Understanding the true nature of the nation's "teacher shortage"
is essential to meeting the mandate of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act.
That law requires that all teachers be "fully qualified" in
the subjects they teach by 2006 -- an impossible goal if there is a
national teacher shortage. However, far from a shortage, there are enough
teachers and potential teachers in the nation as a whole. Shortages, acute
where they exist, are in schools in poor communities and in certain subjects,
such as special education, math, and science.
Instead, the nation's teacher quality problem is one of adverse selection
and allocation. Teaching disproportionately attracts less desirable candidates
while losing the most desirable ones. In addition, the most qualified
teachers are not necessarily in the schools where they are most needed.
Seen in this light, the teacher shortage problem is easier to solve from
a policy perspective. But it's much harder to address politically.
Discussions about teacher quality are inevitably fraught with euphemisms
and dancing around the issues, because everyone knows talented and dedicated
teachers, and no one wants to impugn those who take on one of society's
most challenging and important jobs. Moreover, analysis is frequently
greeted with polemical responses and charges of "teacher bashing."
Nevertheless, because of the well-documented centrality of teachers to
student learning, policymakers must look beneath the rhetoric that surrounds
this issue and examine the facts.
We know teaching is an intellectually demanding profession. Yet, teachers
are drawn disproportionately from among students with lower test scores
on national exams like the SAT, ACT, and GRE. Moreover, according to U.S.
Department of Education statistics, students with higher scores on the
SAT and ACT are more likely to leave teaching within the first few years.
This evidence, however uncomfortable it makes us, cannot be ignored because
it is indicative of a serious adverse-selection problem. There are obviously
many individual exceptions to this picture, but positive anecdotes hardly
refute aggregate data.
Further complicating matters, quality within the teaching pool is not
equally distributed. Poor and minority students are much less likely than
other students to have teachers with a college major in the subject they're
teaching. Better teachers tend to migrate to more affluent schools. The
lack of attention to these realities and their consequences for poor students
has been called a "conspiracy of silence" by education analyst
Paul Hill.
Finally, while there are plenty of candidates to teach in some disciplines,
certain subjects suffer from acute shortages, particularly math, science,
and special education. Department of Education figures show that about
one in four high school math teachers and one in five high school science
teachers lack a major or minor in their fields. Likewise, more than 12,000
special education teaching positions are unfilled nationwide, and 10 percent
of special education teachers lack special education expertise.
Addressing adverse selection and allocation means that instead of asking
generic questions about how to get more teachers, policymakers must figure
out how to attract and retain more good teachers, particularly in high-need
schools and subjects.
Fix the salary schedules. Some argue that the obvious solution
is salary increases for all teachers. With an average annual salary of
only about $43,000, teaching does not compare favorably with other professional
opportunities available to talented individuals. But overall salary increases
alone are better rhetoric than policy. That's because, even when state
and national coffers are flush, there simply is not enough money to raise
all salaries a sufficient amount to make hard-to-fill positions attractive.
Moreover, fiscal constraints aside, across-the-board raises do nothing
to address the differentials between more and less challenging schools
or among various subject areas. Such raises also assume that all teachers
are equally deserving of substantial pay increases.
A more promising solution is to break away from pay schedules that are
based almost entirely on degrees and experience. Rigid salary schedules
are unfair to many talented teachers and have a pernicious impact on poor
students. To attract teachers to subjects and schools where their expertise
is in demand, we should find a way to pay them better, not only compared
with jobs in other professions, but also compared with teaching jobs in
more affluent schools and subject areas where there is no shortage. Such
steps not only address basic supply and demand problems in education,
but also recognize that talented young people are not attracted to jobs
that reward longevity and hierarchy instead of performance, initiative,
and special skills and responsibilities.
Likewise, today's certification system contributes to the adverse selection
problem by creating a deterrent to would-be teachers. Opponents of certification
reform have successfully cast the debate as a choice between letting anyone
teach and retaining the current system. Allowing a wider pool of individuals
to seek employment is not the same as offering them a job. Moreover, calls
to modernize certification are not synonymous with arguments against the
importance of pedagogy, but rather a case for giving schools more flexibility
about how to sequence such education and training.
Because no serious research base exists for most state-level certification
requirements, it is a costly mistake to use them as barriers to employment.
