5. Teacher Shortage Mess: Where Did All the Teachers Go?

In this episode, host, Trina English,  dives into the complexities of the teacher shortage crisis in the United States. Using AI and a scholarly article by Drs. Tuan Nguyen, Chan Lam, and Paul Bruno as reference points, the discussion touches on teacher job satisfaction, the dangers of accepting simplistic answers, and the lack of comprehensive data on teacher vacancies. The speaker also highlights the uneven distribution of teacher shortages across subject areas and socioeconomic demographics, criticizing current recruitment practices and suggesting the establishment of a national professional teacher workforce. 

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Transcript

 Welcome back to the Rebel Teachers Rising Podcast. Today is our first episode on a new theme, the Teacher Shortage Mess. I'm gonna be talking for quite a while, just by myself about an article that I found, the only scholarly article that I found, which attempted to quantify the teacher shortage, um, numbers in the United States.

I really wanted to do that justice when I originally recorded it because I had hoped that I might send it to the three authors who wrote it to see if they might come on, and they did. So the next episode you're gonna hear after this one is one of those, uh, authors, Dr. Paul Bruno, who I've since worked with on several other episodes, and it's just an incredibly brilliant and gracious academic.

His sheer love of learning and of scholarship and his, you know, purest of intentions is really admirable. I, I don't wanna say it's rare, but I don't come across academics like this very often. He did use to teach in, um, a local school district by where I live, and now, uh, is in the Midwest. So this episode is me talking about.

Not really so much the numbers of the teacher shortage. More about how the lack of the data is such good evidence for why we need our K 12 educator governing board. Do we have a teacher shortage? Yeah. But it's like everything we do on this podcast, so much more nuanced than that. We know you sense it.

You see that there is something terribly wrong in our world. Are you confused about how we got here? We have a huge missing piece of the puzzle that's been kept from you. We're rebel teachers who are shining a light on the mess in K through 12 schooling. That is eroding our democracy from within. No one wants our job anymore.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. We're creating a space for fellow rebels to speak truth to power, and offer love and hope for the world. We are rebel teachers rising.

How do we begin to calculate the true vacancy rates in the United States? Well, I started the way I think anyone would. I Googled it and now we have AI telling us, answering questions straight out when you Google questions. So I Googled how bad is the teacher shortage in the United States? I had already done the research and I'd already found the one scholarly article that answered that question.

I was curious what AI was going to say because I knew that there was so much confusion and missing data. And this is what's what's dangerous about, um, not doing clear research because you're gonna get an answer that seems definitive, which I think. People are, and the data is actually much more nuanced than that.

But this is what AI said, so let's sort of fact check and I'll give you the read on what, how accurate or inaccurate AI was when they responded to this question. 'cause some of what they said was very accurate. Uh, they said it's a complex issue which has worsened since. COVID check. Good job, ai. It says only 12% of teachers or so report being satisfied with their jobs check.

It's also very high job dissatisfaction in site-based administration, and I've read it's even worse in site-based administration. I have an administrative services credential for those of you who don't know, that's a credential to be a principal, and I went on to complete the Master's of Ed leadership and I have.

Intentionally stayed out of site-based leadership. I don't think they have a job which is at all humanizing or doable. Um, if you're a site-based administrator and you're hearing this, I, I love you. I, I often disagree with you, but I do love you and I, I feel for you. Okay? But also teachers are not satisfied with their jobs and to a large extent, like this entire podcast is gonna explain why.

So good job, AI with that. One small anecdote right now. Something that we haven't talked about in the podcast episodes yet and we're still adding to it. 'cause we're hoping that once we go public with it on its own website, we'll get more people to come on and round out a more complete and accurate picture of what's going on in our schools from the teacher's perspective.

'cause we are so siloed, terribly siloed. But one, one thing that's coming to my mind right now about job satisfaction is the healthy, uh, heaping dose of toxic positivity. I. That we are subjected to on a regular basis. It's a female dominated profession. We are expected to put on a smile and be in good spirits at all times.

And honestly, we coat that on real thick to the kids too, right? If you're person who has a critical viewpoint and wants to try to make things better, you're being negative, right? Well, professional development is coming up right now, and if you're a teacher, you know what that means? We're going back to sit down and listen to some talking bobblehead, tell us things they think we must know instead of giving us time to work in our classrooms.

