Shortage of U.S. skilled workers by 2020?
By Tom Crouch, CPA, CIA, CISA, and Attorney
(Note: this is part of a series of articles written by the author. For links to the previous articles click here)
Part 9 -- Public High School Teacher Shortage Looming
A study issued in August 2005 said 50% of US high
school teachers will
retire by 2010. The pipeline for new public high school teachers is not
producing enough new ones. About 50% of new teachers leave the
profession during the first 5 years. Long term economic development will
suffer if proactive steps are not taken. Has each school district begun
to
do workforce planning related to high school teachers?
One recently retired high school teacher provided
the following comments:
"Teachers spend a minimum of four years getting a college degree, then they must do one year of internship. Additional post graduate work is required for a master's degree within 5-10 years. The starting salary is not commensurate with the education that is required. Teachers work extra duties as assigned, such as clubs, coaching, bus duty, ballgames, etc., usually without additional pay in some districts. Many nights and weekends involve grading papers and preparing for classes. Teachers work long days and many nights.
In the past teachers were willing to assume these extra duties and low pay because the benefits package was basically a good one. This has been slowing eroding and now teachers and retirees must continually fight against benefit reduction. College students are aware of this and other problems in the education field. Teacher pay, respect, benefits are not enticing to graduates who can go to the private sector and make more with less education. Benefits and chances for advancement are generally better, also. Something needs to be done or there will be major problems in the secondary classroom soon."
Numerous articles and authoritative sources are projecting a coming teacher shortage. See Fewer choosing teaching jobs
Many web site references are provided at the end of this article. The issues and analysis which follows are based on discussions with high school faculty members.
One substitute high school teacher in a large metropolitan area stated that he had substituted at most of the high schools in the area. This source stated that the portion of teachers with white and gray hair made the looming shortage very obvious. Since hair coloring, plastic surgery, and botox are often used, a casual observer might under estimate the high school teachers near retirement age.
Other sources report a very high percentage of college students in the teacher education programs want to become elementary teachers. In fact, it appears that nearly all of those students want to be elementary school teachers. The teacher education students who want to become middle school teachers or high school teachers is a disproportionately low percentage. In essence, the teacher shortage is expected to first emerge at high schools and a little later at middle schools. The teacher shortage is expected to be the most severe at those levels because the pipeline (teacher education programs) leading to those positions has been decreasing in numbers.
The elementary school teachers appear to be more likely to teach longer because the younger children seem to like older teachers. The public high school teachers seem more likely to retire almost as soon as they are eligible because teenagers do not seem to like the older teachers. Elementary teachers often teach past 60 while very few high school teachers work past 55.
As of June 2007, over 25% of US public school teachers are eligible to retire. Many more teachers will become eligible to retire during the next 4 years.
If you were to randomly take a look at one public
high school, most of the time a majority of the teachers were educated
by one of 5 different teacher education schools. This is likely to be
true anywhere in the US. For example, over 50% of the teachers at a
typical public high school probably went to one of 5 colleges. The
actual percentage for the top 5 sources may be 80%. A typical school
district may not need to look any further than their top 5 sources of
teachers.
If the site based councils and the school board offices were tracking
such data, they
would quickly see what is happening to their teacher supply. The data
should be
required to be posted on the teacher college's web sites. This might be
viewed as the
micro-level tracking.
The macro-level tracking should be done by one agency at the state wide
level. They could assist by placing relevant data on their web
site. The central agency should also do data analysis to assist in the
need identification and problem analysis.
The teachers retirement systems should have information showing how many high school teachers over age 45 are still teaching full-time. They should be able to provide break-downs by age which is likely to show nearly all high school teachers retired by age 56. Probability analysis could be conducted based on their data. The central agency could assist in the analysis. The local school boards and site based councils should be shown the data resulting from the analysis. This should enable them to make projections when the data is applied locally.
Another approach would be to determine what percentage of the active high school teachers are baby boomers. Since nearly all of them would be expected to retire by 2016, the high school teaching positions which will need to be filled through 2016 would become obvious. This could be compared with the likely total additions through 2016. These numbers might be easy to obtain in most states.
