Ahh, back to school in America. Time for annoyingly aggressive marketing of clothes and the annual warnings of a national teacher shortage.
But this year the cyclical problem is more real and less a media creation. There are serious shortages of teachers from California to Oklahoma and Kentucky and places in between.
A big factor: Far fewer college students are enrolling in teacher training programs, as we reported this spring, exacerbating a long-standing shortage of special education, science and English-language-learner instructors. In California, enrollment in teaching programs is down more than 50 percent over the past five years. Enrollment is down sharply in Texas, North Carolina, New York and elsewhere.
Add to the mix stagnant pay, attrition, retirements, an improving economy as well as politicized fights over tenure and just about every other education issue and you've got the makings of a genuine problem — in some regions.
"All of those things together are creating a serious challenge for us," Oakland Unified School District spokesman Troy Flint tells NPR Ed. "The teacher shortage we're facing in Oakland is significantly more dire than in previous years. We just don't have as many teachers in the pipeline."
Heading into the new school year Aug. 24th, Oakland has some 50 classroom vacancies. "The biggest challenge this year has come from the nationwide teacher shortage impacting all education employers, especially California public schools," Superintendent Antwan Wilson wrote this week in an email to staff and parents.
California has more than 21 thousand teaching positions to fill. Districts laid off or eliminated some 80,000 teaching jobs between 2008 and 2012 during the Great Recession. And as the economy rebounds more young people have more options.
The shortage areas tend to be worse in districts with budget woes, a concentration of high-poverty areas and systems that are experiencing strong population growth.
Take Nevada. In some districts such as Clark County, which is home to Las Vegas, population growth has meant the district can't build enough schools to meet demand or find enough teachers, especiallywhen you can potentially make more money with tips as a casino card dealer.
Pay is clearly an issue, especially in cities with high housing and living costs including the Bay Area, one of the nation's costliest. The annual starting teacher in Oakland makes a little more than $42,000. The average monthly apartment rent in the area is $2,802, according to Forbes.
But the shortage issue is an old problem. The largest number of teacher vacancies — as has been the case for years — are in special education, bilingual education and science.
"Districts have been screaming for years to send them more special ed and English-language-learner teachers," says Kate Walsh president of the National Council on Teacher Quality.
Walsh argues that there isn't so much a shortage as a chronic, fundamental problem in how we train and place teachers. "We over-produce teacher candidates by a substantial margin. The U.S. has more teacher preparation programs than any other country in the world," she says.
"It's time for school districts to be much more insistent on what the qualifications are of teachers who enter and try to get a new job with them," Walsh adds. "School districts have to assert the fact that they are the client. And it's up to higher ed meet the needs of the client."
Walsh worries that talk of the shortage will prompt school boards to lower standards and qualifications to teach, which, she says, "is exactly what we don't need or want."
And so as children head back to school, what are districts with shortages doing to adapt?
In many cases they'll turn more and more to substitute teachers — if they have enough in their area. Or they'll tap front-office employees with credentials.
"We don't want to rely on administrators with credentials to fill the gap, but that may be the case," Oakland's Troy Flint says. "We'll do that if that's what it takes to make sure there is a credentialed teacher in the classroom," when school begins next week.
Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
