Education

A Closer Look at Oklahoma’s Teacher Shortage

October 28, 2015

Kate Walsh

Talk of a pending teacher shortage comes every decade. (In between, there’s talk of massive teacher layoffs.) While the talk rarely has translated into disaster, there’s no question that it causes districts and school boards to panic. In the search for solutions, technology, new collective-bargaining agreements, smarter licensing regulation, and better pay all need to be on the table.

Some Oklahoma school districts have a real problem. They can’t hire enough teachers and are scrambling to put warm bodies at the head of their classrooms. In early August, districts across the state reported they were short more than 800 teachers.

The problem is not new. The Oklahoma State School Boards Association says that, last school year, districts struggled to fill about 1,000 positions. If the pattern persists—if the people who hire teachers have to compromise standards year after year—it’s not going to be long before the workforce will include a lot of people you wouldn’t want teaching your child.

In many districts, the difficulty has been finding teachers who are qualified to teach students who are still learning English and hiring teachers in science, math, and special education. This mirrors the national situation. But Oklahoma school administrators say that this year even elementary teaching spots, traditionally in excess supply, were going unfilled. That development illustrates the serious difficulty of recruiting for some communities.

Staffing every position in every school, no matter how far out of the way, just isn’t practical.

Nationally, the country’s 1,400 teacher preparation institutions have been turning out more teachers than there are jobs for, particularly in the elementary grades. (Visit nctq.org to see some of the supply and demand data we have collected for the most recent year available, 2012-13, around elementary teachers.) On paper, at least, there should not be a shortage. Oklahoma’s teacher preparation programs graduated 962 aspiring elementary teachers for 570 openings that year.

Oklahoma is way down the list of states that over-produce teachers. But the unfilled jobs seem to suggest that too many of its potential recruits either never get a teaching job or leave the state to teach elsewhere. Pay is almost certainly a factor.

In our groundbreaking report, Smart Money: What teachers make, how long it takes and what it buys them, Tulsa came in 109th out of 125 cities for the lifetime earnings teachers accrue, while Oklahoma City was 117th. In both districts, it takes more than three decades to begin earning more than $75,000—far longer than in other professions.

Consider that exemplary teachers in Pittsburgh—who have the No. 1 place in the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)’s study—earn well over $1 million more during their careers than their counterparts in Oklahoma’s two biggest cities.

Much as many people want to resist believing it, the teaching profession cannot be managed as if it were exempt from market forces. To attract teachers, especially those in hard-to-fill positions like STEM, districts and states must be willing to offer competitive salaries. We also have to accept that some teachers need to be paid more because the market demands it. Typically, physical education teachers—who don’t have a lot of other career options—are paid the same as chemistry teachers, who generally have many more lucrative choices.

Consider also that districts disadvantage themselves when they require new teachers to start at the lowest step on the salary schedule, no matter what their backgrounds. This virtually uniform practice tells content experts—the retired physicist or the ex-military officer—that they should take their skills anywhere but the classroom. What mid-career person wants to be paid as if nothing she or he has done before counts?

Let’s also not discount the importance of removing regulatory policies that discourage qualified persons from teaching. Emergency certificates are not always a bad thing—if they’re being given to professionals who have real content expertise and who are working on completing coursework that would help them be effective. When we allow anyone to teach simply because they can breathe and stand on two legs, the health of the profession suffers.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma is far from alone in having particular difficulty attracting teachers to rural communities. The key to addressing those shortages—until or unless the state or others offer enticing incentives—lies in much higher pay for doing a tour of duty in rural areas (not just a $1,000 bonus but increments of $15,000 and up). It also requires us to solve our infrastructure issues so that technology can be used.

Small districts may have no choice but to “pipe in” specialized teaching. Staffing every position in every school, no matter how far out of the way, just isn’t practical.

Talk of a pending teacher shortage comes every decade. (In between, there’s talk of massive teacher layoffs.) While the talk rarely has translated into disaster, there’s no question that it causes districts and school boards to panic.

It’s a level of panic that causes policymakers to make bad decisions—for the teaching profession and for kids. It’s a short walk from “We have a crisis” to “We have to lower standards.” If all people are thinking about are declining enrollments and open jobs, teacher prep institutions will be encouraged to keep their already pitifully low admission standards, and states will toy with lowering the rigor of teacher licensing tests.

That will take us nowhere good. If we want talented people to become teachers—if we want the profession to have stature and respect—we have to structure a profession that is attractive to them.

Typically, physical education teachers—who don’t have a lot of other career options—are paid the same as chemistry teachers, who generally have many more lucrative choices.

Assuming government projections are even remotely accurate, the drop in teacher prep enrollment isn’t likely to lead to general shortages, not at their current rates. Further, a decline is not necessarily a bad thing, provided it isn’t the better prospective candidates who are making other career choices. While universities might like the resulting tuition revenue, it’s not healthy for a profession to systematically overproduce, and not only because it suppresses wages.

The reality is that there is not going to be a single solution to real shortages like those that exist in Oklahoma. Technology, new collective bargaining agreements, smarter licensing regulation, better pay—all these things need to be on the table. If we really care about giving every child an effective teacher, we have to end some of the nonsensical things we’re doing. We definitely can’t let all comers become teachers.

Kate Walsh is president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonpartisan research organization based in Washington, D.C., whose focus is driving student achievement through improving teacher preparation.