Recognizing a looming shortage, area school districts work to find, then keep teachers
The nation is facing a growing shortage of public school teachers, not only because fewer people are entering the profession, because those who do, aren’t staying.
Teacher turnover – teachers leaving for reasons other than retirement -is not only costly for a community, research indicates that teacher turnover reduces student achievement. More consequential, failing to motivate young people to become inspired, dedicated teachers has long-term societal implications.
“The critical shortage of teachers is very real and is very scary,” Annie Whitaker, Director of Human Resources Montgomery County School District for Attrition and Retention said. “It requires the focus of not only the public education system, but our community as well.”
Virginia Department of Education reports that, while two million teachers may be needed nationally over the next ten years, but that traditional teacher preparation programs have only one million prospective teachers in the pipeline.
In Virginia, while public school enrollment has steadily increased 6.5 percent over the last dozen years, the teacher workforce has increased less than 1 percent, plummeting nearly six percent in the years surrounding the 2008 recession according to a 2017 University of Virginia report.
That report and a number of recent informational summits examining teacher attrition and retention have turned Virginia Department of Education’s efforts to policymaking and providing guidance for Virginia school systems.
According to Montgomery County Public Schools there is not yet a teacher shortage in Montgomery County, but increasingly the system is finding it difficult to staff specialized positions like high-school math and other STEM fields.
So difficult to find willing, competent instructors, those positions are sometimes filled by provisionally licensed teachers who did not come to teaching through traditional teacher training and who, studies find, are 25 percent more likely to leave before retirement.
“Math is a particularly difficult,” Whitaker said. “While Montgomery County does not have any unfilled positions. We do have provisionally licensed teachers. The district has not been in the position of not being able to find someone to fill a position.”
Inspiring high-school students to choose education as a university major, filling the pipeline with teachers may require better marketing of the job as fun, respectable and noble.
“We must encourage students to enter the profession,” Whitaker said. “We can do that through the way we speak about teaching, the respect we show those who educate the children in our communities.”
There are tangibles too. School systems have to ensure teacher pay is competitive with other professions she said.
Superintendent of Radford Schools Robert Graham attributes the small size of the Radford system as well as adequate compensation to currently being able to recruit faculty and staff fully licensed and endorsed to teach in their particular areas.
“The climate and culture of the environment of the workplace,” he said “has a great deal to do with whether a teacher stays or leaves. If they feel valued (compensated appropriately, trusted, respected, treated as a professional etc), they are more likely to stay instead of leave. RCPS is a very small school system. We are more like a family than a school division and to most faculty and staff members that is very appealing.”
Despite the family size and atmosphere of Radford’s school district, Graham points out the unsustainable conflict that, while Virginia is rated sixth nationally in public school education, it is 34th in teacher pay “almost $9,000 less than the national average,” he said.
Montgomery County Superintendent Dr. Mark Miear feels teaching as a profession has an image problem arising from standardized testing.
“Students who are entering college and determining their career paths only know an educational system focused on high-stakes testing,” he said. “They have seen their teachers overwhelmed with testing and have heard their frustrations regarding teacher pay. This is the view of the profession that many students have when they graduate and it is not one that encourages them to enter the field,” he said.
Not only do students witness their teachers burdened by bureaucracy, Miear hypothesizes that young, prospective teachers may also be discouraged from teaching by loved ones who are concerned about the potential for future earnings and stress levels connected to standardized testing.
But teaching is a service profession in which the mission of the job trumps salary.
“Those who become educators make the conscious choice to give back,” Whittaker said. “They have chosen this profession even though the potential for significant pay increases is minimal and the work extends many hours outside of the regular workday because they understand the impact they can make in the lives of children and on our community. They do this willingly and selflessly because they earnestly care and know how important it is to have teachers who are invested in helping students develop, realize their strengths, learn to work through difficulties, and ultimately become contributing members of society,” she said.
Meanwhile, to re-fill the dwindling teacher pipeline, schools are launching initiatives that they hopes will encourage students to become teachers and educating adults to become licensed.
Reasoning that students recruited locally, will stay in the community to teach, Radford schools introduce Radford students to the educational profession through job fairs and career exploration.
“I feel that showing the value of a teachers (“Teaching is the profession that teaches all”) is the best way to keep staff as there is no better satisfaction than making a positive difference in the life of a child,” Graham said.
Montgomery County schools take the same approach to sourcing teachers locally through an internship program called Teachers for Tomorrow that recruits interested MCPS high-school students to shadow MCPS teachers.
“We’re trying to find alternative routes and “grow-our-own” programs to grow teachers from our own students encouraging people to become teachers in their own communities,” Whitaker said. “I’m a parent, a teacher, a recruiter, if we don’t – I worry about this – it’s going to impact our country.”
MCPS will be holding a community meeting at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 14 in the School Board Office for individuals who currently hold a bachelor’s degree and may be interested in becoming licensed teachers.