The “National Teacher Shortage” has been chronicled for the past few months as a crisis that has created a lack of available teaching staff nationwide, leaving many primary and secondary public schools with open positions for core subjects, including science, mathematics and technology. School districts in rural areas that are home to many high poverty students have the highest risk of losing teachers, and most schools have faced the blows of the COVID-19 pandemic on schooling and the mental health of students and faculty.
Notably, the term “National Teacher Shortage” is a recycled phrase that is misleading. It is more accurate to describe it as local and regional shortages that are found across several states. The severity of teacher vacancies within public schools is highest in rural areas that have witnessed a steady decline of teaching staff over the past decade. This has occurred within Pennsylvania, districts struggle to hire new teachers when competing with other state regions that can offer higher salaries, that is, if the schools can find potential candidates in the first place. One of the most difficult teaching positions to fill is special education for children with disabilities, according to the 2020 annual report to Congress of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. There are simply fewer qualified candidates in the hiring pool. I
n the Washington County School District, schools find it is relatively easy to find candidates willing to teach elementary children, but candidates qualified to teach specialized subjects in science technology engineering and math are harder to find.
The growing number of vacancies did not occur overnight. The resignation rates of teachers and the decline of new education degrees awarded annually have been gaining momentum for years. Only recently in this decade has this epidemic reached a broader level of concern among the public, but the vacancies are not quite as shocking to current public school officials.
In Pennsylvania, Department Of Education (DOE) administrators claim that the state will require thousands of new teachers by 2025. Given the stagnation of students entering this workforce, there are doubts on whether the state can reach this goal. During the 2011-2012 school year, there were 15,000 new teacher certifications in PA. In the past few years, the number of new certifications per year declined by approximately 10,000. The number of college students pursuing a degree in education or entering the workforce as teachers has declined in the state, partially because teacher salaries are comparatively low to other college-degree fields, especially for professors.
Another conflict that Pennsylvania must face when hiring teachers is competition with other states that can offer higher salaries: The average starting salary for teachers in PA is $46,000, while the District of Columbia offers $56,000 and New Jersey offers $53,000.
Besides hiring new teachers, the state will also have to focus on how to reduce the number of teachers quitting each year. The main causes of resignation arise from teachers being underpaid, or from mental wellness issues, including being overworked, drained and anxious. The pandemic contributed to pre-existing mental-health struggles that teachers faced. Remote learning made teaching course material challenging when students were less engaged online.
Transitioning back to hybrid or in-person schooling came with its own set of conflicts, as many schools had unsatisfactory Covid-19 and masking protocols. In addition, teachers found there was decreased motivation and engagement from students—factors that made any connection between teachers and students much weaker, and accelerated burnout in teachers. Public school teachers share these grievances across the country, but this has been an issue in American education for decades. In a study from 2014 examining the effect of working conditions on the mental health of teachers, researchers noted that over half of their sample scored above the threshold for depression.
Public K-12 education and private colleges are vastly different education systems. However, it is still unnerving that within the same state, there are acute differences in teacher vacancies in public schooling versus professors in private colleges. Private colleges in the state do not have a shortage in faculty while many public K-12 schools do, despite the fact that college studies are a specialized form of education, and becoming a professor requires more education than becoming a classroom teacher typically does. One explanation for this disparity is the variation in salary: In 2015, the average salary of a college professor at Haverford College was $123,000 excluding further compensation. Currently, the highest teacher salary by district in Pennsylvania is $59,000 in Franklin Regional County. The lowest teacher salary in PA is $18,500 in Harmony Area county. The majority of salaries by school district in the state fall between $35,000 to $55,000.
Another factor that makes it difficult to label this issue as a national crisis is that data from school districts may be interpreted differently by a state official than the leader of a local school district. Locally, the absence of teachers for science, math and special education is felt more harshly than it is on the state level. When some state districts are able to fill their spots while other districts are unable to, it becomes difficult to label teacher shortages as a statewide or national problem.
However, there is still growing concern over how schools with pre-existing teacher vacancies will be able to bring in more staff, and how they will prevent future resignations. This issue is not unprecedented. The challenges that teachers face in the classroom are decades old, and they have been accelerated by the pandemic and the increase of higher cost of living without increase of compensation. The threat of further teacher resignations and the lack of potential candidates is not new either. State officials may be reluctant to label these vacancies as a national shortage of teachers, but it is clear that schools with pre-existing teacher shortages should expect to witness further complications with maintaining filled positions.
