemnity, reflected the NEA’s urgent call for 2.2 million new teachers over the following ten years. It appears that 2.2 million is roughly the number of teachers that are normally hired every ten years anyway. And what if the NEA actually gets what it wants? How long will it be before it starts demanding a one-to-one student-teacher ratio?
[1] Digest of Education Statistics: 2005, Table 63. NCES 2006-030, June, 2006.This chart can be viewed at: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d05/tables/dt05_063.asp
[2] http://www.nea.org/teachers/research-teachers.html
[3] ibid. See also ABCNews.com, (Nov. 4, 1999) Carla Wohl.
[4] ibid. See also Winchester Star, Daneesha R. Davis, Nov. 14, 2005.
[5] Several sources quote this number. The authors cannot pin point the original source of this figure. Some of the sources we found were: The National Education Association; The Wall Street Journal, Jan 28, 1998; PBS.org/merrowtv/tshortage; NewsMax.com Wires, Aug. 15, 2001, careerbuilder.com/w1_work_0011_teachershortage.html; usatoday.com, Jul 7, 2001, by Anne Ryan.
[6] http://www2.nea.org/teachershortage/03shortagefactsheet.html
[7] This statistic has been widely disseminated in the print and electronic media. We believe the original source of this information was The American Federation of Teachers, National Teacher Survey, 1999.
[8] opcit.
[9] National Center for Education Statistics, Private School Universe Survey, 1999 - 2000. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics: (1999-2000) Digest of Education Statistics: 1998 (NCES 1999-036) (based on Common Core of Data); and (1998) Projections of Education Statistics to 2008 (NCES 98-016). Text can be read at: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2001330See also: nces.ed.gov/programs/quarterly/vol_4/4_3/6_2.asp - 38k
[10] opcit.
[11] Is Teacher Shortage Real? No author given. NewsMax.com, Aug. 15, 2001. http://www.newsmax.com
[12] ibid.
[13] Anne Ryan, USA Today, July 7, 2001
[14] American Federation of Teachers, National Teacher Survey, 1999.
[15] John Merrow, Teacher shortage: false alarm? The Merrow Report. http://www.pbs.org/merrow/tv/tshortage/
[16] ibid.
[17] ibid.
[18] Claire Campbell, Charis Ganger, Teaching equity: how poor and minority studetns are shortchanged on teacher quality, Education Trust.
[19] ibid.
[20] ibid.
[21] Dennis McCafferty, The coming teacher shortage: why aren’t the best minds educating our children? USA Weekend Magazine. www.usaweekend.com
[22] Natioanl Council for the Acreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), standards for Professional development Schools, Standard IV, spring, 2001.
[23] Rick Allen, Supporting New Teachers, ASCD Education Update, 42, (5), August, 2000, p.6.