Tackling the Teacher Shortage 1

Running Head: TACKLING THE TEACHER SHORTAGE

Where’s the Teacher: Tackling the Teacher Shortages in American Schools

Chanelle R. Williams
Glen Allen High School
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Introduction

According to the Learning Policy Institute, there are not enough qualified teachers applying

for teacher jobs to meet the demand in all locations and fields (Ostroff, 2017). The nationwide

teacher shortage affects the academic performance of the school and the students. Yet, most of the

shortage of teacher occurs in the high-need fields – mathematics, special education, science,

foreign language, and English as a second language – but also in the rural and low-socioeconomic

schools and school districts. Well-qualified teachers are less likely to be willing to teach in urban

and rural schools, especially those serving students of color and low-income students (Parker,

2018). But holding the school systems accountable for improving the performance of all schools

and all students might require that resources – both human and financial – be allocated according

to greater need (Prince, 2002). Although school officials recognize the effects of the teacher

shortage within American schools, the real question is how can they minimizes the shortage in the

high-need fields and attract qualified teachers in their school district.

Background Information and Effects

Schools districts and state governments across the U.S. are combating the worsening

teacher shortage crisis that is expected to peak this school year with new creative policy solutions,

and they’re not exactly going by the textbook (Edelman, 2017). But since the early 1980s,

education policy researchers have warned the coming possibly of severe teacher shortage in

elementary and secondary schools (Ingersoll, 2001). But research on the teacher labor shortage

identify three common cited teacher shortage gaps: (1) a shortage of well-qualified, well-prepared

teachers, especially in schools serving mostly students of colors and living in poverty; (2) a

shortage of well-qualified and well-prepared teachers in specific content or subject areas; and (3)

a shortage of teachers of colors to reflect the racial/ethnic diversity of the student population
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(Castro, Quinn, Fuller, & Barnes, 2018). Yet, many were surprise to find they had serious difficulty

finding qualified teachers for their positions, especially in fields like mathematics, science, special

education, and bilingual education/English language development (Sutcher, Darlling, & Carver-

Thomas, 2016). With colleges overproducing candidates with expertise in already-staffed, low-

demand subjects and underproducing candidates with expertise in understaffed, high-demand

subjects, it causes an increase in the high-need fields (Aragon, 2016). According to the US

Department of Education, public schools in 48 states and the District of Columbia report teacher

shortage in math for the 2017-2018 school year. Forty-six states report shortages in special

education, 43 in science, and 41 in foreign language (Ostroff, 2017).

Understanding the teacher shortages is one piece of the puzzle, however the schools and

students affected by the shortage faced the difficulties obtaining the resources and teachers to meet

the needs of the school community. Between 2013 and 2016, the Dowell County Public School

district hired 137 teachers, yet in the same period, they lost 163 (Hanford, 2017). Teachers in the

school district feel “ill-equipped to meet their [student’s] needs as one of the teachers in Dowell

quoted that she “feels like [she] need[s] to be a counselor or social worker or somebody with more

crisis isolation” (Hanford, 2017). High-poverty schools suffer from fewer resources, greater

teacher and administrator shortage, fewer application for vacancies, higher absenteeism among

teachers and staff, and high rates for teachers and administrators turnover (Prince, 2002). But any

serious effort to attract well-qualified teachers to the schools that serve students with the greatest

needs will require attention to a whole range of factors that make the job more doable, which

includes improving school leadership, reducing class size, and clamping down on student

discipline problems (Prince, 2002). Nevertheless, students in the high-teacher vacant schools

“summarizes the impact in one word, betrayal” (Robles, 2018). A 7th-grade student explains that
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“it is like [the teacher] was there for all of [them] and then…just left. In return, [they] got [a]

terrible teacher who didn’t care about [their] well-being at all” (Robles, 2018). The teacher

shortages have negatively impact the academic performance of the student, as they believed no

one cares about them. Therefore, the real teacher shortage is not an absence of warm bodies free

of criminal records. It is an absence of talented, caring, experience professionals who choose to

teach and remain in the high-poverty schools where they are need most (Minkel, 2018).

Inside the Teacher Residency Programs

Preventing and solving teacher shortages so that all children receive high-quality

instruction is essential in a 21st century economy for the success of individuals, as well as society

as a whole (Sutcher, Darlling, & Carver-Thomas, 2016). The teacher shortage provides an

opportunity for the United States to take a long-term approach, as was done in medicine more than

half a century ago, to mitigating current shortage while establishing a comprehensive and

systematic set of strategies to build strong teaching profession (Sutcher, Darlling, & Carver-

Thomas, 2016). Yet, decades of research have proven that no school factor has a greater impact

on student achievement than the effectiveness of the teacher at the front of each classroom (Jacob,

Vidyarthi, & Caroll, 2012).

An alternative method of recruiting new teacher is teacher residency programs. The Urban

Teachers residency programs, located in the District of Columbia, sprung up as education schools

have come under attack for inadequately preparing teachers for today’s challenge, including higher

standards, new technology, and stubborn achievement gaps (Mader, 2016). Paige Hoffman, the

district’s manager of innovation and design, stated, “[The] Urban Teachers has a strong reputation

for developing teacher. [They] see folks really being able to enter the classroom with a strong

foundation because they’ve had that experience of being in our schools” (Mader, 2016).
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Conclusion

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the number of new

teacher hires in the United States is projected to increase 29 percent between 2011 and 2022, and

the total number of elementary and secondary teachers is projected to increase 12 percent (Aragon,

2016). The American teacher shortage impacts the academic performance of the students as more

teachers leaves the high-need fields and rural and low-socioeconomic school districts. Schools

leaders continue to decrease the number of teacher turnover and hire new teacher to fill the vacancy

within their schools. The efforts to attract well-qualitied teacher in economic, social, racial

isolation areas, but also the high-needs fields must maximize the available resources for new

teachers to continue teaching in the difficult school districts.

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Reference List

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