by James A. Bacon

Last week the Youngkin administration reported some good news about teacher vacancies in Virginia: they’re down from last year. The teacher shortage appears to be abating.

The statewide vacancy rate stood at 3.4% at the beginning of the current school year, half a percentage point (0.5%) lower than last year. Today, according to a press release from Superintendent of Public Education Lisa Coons, 35 school districts have teacher shortfalls of one percent or less, and 64 of two percent or less.

Not mentioned in the press release but available from the Excel spreadsheet it linked to: 11 school districts have vacancy rates of 10% or more. The rate in Southhampton County stands at a stupefying 27.9%.

Still, Virginia’s public schools overall are moving in the right direction. The question is who or what deserves the credit? Has there been a shift in the job market? Are working conditions improving? Are the Youngkin administration’s efforts paying off?

Coon’s press release emphasizes how Youngkin administration initiatives are increasing the supply of teachers and improving working conditions.

“We remain focused on putting more qualified teachers in schools across the Commonwealth by providing innovative opportunities for aspiring educators, lowering classroom sizes, and decreasing workloads to retain the great teachers we currently have in our classrooms,” Coons said.

In August the Virginia Board of Education finalized rules that made it easier for aspiring teachers to obtain licenses. School boards may now issue one-year, local-eligibility licenses to individuals who hold a baccalaureate degree and possess relevant experience or training. The Governor also signed into law earlier this year a bipartisan bill for Universal Teacher Licensure, making it easier for teachers from other states to get into Virginia classrooms faster.

Another initiative creates a pre-apprenticeship “pathway” into the teaching profession. A $6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor will expand the number of participating school divisions offering teacher apprenticeships for K-12 educators and building pre-apprenticeship on-ramps into the teaching profession.

Bacon’s bottom line: For the most part, I am philosophically aligned with the Youngkin administration, although I would like to take a closer look at the numbers to confirm the administration’s spin.

In theory, loosening the educational/licensure requirements for becoming a teacher or transferring from another state should increase the pool of job applicants from which public schools can recruit. Many licensure requirements are zero-value-added bunkum designed to keep Virginia’s Schools of Education in business. Virginia should encourage teachers to enter the profession from all walks of life, not just from teacher colleges. With its focus on easing entry into the field, team Youngkin is right on target.

Still, I would like to know how many teachers obtained their licenses this way. A dozen? A hundred? A thousand? In the real world as opposed to the theoretical world, has licensure reform had a significant impact or just a marginal one? Is Virginia on the way to solve its problem or does much more need to be done? The press release provides no answers.

Coons also noted that smaller classroom sizes translate into lower workloads for teachers. The implication is that better working conditions help with teacher retention.

I’d like to dig deeper into those numbers as well. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, the average student-to-teacher ratio in Virginia public schools is 13.6-to-1 (better than the national average, by the way). If the teacher vacancy rate shrank by one-half of a percent since last year, all other things being equal, class sizes should be one-half a percent smaller. If class sizes shrank by one-half percent, that would reduce the student-teacher ratio from 13.6-to-one to 13.5-to-one. In the vast majority of classrooms, in other words, there would be no reduction in class size and no improvement in working conditions.

Coons is suggesting a link between class size and teacher retention. I’m not saying she’s wrong, but I am saying she needs to provide better documentation for her assertion.

According to Virginia Department of Education data, teacher vacancies vary widely between school districts, suggesting that other factors are in play. Southhampton County has a vacancy rate of 27.9%, which is much higher than demographically and socioeconomically comparable school districts. Most other districts with high rates happen to be rural counties. But not all rural counties have high vacancy rates. Wise County in the remote Appalachian coalfields has a vacancy rate of 0.00%.

Similarly, the City of Petersburg has a vacancy rate of 26.4% while the demographically comparable City of Richmond is 7.8%.

What accounts for the differences? Perhaps that’s a question for a Ph.D. dissertation, not a press release. But I’d like to see tighter argumentation and more data from the Youngkin administration for which I have much higher expectations than its predecessor.