And it's all about be in good spirits, not for the kids. You know that toxic positivity is real gross, guys, and please allow teachers to have all of the feelings. Okay? Anyways, that's my little note about job satisfaction. What's on my, my mind right now since we're going back from summer? So where are we right now with the actual numbers?

According to ai, they say that, I think it LA it was last year, 2023, that there are 55,000 vacant teaching positions. AI has been right on a number of things. They're right on job satisfaction on the fact that it's a complex issue. This number of 55,000 vacant teaching positions is not accurate because as I'll explain, there is no accurate number.

There's just best guesses, and it also says that 44% of schools reported vacancies also impossible to know. We just don't have a read on the problem because of the missing and absent data. And I'll explain more about that too. AI goes on to explain that these vacancies are not evenly distributed, and that is true.

Certain content areas, teaching content areas like stem, special education and foreign languages are uniquely burdened. For a number of different reasons, and we can sort of know already that STEM positions are understaffed because people with advanced degrees in STEM have other employment opportunities besides teaching and special education, we have a whole theme coming up in the series about the unique burdens of the teacher.

Shortage on special education is just a really hard job that nobody wants for a number of reasons. Not that we don't like working with children with special needs. We do. Many teachers prefer it. I love it. That's not why. It's not the kids. It's never the kids. It's always the system. The special education system is oppressive.

We have a whole theme with several episodes coming up on that foreign language. I dunno too much about why we don't have enough foreign language teachers. I think maybe we just don't have enough people. We're not producing enough people with the right degrees. Maybe. I don't know. You guys tell me, but a, I got this right there.

There are certain subject areas that are more impacted. Okay. Though we're getting to the point now where even like the more, uh, the other subject areas like that, we've always had enough talent for, like history and ELA at the secondary level. Even undesirable districts, those places are even struggling to find, uh, highly qualified good talent.

So it's, it's permeating way beyond just these areas though, these areas definitely, I agree with AI have struggled. Other areas too. Math was part of that too. Okay. But what AI is not explaining here is that they, teacher vacancies are not evenly distributed across geography. And this is written up quite a bit.

I don't really know why AI didn't write about this. It makes me think maybe. The logarithm or whatever. I don't speak coding language isn't primed to get salient data about, um, racial oppression, but whatever. I'll go ahead and fill in the blank spaces. Teachers, everyone knows this, right? That historically marginalized communities, particularly bipoc communities in urban areas.

Have a much, uh, struggle much more with teacher vacancy, you know, rural areas. Yes. But urban areas of lower socioeconomic status are the, are how have the hardest impact with teacher vacancies? Because, A, it's really expensive and B, it's really hard to teach in those schools the trauma that kids are playing out because of the racial oppression that they experience means they ha have very special challenges.

So there is a strong desire as a teacher to get out of those districts and they are forced to hire people that are just starting their credential journey much more than more privileged, socioeconomically privileged communities. Okay. So yeah, content areas, geography, definitely along racial lines. So what we have here is a civil rights nightmare, right?

Because I mean, we have students who ha have special needs and students who are traumatized by socioeconomic and racial based oppression. Who are year after year after year, brand new to the profession. So we're covering this up. We're calling it whatever we can, and K 12 is getting away with it because the public doesn't understand what's going on here.

It's a travesty, and it directly contributes to the reading opportunity gap and why we have. A very low literacy rate. I'll talk about it in just a moment, but it's not evenly distributed either. Illiteracy is in pockets. Okay, so AI got some stuff, right? It left off some important information to correctly characterize the teacher shortage, but now I wanna talk about the fact that their numbers that they're quoting here, they can't possibly, I'm saying they as if AI's a group of people.

That big brother, whatever we're calling AI now has hard numbers in there that I just went over that are not reliable or credible. So I wanna talk about three scholars who wrote the only article I was able to find that was a legitimate expert source of information and their names are Wan n John Lamb and Paul Bruno.

These are doctors. They have a doctorate in education. Please, I hope I am pronouncing their names correctly. The first two, Dr. No and Dr. Lamb are in Kansas State University and Dr. Bruno is at the University of Illinois. These three men are fa. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. They sat down and got to task at trying to figure out exactly what the quantitative data is behind the teacher shortage, shortage crisis.

