Why Doesn't Anyone Want to Teach

Keri Randolph, former Assistant Superintendent for Innovation in Hamilton County, shares her own reluctant journey into the classroom and tries to find out why so few people are taking that path. Asking why no one wants to teach anymore to the following experts:

• Pete Fishman, Vice President for Strategy Deans for Impact @psfishman
• Kate Walsh, President of National Council on Teacher Quality @nctqkate
• Tiffanie Robinson, President and CEO of Lamp Post @LampPostBldgs
• Barnett Barry, Founder and CEO for Center for Teaching Quality @teachingquality
• Rickteyzia, Aspiring Teacher and Lasell College Graduate
• Carole Basile , Dean of Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona
  State Teachers College @asueducation
• Lance Huffman, former principal
• Mariel Novas, former community organizer
• Shanna Peeples, 2015 National Teacher of the Year and author of
  Think Like Socrates

The dread color-coded sheets. They always started arriving around January. The Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources would prepare weekly updates on anticipated job openings at schools in the district and distribute them to the district leadership team. Green meant a school was fully staffed; yellow meant more than 50% of openings had been filled; and red meant more than 50% of openings had not been filled. During my first January in the district, I was shocked to see the abundant red lines and numbers of anticipated openings. Over the next few months, the red lines increased with more than 300 teachers needed to fill openings for the following school year. Our conversations as a leadership team were rarely about quality or effective teachers, but rather a growing lack of certified candidates. Through these conversations, I learned that, some classrooms in our highest poverty schools went without a permanent teacher for months or even a year in high needs areas like math and science. But, we were starting to experience shortages across the board except in our most affluent schools. We moved back the hiring season so that it started in December in hopes of signing teacher early before they could be recruited away. We partnered with our local university to improve teacher preparation and strengthen the student-teaching experience. We started a mentoring pilot to support new teachers in hopes they would stay, but through all of this, I saw a bigger problem.

Not enough people wanted to teach in our schools.

See below for some references and additional resources to accompany the content in the podcast.

The Situation: Framing the Issue.

1. Do we really have a teacher shortage?
   a. 2017-18 Teacher Shortage Area Nationwide List from the Office of Postsecondary Education at the US Department of Education. Urban, rural, high poverty and low-achieving schools have the biggest staffing problems.
   b. Some schools and districts (for example, South Carolina) are looking to teacher exchange programs to fill vacancies.
   c. Retention is a huge issue, but it is outside of the scope of this podcast. We plan to release an episode solely on retention soon.
   d. We have a national shortage of minority teachers.

2. Teaching is local, and so are shortages.
   a. Teaching is more local than most professions. Teachers are more likely to teach near where they grew up and receive their training locally, as well. Read more about Deans for Impact on Peter Fishman’s blog, 13 Miles: The Inherent Localism of Teaching.
   b. Check data from your state here. Shortages can vary within states, within communities and even within districts.

3. Teacher preparation programs are lacking in numbers and quality.
   a. Declining enrollment in teacher preparation in some parts of the country raise concerns that local supply won’t meet local demand. More on the data included in the podcast from the Learning Policy Institute.
   b. Teacher preparation program- the quality debate. The National Council on Teaching Quality reviews and ranks teacher preparation programs including traditional and alternative certification programs, though, there’s debate over how to measure the quality of teacher preparation programs. Here’s the link to the Third Way survey, Teaching: The Next Generation, Kate Walsh mentions in the podcast. Here’s the list of alternative teacher preparation programs in Texas.

4. There’s a lot about teaching in many communities that isn’t attractive.
   a. North Carolina salary schedule referenced in podcast, and blog article on the high numbers of North Carolina who work additional jobs outside of the regular school day.
   b. The OECD 2017 Education at a Glance report released in September found that the US pays our teachers on average less than 60% of the salaries of similarly educated professionals- the “lowest relative earnings across all OECD countries with data” and the report also noted that US teachers work longer hours than their international counterparts, and this makes the profession “increasingly unattractive to young students.”
   c. More on Tiffanie Robinson and Lamp Post.
   d. More on the Center for Teaching Quality’s Barnett Berry.

5. De-professionalization and the Low and High Roads
   a. The 2017 American Federation of Teachers and Badass Teachers Union Teacher Worklife Survey report decreasing teacher morale and mental health.
   b. National Education Policy Center’s 2015 brief, Reversing the Deprofessionalization of Teaching
   c. For more on de-professionalization of the teaching profession:
   i. Darling-Hammond, L. (2007). Images of teaching: Cultivating a moral profession. In Arcilla, et al (Eds.), A life in classrooms (pp. 16-33). New York: Teachers College Press.
   ii. Mehta, J. (2013). The allure of order: High hopes, dashed expectations, and the troubled quest to remake American schooling. Oxford University Press.
   d. Marc Tucker, President and CEO of the National Center of Education and Economy, writes extensively on the education labor market and has been a leader in the standards movement in the United States. He led the writing of America’s Choice: High Skills or Low Wages, informed the high road, low road discussion in the podcast.

6. Reimagining the Teacher Workforce and the Profession
   a. Read more about Dr. Carole Basile and the work at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University to reimagine teacher preparation and the teaching profession. This blog offers more information on some of the work Dr. Basile discussed.
   b. More on the The Behavioural Insights Team in the UK and their work can be found on their website. The work referenced in the podcast on what motivates the talented young people to join the teaching profession was from personal communications with members of the BIT team during a visit to Chattanooga in the spring of 2016.
   c. For more on the value and importance of diverse teams, check out this article.

There wasn’t time to go international in the podcast, but it is important to note that there are bright spots internationally with high-performing education systems and a professionalized teacher workforce. Finland is one of the most often cited and striking examples, partly because of the success of Finnish reforms but also because of the fairly rapid professionalization of teaching with key policy changes about 40 years ago. Teacher training shifted to Finland’s university system from a teacher college model. Rigorous entrance standards raised the bar for those entering the profession, and teacher preparation programs were designed to be high quality and challenging. By elevating teacher training to the university system, the profession became prestigious and more equal in clout with doctors and lawyers. This high road approach has been accompanied by policy changes to support professionalization such as government funded training for teachers and protected time for teachers to plan, collaborate and hone their craft. It is no surprise that Finland does not have teacher pipeline or teacher shortage problems. In the United States, we do not have the federalized system that supported Finland’s transformation, but one can imagine that there are states and communities who could mimic Finland’s professionalization strategy. Since teaching a local labor market and most teachers are trained locally, states or local communities could work with higher education to raise the bar on teacher candidates. I think it will take policy to make changes, because there is little impetus for higher education to raise standards and admit less students to their programs. The pressure will have to come from the state government as the teacher certification entity and/or from districts who demand higher quality candidates.

References:
Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). Steady work: How countries build successful systems. In The flat
world of education. (pp.164-172). New York: Teachers College Press.
Schwartz, R.B. & J. Mehta. (2011). Finland: Superb teachers- how to get them, how to use them.
In M.S. Tucker (Ed.) Surpassing Shanghai. (pp. 51-78). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.