The Teacher Shortage: Another Thought

 Here is a thought on how we might minimize the negative impact of the teacher shortage on today's students:   

Why not encourage States to make a policy that allows retired teachers to teach up to 2 class sections per semester in our high schools without endangering their existing retirement income?  Not all retirees would be interested, but there surely are teachers who would be willing to help--and earn some extra money-- by teaching one or two courses per semester or by providing other professional support.

 At the same time, we need to acknowledge that some uses of new technology--things that we did during the Pandemic to keep learning active for our students--will find permanent homes in our educational environment.  For instance, in higher education, we have already begun to see universities using e-learning to share specialized curricula in areas such as agriculture, geographic information systems, and other areas.   In the U.S. Midwest we have the example of the Great Plains IDEA (Interactive Distance Education Alliance)  through which multiple state universities are sharing responsibility for teaching undergraduate and master's level specialties.  This opens new possibilities for school districts within a State to share junior and senior-level courses at the high school level.  

Another way to increase the teaching capacity of our high schools is to partner with area higher education institutions to offer online "dual enrollment" courses,  in which high school students can earn both high school graduation and college credit.

The online eLearning environment has been with us now for over a quarter of a century.  It is increasingly a mature, well-supported learning environment at institutions that have taken it seriously.  Now is the time to consider how to fully integrate it to ensure that students have access to the kind of learning that will prepare them for postsecondary and workplace success.

The President and the Freedom Fighter

 

I just finished reading David Kilmeade’s The President and the Freedom Fighter, which looks at the Civil War through the evolving perspectives and actions of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.  It is a fascinating read.  In just about 250 pages, it presents key people and events before, during, and after the Civil War and explores how Lincoln and Douglass saw the issues of slavery and emancipation.  It reads like a novel.

Douglass, an escaped slave who became a major public figure, believed in immediate emancipation.  Lincoln, a self-made lawyer and politician, was concerned about the bringing the Union back together.  He worried that immediate emancipation would make it impossible for southern states to re-join the Union and cause some northern states to join the Confederacy.  He wrote the Emancipation Proclamation and kept it in his desk drawer, awaiting a time when it would be accepted as a solution rather than as an irritant.

The story of these two leaders and the environment that shaped their lives before, during, and after the Civil War, is powerful. 

The Teacher Shortage and How to Solve It

The latest news on the start the 2022-23 school year is that nearly 300,000 teachers have left their jobs over the past few years, creating a severe teacher shortage in both large and small school districts around the country. What we can do about it? Here are some thoughts to start the discussion. 

My first suggestion is obvious. Pay teachers salaries that reflect their preparation and their experience. Teachers are among the worst paid professionals in the nation, yet their work is absolutely essential to the economy and to the overall civic health of our society. Pay them for the education they must do to qualify for the jobs, for the countless hours outside the classroom that they must spend in addition to their classroom time, and for value they add to the lives of their students and to their community. 

Second, respect them for the professionals that they are. Our local school district tends to refer to teachers as "staff." That's wrong. They are "faculty" and should be seen as special contributors to the work of their schools. That should show up in their paychecks, but more importantly, it should give them a stronger voice in school policies and practices related to instruction. 

Third, start looking ahead. Increasingly, we are hearing about the evolution of our K-12 system into a "K-14" system--one where the social expectation is that students will be expected continue their education into the first two years of college. This will place new demands on teachers at all levels as schools try to position their curricula for the new environment in an economy dominated by technology. We ust help teachers prepare for the future--and ensure that there is a good career path for them as education adapts to the Information Revolution. 

However, beyond these immediate issues there is a larger question of the role of K-12 education in a society that is increasingly being shaped by the Information Revolution.  The question we must ask is: What is the purpose of public education in this new society?

In a 2012 article in Education Week, Greg Jobin-Leeds noted, “The unfortunate reality is that many believe training students in Math, Science, English, and History is what it means to educate. Society is far more complicated than the limited ideas covered in these four subjects.”  He went on to argue that “To educate is to prepare and train someone in the necessary skills to have the ability to participate in society as a full citizen. This definition reaches far beyond the scope of the four primary subjects. Education should include thoroughly learning the functions and duties of government, a complete understanding of the constitution and one’s rights, learning how social justice movements change society, how to farm, how to cook, etc. The public school system should exist to prepare young people for life. This is the task of an educator: facilitate the progress of transforming youth into functional independent full citizens.”

Ted Wheeler, writing for NEA Today, noted a 2016 survey by PDK International that asked about the mail goal of public school education.  Responses:

            45% felt that public school education should “prepare students academically.”

            26% felt that public schools should “prepare students to be good citizens.”

            25% felt that public schools should “prepare students for work.”

            4% were unsure

In 2017, a Penn State website on the purpose of K-12 education quoted Martin Luther King’s statement about the purpose of education in a 1948 speech at Morehouse College:  “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason but no morals. … We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.”  The first goal, the article notes, is that “students should develop the capacity for independent thought through inquiry and reasoning.”

More recently, a Study.Com piece points to the National School Boards Association position that “public education exists to serve the following purposes, among others:

• Prepare students for college and the workforce, including preparing them for jobs that may not even exist yet due to rapidly changing technology
• Help children fulfill their diverse potentials
• Enable students to become well-rounded individuals, focusing on the whole child and not just mastery of academic content
• Prepare students to live a productive life and become good citizens, while obeying the social and legal rules of society

Add to that mastery of common core and state standards, assessment after assessment, activities, sports, technology, literacy, etc. That's a lot to accomplish. How does it do all this and what is the role of the teacher as well as teacher learning communities in public education?”

In short, the expectations of public schooling in this new world place new and much greater demands on teachers.  It is essential that we fund teaching appropriately and give the profession the respect it needs in order to attract the best teachers to our schools.

Your thoughts?