National Teacher Survey Sounds Alarm – Teacher Shortages About to Get Worse
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34 responses to “National Teacher Survey Sounds Alarm – Teacher Shortages About to Get Worse”
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I’ll bet that, if you look closely at the payrolls of Virginia state colleges, you’ll find lots of administrators who add no value to the classroom experience. Perhaps the money spent on those people could be diverted to secondary school teacher pay.
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Colleges? Don’t ignore the admin bloat K-12.
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Not every division enjoys that bloat. Smaller divisions must get the same tasks done as larger division, but with a smaller administrative staff. In smaller divisions, one person may do the job that 5-10 people do in a larger division.
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Best and newest buildings usually are the Admin Bldg.
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Yup, the teacher shortage is bad and getting worse. The canaries in the coal mine are the teachers in Title IX (high poverty) schools where working conditions are the worse. Inadequate pay is a universal constant. But lousy working conditions — indifferent or hostile students, indifferent or hostile parents, increased reporting and paperwork, disorder in the halls and classrooms, increasing fears of physical violence, buck-passing school administrators, and ideologues in the district office — are worse in Title IX schools than anywhere else.
There’s a vicious cycle at work. When there aren’t enough teachers, existing teachers have to take on more students, which means more classes, more students, more papers to grade, and less time to prepare. Title IX teachers are getting burned out. As more leave and schools fail to replace them, those who are left behind get even more burned out.
This is a crisis. The Youngkin administration didn’t create it, but they’re in charge now. They have to find a way to deal with it.
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Title 1 schools.
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Since you have concluded that the root of teachers’ dissatisfaction was the “woke Board of Education” and that (1) angry crowds berating local school boards due to policies opposed to “traditional values” (never mind that those school boards had been elected by a majority of the voters in their localities), or (2) Youngkin’s tip line, (3) teachers having to redo their lesson plans several times because a parent did not approve of the reading assigned, or (4) parents rhetorically attacking teachers for teaching critical race theory had nothing to do with poor teacher morale, you should have no worries about a shortage in teachers in Virginia next fall. After all, as of July 1, Youngkin’s appointees will constitute a majority of the Board of Education and all will be back to “traditional values”.
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“angry crowds berating local school boards due to policies opposed to ‘traditional values'”
Yes, it is irritating when the normals don’t know their place and—what’s worse—refuse to follow the instructions the experts have given them. Americans do have a pesky habit of throwing the B.S. flag when they see B.S. Those upstart rankers kneeling in the snow at Valley Forge caused Baron Von Steuben no end of grief—they insisted he explain his orders!
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The same thinking has concluded that an absence of locks, armed guards, and mental health care, but not guns, contribute to school shooting.
You’re going to want to stay on the low side of the boat while doing that.
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Article not about school shooting.
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It’s about concrete brains. Or, an exemplar…
Although, they’re short two in Uvalde. BTW, not that he is to be believed, but the shooter’s post of the day wherein he denied he would shoot up a school, and the fact that he crashed his truck, may indicate that the school was a TOO, and not his primary. I wonder where he was headed?
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That was one of the weirder things about Uvalde, why did he drive the truck into a culvert? He had to work to do that. It was a lot more than just veering off onto the shoulder. Were the voices coming from his fillings distracting him?
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I think you will agree that it was a three step process: 1. the Board of Education, teachers unions and some local school boards started the culture wars fights and the disputes over school reopening. 2. Parents responded. 3. Teachers were collateral damage.
What do you recommend the state and local governments do before Aug 1 to mitigate teacher shortages?
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No, I don’t agree that the culture wars fights started that way. But, we have debated this ad nausea and I am tired of it. So, we can agree to disagree and see if teachers happily return to their desks in August/September.
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I’ll stipulate that too many parents have unrealistic expectations for their public school system’s teachers. It seems that many parents expect their public schools to perform magic, and somehow make up for all the learning that all students—regardless of their circumstances—lost due to COVID. That’s not going to happen right away, if at all. Especially if we’re losing teachers.
Wealthier parents are going to have to pony up for tutors, simply because they’re the only ones with the means to pay for extra academic help for their kids. Parents whose kids attend the state’s disadvantaged schools don’t have the means.
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DeSantis doesn’t understand why Florida is facing a teacher shortage either.
“Florida will likely continue to struggle with a teacher shortage for the 2022-23 school year, according to the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE).Mar 25, 2022”
It could be that they quit in order to sue him..