See Part 4 --- Where will skilled labor shortages emerge early?
When these factors are taken together, many folks would see how the changing situation is likely to impact each local school, each school district, and state-wide. Hopefully, more awareness would lead to action.
Need is the mother of invention. One must first recognize the need so that there will be action. Those with a vested interest in maintaining and improving public schools need to be assisted with documenting and identifying the need related to the looming teacher shortage.
Another approach is to determine the number of teacher education students that are preparing for each field (elementary, secondary, middle school) and compare those numbers with enrollments in the past, and also taking into consideration the number of teachers eligible for retirement. This approach should enable anyone to gauge the problem fairly quickly.
The long term cultural and economic implications of a public high school teacher shortage are very disturbing. If the number of high school teachers declines and class size increases, the result is likely to be more teachers driven out of the profession. The quality of education generally declines when class size increases. Teacher shortages are likely to result in more emergency certified teachers.
Possible solutions to the looming high school teacher shortage
1. Raise pay for high school teachers while leaving the elementary and middle school teacher pay stable. The teachers unions would fight this. The step would merely reflect the difference between supply and demand.
2. Reduce the demand for high school teachers. The Swiss school system pulls low performing students off the traditional school track after the eight grade. The ones pulled off are sent to a separate school and provided training for jobs. The net effect is an improvement in traditional school discipline and a reduction in the need for traditional high school teachers.
3. More teachers would be attracted to and retained in public high schools if strict discipline were returned to public high schools. Public high school teachers are not given sufficient respect by students and parents. The public high schools frequently have a hostile work environment for the teachers. The private schools pay teachers less but generally have strict discipline. The better work environment practices in the private schools could be adopted by the public schools.
4. Provide scholarship money for students agreeing to become public high school teachers.
5. It appears that public high school teachers are threatened with lawsuits more frequently than other teachers. Tort reform or reducing potential legal liability should be one component of improving the work environment.
6. Recruit seasoned teachers from other countries. The difficulty might be the similar expected teacher shortage that those other countries may be beginning to see. These potential immigrant teachers might not be readily available and these foreign teachers might find controlling US high school students a very difficult task. The immigrant teachers would have to balance their teaching methods with US teaching methods and the constraints placed on US teachers. The foreign teachers might find it difficult to become certified teachers in most states.
7. Try to identify states and local school districts which are already using work force planning and other approaches to alleviate the coming shortage of high school teachers. If some states and school districts have already designed processes to address the coming shortage, their approaches could be replicated elsewhere.
CONCLUSION
Which entities should solve the coming shortage of high school
teachers? Some people might suggest local school boards and their administrators. Other people might suggest teacher training programs. Others might suggest one or more state agencies. Still other people might suggest the US Department of Education. If everyone is responsible, perhaps everyone has decided that someone else will address the high school teacher shortage problem.
The education entities that should be pro-actively
addressing the coming teacher
shortages seem to be silent compared to the difficulty of the challenge.
Thus, the
most workable solution appears to be intervention by the trade and
industry groups.
The trade and industry groups should ensure that the responsibility has
been clearly
assigned for ensuring that there are enough properly trained high school
teachers
willing to fill the needs. The trade and industry groups should ensure
that the public
high schools continue to have enough qualified teachers for training the
future workforce.
Copyright (C) 2007 by Tom Crouch This article may be forwarded via fax or email so long as the copyright is shown. This article may be republished so long as the copyright is shown.
Other references are shown below.
A Different Approach to Solving the Teacher Shortage Problem
Will it get worse before it gets better?
There are numerous upcoming retirements at all levels of government. Workforce planning
or manpower planning might be very important to keep processes flowing smoothly. The
web sites below provide some ideas that might help some folks.
http://www.hr.state.tx.us/workforce/guide.html#What
http://www.hhs.gov/ohr/workforce/wfpguide.html
http://www.doi.gov/hrm/WFPIManual.html
http://www.dhrm.state.va.us/workforceplanning.html
http://workforceplanning.wi.gov/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the above article do not purport to represent the views of any professional association or the views of any employer.
