Thursday, December 05, 2019

Another Chicken Little Claim

The next massive teacher shortage is always just around the corner, but somehow it never materializes:
Julia Alvarez, a 21-year-old senior at Michigan State University, is part of a disappearing demographic: those pursuing a career as an educator.

"Why I really want to become a teacher is because I want to go back and make my community better," says Alvarez, who grew up just east of Los Angeles. "But I was afraid of going into it because there were so many reasons not to."

Teacher preparation programs have experienced sharp enrollment declines over the last eight years in nearly every state across the country, a new analysis shows.
Sure, math, science, and special education teachers are often in short supply, but they're in short supply because of the difficulty of the subject matter. When there's an actual shortage of elementary, English, or social science teachers, let me know.

3 comments:

David said...

My school had 3 math teacher positions openings this past summer out of 6 possible at my school. We have a special ed opening for the past 6 months. However, for the history position, we had 10 candidates for 1 job.

Mike43 said...

Somebody needs to count the number of issued certificates/licenses. My calculation showed about 2-3 times the number of qualified teachers who are out of the profession.

I wonder why that is? That is a huge issue as well.

My particular HR is so clumsy that when a pair of teachers I knew, were finally approved for school based interviews they already had 5 other offers.

Another issue, as well.

Darren said...

A year and a half ago, my student teacher was looking for a job. We knew we needed another math teacher and encouraged her to wait. She interviewed elsewhere and was even offered a job. We encouraged her to wait.

Finally the position was posted. She got it.

I can't understand why it takes our district so long even to plan to fill known vacancies.