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The teachers I’ve spoken with bemoan the lack of back up from the administrations regarding student behavior. I’ve seen this first hand with the decline of a formerly great middle school. The school formerly had a Black female principal who “ran a tight ship” and faculty viewed themselves as a family with very low turnover. The moved her out, brought in a succession of white female principals who sought to implement an “equity” agenda. Classrooms are becoming dysfunctional because the teachers are not allowed to enforce behavioral expectations, fights are up, learning is down, and teacher turnover is through the roof. The administration leadership was driving teachers away, even before covid. So, in the name of “equity”, they are harming the most at risk populations. So, now those that can are fleeing to the suburbs again and/or the local private schools. To me, it’s the clearest example of “systemic racism”. Grrr.
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50% of US 3-4 yo kids are enrolled in pre-K,
90% of European 3-4 yo kids are.The teacher shortage is worldwide, although it’s worse here than in other G-20. We rank 6th in entry HS teacher salary, which is somewhat misleading since it’s our (nearly equal to 25 European nations) average versus their individual salary. I’m sure taking individual states, NY or CA would rank at the world top.
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I believe Washington D.C. would.
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DC is off the scale on just about everything. Would not surprise me if it has the highest teacher salary. There’s a state by state chart on robbery rate. DC is twice the next highest. Could be that it’s because it’s not a state, but treated like one. Could be because it’s a den of beltway bandits.
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We’re a negative outlier in Virginia, in fact the most negative outlier.
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Ain’t we though, Raggedy Man.
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Great article Captain! This chart from the report grabbed me. Of the 57 hours of work performed by a teacher in a week, only 25 hours are actual instruction/teaching. This must change to budge the performance needle.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f9bdbe3b3829e4aee159475d3e3efc18a261a21a1f97690bf9d0416acc87408c.jpg-
I am sure that all those extra hours were caused by the “woke” Board of Education. Not to worry. The new Board of Education will eliminate, or substantially reduce, those 22 hours spent doing something than actual instruction.
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The BOE, whether it is the old one or the new one, needs to get out of the way of instruction time.
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Wisdom from an actual, experienced teacher.
It would be interesting to see how those non-instructional hours increased over the years.
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It’s not just the BOE, but the General Assembly as well. For example, everyone has lauded the Virginia Literacy Act as the savior of all students who can’t read. It may certainly provide some benefit, but read the fine details and look at how things will be micromanaged from Richmond and Charlottesville, and how teachers will be required to do much, much more paperwork. For those grades, the percentage of instructional hours compared to all work hours will decline more.
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“I am sure that all those extra hours were caused by the “woke” Board of Education. Not to worry. The new Board of Education will eliminate, or substantially reduce, those 22 hours spent doing something than actual instruction.”
Perhaps instead of stating your opinion if you engaged a teacher you’d find out, as you’ve dismissed an actual teachers opinion on them for your own political opinions.
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More gub’mint = more regulation. More regulation = more time filling out forms and less time teaching. More time filling out forms <> better educational results for the students.
The answer is clear – cut back gub’mint.
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As a note, I ran this by a couple of local teachers before publication. They and every teacher who has commented since find it accurate. Worth knowing.
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A teacher I know who teaches in the Richmond area initially resigned when her school division decided it was having in-school instruction instead of closing for the pandemic in September 2020. When the sch00l division chose to go to remote learning, she returned. Recently, she decided not to go back next fall. One of the deciding factors was having to create multiple lesson plans in order to satisfy parents’ complaints about the reading assigned to students. I doubt if she would agree with your contentions.
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That doesn’t negate Sherlock’s point, you’re example is of a teacher who shouldn’t have been teaching in the first place. As it’s clear with her vacillation that her concerns are only for herself.
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The General Assembly did approve a 10% raise for state employees and teachers over the biennium (5% this year and another 5% next year). To be sure, that’s better than the previous 4% or 5%, and certainly better than none. However, at the end of this year, if inflation remains at the current rate of 8.5%, teachers will have 3.5% less purchasing power than they did last year. If inflation goes up much more than what it is, it will have consumed all of the raise over the biennium. I realize state funds are limited, and that everybody’s trying to get a bigger piece of that pie, but we really need to provide a more lucrative financial incentive to bring more people into a profession that has been hemorrhaging people for years. If we don’t, we need to develop a plan B.
As for remote instruction, our response to the pandemic very clearly demonstrated that this is not a wise move, especially for the kids who are most in need. Remote instruction may cause some folks to think that instruction is happening, but a casual review of our 2021 SOL data clearly demonstrates that’s not the case.
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“disillusionment of many teachers who feel overworked, underpaid, and under-appreciated,” What horse hockey. Underpaid, overworked. What about the rest of the professions? The product that is turned out might as well have Substandard Quality stamped on it.
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