The teacher shortage:
How bad is it?
What's being done about it?

There's a simple but unavoidable truth about improving our schools: We can't do it if we don't have qualified teachers in every classroom. As school enrollments grow and as more teachers retire, we face a huge challenge in hiring--and retaining--enough high-quality educators. In this issue of American Teacher and in subsequent reports, we'll take a close look at the issues surrounding the teacher shortage--and at solutions that have shown some promise in helping our schools meet this challenge.

Two million in the next 10 years. That's the round number you usually hear when policymakers fret about the challenge of hiring enough qualified teachers to staff our schools in the coming decade.

But what does this number really indicate? It certainly doesn't mean a credentialed teacher can walk into any school district in the country and expect to get a job. Many affluent suburban districts have file cabinets full of applicants looking for a teaching position. But that same prospective teacher, armed with a license and a background in math, science, technology or--best of all--special education, will probably get more job offers than she can keep up with.

And unfortunately, almost every urban district in the country--most of them in cities where the AFT represents teachers--continues to staff too many classrooms with teachers who are working with emergency or provisional certificates. The same also holds for many rural districts.

In other words, the laws of supply and demand are alive and well in the teaching marketplace. So, what's the problem? The supply isn't where the demand is greatest. What's more, many schools of education are continuing to turn out too many teachers in surplus areas, such as social studies, and too few in the chronic shortage fields.

Why the shortage?

A variety of factors--social, economic and political--have contributed to the teacher shortages that do exist. For starters, there's a demographic train wreck down the line: record public school enrollments that will continue to grow, combined with a teaching force full of people nearing retirement.

If demographics were the only factor, however, there would be more uniform shortages around the country. But there aren't, and that's where economics comes into play. Any teacher will tell you he or she didn't enter the profession to get rich, but the salary disadvantage teachers face compared to almost every other college graduate is a real problem--and it only gets worse the longer someone stays in the profession. Combine that with the robust economy of recent years--rising salaries and countless new job opportunities across many sectors--and schools have an even tougher time competing, especially for people with highly valued skills in math, science and technology.

The AFT's most recent salary survey, released last summer, shows that the average beginning teacher salary in 1999 was $26,639, compared with $37,194 for new college graduates overall. Graduates in fields such as engineering and computer science out-earn new teachers by $16,000 to $18,000. Even more striking: If you take the nation's 100 largest school districts and single out the one with the highest starting salary (Yonkers, N.Y., at $37,045), you'll find that it too is below the average for college grads.

The survey shows that the average teacher salary (which turns out to be for someone with about 16 years of experience) is $40,574. This compares to average figures of $68,294 for engineers, $66,782 for computer systems analysts and $49,247 for accountants, to name a few. Over the course of a career, that adds up to a huge earnings gap.

The bottom line, as AFT president Sandra Feldman puts it: "Low salaries are preventing quality people from both entering and staying in the profession."

Teaching's intrinsic rewards--working with children, shaping young minds, seeing firsthand the joy of learning--can't be underestimated. But these positives only go so far when you add the frustrations beyond salaries that make the job that much tougher. "Not having enough materials and books and supplies, for example," Feldman says. "Teachers often spend hundreds of dollars of their own money to make sure their students have what they need.

"We talk a lot about computers," she points out, and about "the most sophisticated and powerful technology that links us to the remotest parts of the globe. Yet most teachers, if they want to call a parent about how her kid is doing in math, have to go down the hall and wait in line for a telephone."

Add in parents who aren't involved, schools that are in disrepair, student discipline problems and inadequate support for new teachers, and it's no wonder the U.S. Department of Education estimates that more than 20 percent of teachers leave the profession in their first three years--a figure that's closer to 50 percent in urban schools.

The role of reform

Unfortunately, some of the positive trends in school reform have further complicated the matter of hiring enough qualified teachers. Most strikingly, the move to reduce class sizes in many states and districts has increased the demand for teachers. California, with its high-profile statewide class-reduction initiative, is the textbook example. Although the evidence from California, and other states, suggests that the effort has paid off in improved student achievement, it has also forced districts to hire huge numbers of uncertified teachers, which could dilute the positive impact of smaller classes.

California needs to hire some 300,000 teachers statewide during the next decade. In districts like Los Angeles, the shortage has reached epic proportions: More than half of new teachers hired this school year lack certificates. About one-fourth of the district's teachers are working with emergency credentials, and not surprisingly, they are concentrated in schools with the most disadvantaged students.