Besides, when Public Agenda asked school administrators whether certification
in their states meant that teachers had what it takes to succeed, only
10 percent said yes. Conversely, 55 percent favored opening the teaching
profession up to qualified people with no formal teacher training. That
is a resounding no-confidence vote from within the system.
Decoupling certification from employment would bring education more in
line with most other professions, where certifications are used to build
skills and enhance employability rather than as barriers to employment.
While it is fashionable to suggest that teacher education should be more
like law or medicine, that ignores substantial differences between the
disciplines, not the least of which is the absence of a canonical body
of knowledge that all practitioners must have.
The "fully qualified" definition in the recent education law
is wisely crafted with this in mind. While deferring to states on what
should constitute "certified," the law requires subject-matter
expertise for middle and high school teachers. There are evidence-based
pedagogical skills and knowledge that, for example, special education
and reading teachers must have. The law sensibly encourages different
requirements for elementary school teachers. However, where policymakers
do not have clear evidence of essential requirements, they must resist
ideological pressure to simply manufacture them, and they should similarly
revisit state certification requirements as they implement the new education
law.
Arbitrary and often intellectually bereft certification and compensation
schemes -- along with the lack of advancement and options for teachers
who do not want to leave the classroom -- create a professional environment
that many young people find repellent.
It's not surprising that public charter schools attract a disproportionate
number of young teachers and that Teach for America (TFA) consistently
attracts applicants with outstanding academic credentials from the nation's
most elite schools. Young people are drawn to innovation, flexibility,
and opportunities to make a difference.
The success of TFA is a particularly scathing indictment of the status
quo. Not only does TFA demonstrate that talented young people will go
into teaching under the right circumstances, but existing research also
indicates that TFA teachers, who have not endured the standard certification
regime, do at least as well as teachers coming through traditional routes.
Realistically, the TFA "crash course" training strategy is
not an efficacious long-term solution. However, rather than using the
experience of TFA as a jumping off point for modernizing the certification
regime, TFA instead endures a withering assault of hatchet job studies,
misinformation, and outright hostility from academics and organizations
set on preserving their near-monopoly on teacher training and licensure.
Besides TFA, there is no shortage of ideas about other innovations. Frederick
Hess and Bryan Hassel have written influential papers for the Progressive
Policy Institute offering ideas about reforming certification and pay
plans. Hess proposes a modernized, pseudo-TFA certification process with
a greater focus on school-based support and training for new teachers
rather than ineffectual paper barriers. Hassel recommends ways to build
knowledge, skills, and special assignments into pay schemes to better
align them with educational goals.
Encouraging philanthropic efforts are being made as well. The Milkin
Family Foundation's Teacher Advancement Program gives teachers greater
responsibilities and opportunities for advancement. Meanwhile, the American
Federation of Teachers continues to call for more mentoring and induction
for new teachers. Such activity not only helps recent hires but also provides
essential professional opportunities for more experienced teachers.
It's about politics. With so many promising initiatives and ideas,
what is the hold-up to change? It's largely politics. Many state and local
teachers' unions remain adamantly opposed to ideas like differential pay,
or even paying extra to teachers who work in high-poverty schools or high-need
subjects like math, science, or special education. Similarly, a host of
organizations and powerful universities have a stake in the current certification
regime and ferociously resist almost any change. Right now, both debates
turn more on political power and fiscal concerns than evidence.
Those fighting change are not blind to problems with the current system
or its adverse impact on low-income students. But, as a political matter,
they are apparently blind to how their intransigence lets Republicans
off the hook on raising teacher salaries or investing in mentoring and
professional development. It's not unreasonable to oppose more spending
on compensation and licensing schemes that work at cross-purposes with
reform goals. Proposals that both increase pay and modernize the system
make both political and policy sense and help call the Republicans' bluff
in Washington and in statehouses.
For their part, too many Democrats remain reticent about seriously tackling
the issue. They stick with bromides that make interest groups swoon but
voters suspicious of the party's reform credentials. This, too, makes
it easy for the Republicans. It's an unfortunate state of affairs. Politics
aside, improving education for poor and minority students and treating
teachers as professionals, not just in name but in deed, means that elected
officials must deal with these problems head-on -- and must do it soon.
Blueprint Keywords: Extra Teachers
