What we do (and don't) know about teacher shortages, and what can be done about them
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Imani Khayyam for NPR
First-grade teacher Kimberly Pate, 52, worked for nearly two decades as a classroom assistant. Through the Mississippi Teacher Residency, she'll earn a master's degree plus dual certification in elementary and special education, all at no cost. "How could you pass that up?" she laughs.
Wearing an effortless smile and a crisp, gray suit with a cloth lapel flower, Tommy Nalls Jr. projects confidence. Which is the point. In a ballroom full of job candidates, no one wants to dance with a desperate partner. And, as badly as his district needs teachers, Nalls doesn't want just anyone.
"They have to have this certain grit, that certain fight," says Nalls, director of recruitment for Jackson Public Schools, in Mississippi's capital city. "That dog in 'em,' so to speak."
On this sun-kissed morning in March, he's a couple hours north of Jackson, in a ballroom on the campus of Mississippi State University, at a job fair full of soon-to-graduate teachers and school district recruiters from all over the state, and even out-of-state, competing to hire them.
Many districts across the country are grappling with teacher shortages large and small. Limited federal data show, as of October 2022, 45% of public schools had at least one teacher vacancy; that's after the school year had already begun. And schools that serve high-poverty neighborhoods and/or a "high-minority student body" were more likely to have vacancies.
For several months, NPR has been exploring the forces at work behind these local teacher shortages. Interviews with more than 70 experts and educators across the country, including teachers both aspiring and retiring, offer several explanations: For nearly a decade,
pay remains low in many places
; and, with unemployment also low, some could-be teachers have chosen more lucrative work elsewhere. Researchers and educators also point to a cultural undertow pulling at the profession: a long decline in Americans' esteem for teaching.
Educators shared stories of students learning Spanish from computers, and superintendents doing double duty as substitute teachers. But they also shared stories of creative, committed efforts from San Antonio to Hooper Bay, Alaska to grow a new generation of teachers, while doing more to make sure veteran teachers want to stay.
Jackson's story is instructive, if not unique. On average, Nalls says, the district loses 1 in 5 teachers every year. Salaries there start at just $44,000, and, back at the job fair, Nalls has to compete with a suburban Texas district, a few tables over, advertising $58,000.
Jackson's shortage is also exacerbated by a years-long water crisis and poverty, which can follow students to school in the form of trauma, disruptive behavior and lower test scores. In Mississippi, districts are publicly rated on student performance a rating novice educators are well aware of. Just a few years ago, Jackson was an F-rated district, and this job fair has plenty of districts with higher salaries and technicolor banners trumpeting their A ratings.
It takes 20 minutes for the first teacher candidate to pause at Nalls' table.
"I'm looking for a good work environment," says Kierra Carr, who plans to become an elementary school teacher. "And I just want to have fun with the students, basically."
"You hadn't considered ever coming to work and teach in Jackson?" Nalls asks playfully, low-pressure. "Why not?! We've got some of the best elementary schools in the state!"
Carr leaves her name and email on Nalls' interest list, while admitting she has reservations about teaching in Jackson: "It's kind of scary. I think that's why most people stray away
from teaching there because of what's been said on the news a lot."
Nalls leans into these headwinds with patient optimism. Jackson is on the rise, he points out, earning a C rating from the state last year. And he's proud to make that pitch to the eight candidates he interviews at the fair and the half dozen more who leave their contact information.
"They're not beating the table down trying to get to Jackson," Nalls says toward the end of the fair. "But we're working on that part of it."
It's hard to know the size of the problem
"Teacher shortages are poorly understood." That's according to a paper published last summer. The reason they're poorly understood? A profound "lack of data" at the federal- and state-level.
So the paper's researchers built their own dataset by combing through news reports and the websites of state departments of education. Their conclusion, what they consider a "conservative" estimate of teacher shortages nationwide: at least 36,000 vacant positions and many times more jobs being filled by underqualified teachers. One of those researchers, Tuan Nguyen, shares his data at the easy-to-remember teachershortages.com.
A nationally representative survey
, by the RAND Corporation, found that "teacher turnover increased 4 percentage points above prepandemic levels, reaching 10 percent nationally at the end of the 20212022 school year."
It's important to think of school staffing challenges not as one, national shortage, but as innumerable, hyper-local shortages. Because nationally, "we have more teachers on a numeric basis than we did before the pandemic, and we have fewer students" due to enrollment drops, says Chad Aldeman, a researcher who studies teacher shortages.
"Contrary to popular talking points, there is no generic shortage of teachers," reads one deep-dive into the available data. "The biggest issue districts face in staffing schools with qualified teachers is... a chronic and perpetual misalignment of teacher supply and demand."
Some
kinds
of teachers are consistently in short supply. Jackson Public Schools need special education, science and math teachers. But so does every other district at the job fair.
The misalignment of supply and demand is also geographic and economic, though.
There's an inequity around teacher shortages
"Some schools are harder to staff," Aldeman says.
/ Imani Khayyam for NPR
/
Imani Khayyam for NPR
Jennifer Carter earned her master's degree in December through the Mississippi Teacher Residency. She's now a special education teacher by day and drives a bus before and after school to make extra money.
Many districts "have dozens of teachers applying for the same positions," Tuan Nguyen explains. "But in a nearby district that is more economically-disadvantaged or has a higher proportion of minority students, they have difficulty attracting teachers."
In Jackson, the median income of school district households is under $39,000, and 95% of students are Black, after generations of white flight from the district.
It turns out, shortages are a lot like school districts themselves. They often begin and end at arbitrary lines that have more to do with privilege and zip code than the needs of children.
At the job fair, Nalls meets a few candidates who, though they're from the Jackson area, say they're more interested in teaching in nearby, more affluent suburban schools
Wednesday, March 22, 2023 at 9:00 am