On the flip side, the strong focus on raising standards, implementing proven programs and providing better professional development in many urban districts (see page 3 for more on "Doing What Works," a recent AFT report on the topic) has made big-city systems more attractive places to work. As urban schools continue to improve their performance--and their public images--their recruiting challenges should ease at least a little.

Money talks

Some things can't be changed, like the number of students enrolling in public schools or the inevitable retirement of hordes of veteran teachers. But there are plenty of policy options that can be tried; the severity of the teacher shortage in many areas has prompted an array of solutions, some obvious and some downright creative.

Financial incentives are a logical step, both in terms of raising salaries and in providing bonuses and other benefits for entering or staying in the profession. As United Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten bluntly wrote in a USA Today column: "Making sure that we have a well-qualified teacher in every classroom requires that we make the job attractive by paying competitive salaries." And she, as much as any union leader, knows just how important this is: New York City teacher salaries lag about 25 percent behind those in the surrounding suburbs.

In the past year, many state legislatures nationwide have initiated measures to raise salaries--for novice and veteran teachers alike. Many districts have boosted teacher pay to stay competitive with neighboring districts or have offered "signing bonuses" to help fill vacancies. But the teaching marketplace is primarily local or regional, not national, so financial incentives may mean that teachers will jump from one district to another nearby where they can earn a little more. To raise salaries nationwide--to a point where teachers are among the highest-paid civil servants, as they are in Japan and other countries--would cost billions of dollars more than lawmakers have indicated they're willing to spend.

As a result, one-time incentives, such as signing bonuses, have become more common. Massachusetts, for example, has offered $20,000 over four years to more than 200 new teachers. Other states and districts have provided low-interest mortgages, subsidized housing, tax credits, daycare subsidies and the like--financial assistance you hear discussed more often in conjunction with solutions to poverty.

It takes more than money

As Sandra Feldman and AFT leaders around the country have been arguing for years, improved working conditions and a greater sense of professionalism are as important as money in attracting and retaining teachers. Weingarten's comments about New York City could apply to virtually any urban district in the country: "If the city and the board of education are going to be able to recruit the 50,000 qualified teachers we'll need in the next five years, we have to do more to raise salaries, improve working conditions and give teachers the respect they deserve for the critical job they do."

Even in New York City, with all the challenges one expects in the country's largest school system, there's a certain attraction to teaching. While creating merely a ripple in the bigger picture, the city got more than 2,000 applications last year when it developed a "teaching fellows" program to lure qualified career-changers to teaching. Many of these individuals were willing to take substantial pay cuts for the opportunity to teach.

Similar alternative certification programs have been around for years in various forms, especially targeted at groups such as paraprofessionals, retired military officers and recent graduates from prestigious universities.

Although such programs raise obvious questions about the wisdom of throwing novice teachers into their own classroom after just a few months or even weeks of training, some have helped bring many talented and successful individuals into the profession. As shortages continue, districts are bound even more to turn to nontraditional sources of teachers.

There also exists a huge pool of people who have earned education degrees but, for a variety of reasons, have never set foot in a classroom. (Just for fun, ask a few realtors in your area if they have education degrees--you might be surprised by how many say yes.)

An analysis of the state of Oklahoma conducted by the Southern Regional Education Board found, for example, that only 54 percent of college graduates trained to teach math between 1994 and 1996 were actually teaching by 1996. Efforts to upgrade salaries and working conditions would likely draw some of these candidates into the classroom.

Other attempts have been made to entice retired teachers back into the classroom by allowing them to continue collecting full retirement benefits. A survey by the AFT-affiliated New York State United Teachers found that 61 percent of senior teachers in the state (which is considering such an incentive) would be willing to come back, full or part time, after retirement--if they could keep their pension benefits.

These are just a sampling of the approaches that have emerged in recent years to alleviate the teacher shortage. Others include greater reciprocity among states in accepting licensed teachers from other states; more portability of teacher pensions so people who move to another state aren't penalized; streamlined hiring and licensing procedures so potential candidates don't give up out of frustration; national clearinghouses (primarily on the Internet) to better connect prospective teachers with the districts that need them; and efforts to connect with bright students in college and even in high school to get more of them to consider teaching careers.

American Federation of Teachers, AFL•CIO - 555 New Jersey Avenue, NW - Washington, DC 20001