So what I mean is, what are the numbers? They wrote up their findings in the Annenberg Institute of Brown University publication. We're gonna link it to the website. It is fantastic. It's not a long read, it's not super jargony. It is written at a high level, but it is definitely something like a high school student could sit down and read.

And it would be super interesting as a high school teacher to assign this reading to your students. So I've annotated my own copy. I'm a huge fan girl, and I, my goal right now is to woo these men with my praise in this podcast, to get them to come on to describe the limitations of, of their data. They're gonna do it better than I could.

So their, their paper is called, is there a National Teacher Shortage, A Systemic Examination of reports of teacher shortages in the United States. And the big deal here, according to these three experts, is that there's a staggering lack of data. And they say it eloquently on a number of occasions throughout the article.

They say their biggest takeaway isn't what the data reveals. It's the fact that there isn't accurate and complete data to begin with, which is really heart wrenching to consider their findings essentially. I'll cut to the chase are, yeah, we do have a national teacher shortage crisis, but the big deal here is we don't know exactly how bad it is.

They go on to explain that. There's a lack of consistent vocabulary used to describe teacher vacancies. I'm saying there's very little oversight of local school districts and they all o operate under their own rules, use different phrasing and vocabulary to describe the shortage, but also a lot of districts have lowered the bar so low to become a teacher, and this usually happens at at the state level.

That districts are able to report lower vacancy rates because they've filled those classrooms with underqualified teachers, and some states are doing that more than others. So if you just look at the raw data, you don't necessarily know which states are more impacted by a lack of credible teachers. Now, the school districts are running around mitigating that by buying these dense canned curriculums.

That they think can stand in. For veteran teachers that don't, they don't. There's a lot of reasons why and when we get in the canned curriculum episodes, it'll explain it a lot more, but I sort of think. That once the districts start to see that, they can, in their mind mitigate away the lack of a veteran teacher in those rooms or even a, even a credentialed teacher in those rooms, and that they save a lot of money doing that because of our step and column, which is our bizarre teacher salary schedule, which is so weird, does not exist in any other profession.

Which I will talk about in the Teacher Pay Mess episodes. I think they sort of like stop trying to get qualified teachers in those classrooms. Some of the ones that are really deeply hemorrhaging, teachers save a lot of money by having brand new teachers that are not fully qualified in those classrooms.

That may sound a little jaded. It's just my gut. It's sort of what I think. I don't have any proof to support that, but so since they've lowered the bar so low and there is this thing called getting the, the emergency permit, that's what we call it in California. I can't tell you what we call in another state because every state is so different.

Every district is different. There's no consistency across the states here because of local control, but they are able to fill these positions with underqualified teachers. And in another episode, Jess and Amanda and I are having a conversation that you'll hear, you're gonna hear later where we're talking about the crazy recruiting strategies a lot of school districts are resorting to, which is recruiting straight out of the Philippines.

And Jess's reaction I completely understand was, whoa. Trina, I really love the Filipino teachers that are teaching in our schools. And I mean, I do too. This, I'm not talking about the fact that. I'm not grateful for anybody who's willing to come into our classrooms, and I know that over time you can get yourself to where you need to be.

What I'm talking about here is not about the teachers who are being recruited outta the Philippines. I'm talking about the practice because instead of figuring out why no one wants to teach in our schools anymore and fixing that problem. They're paying money to fly people out from the Philippines to take these positions.

And let's be clear, those new teachers now have presumably language and cultural barriers, making that first few years of teaching so hard, harder than it was even for me. But also they're being put in very expensive private colleges for to get their credentials. I mean, you can teach for one year without being in the credential program, but then by the year two, you have to be enrolled to get a different kind of permit.

Um, and they're taking on debt and they're doing the first two to three years of their teaching career in this high stress environment of a high needs district. Lots of what we call culture and climate problems. The kids are a mess in these goals. Let's be clear. I love the kids. The kids are reacting to the problems that we have put on their doorsteps, right?

But they're, they're having to work in the hardest of hard settings to teach in, and they have cultural linguistic barriers, presumably making it difficult to form the relations relationships that are required to have any sort of classroom management game, right? They're going to expensive classes at night, so they have no time for themselves.

Districts will continue doing this. You guys, districts will continue to shift around recruiting strategies, uh, aggressively changing and hiring people to move heaven and earth to bring in people who I've heard in some states, this is what Jess was telling me in Vegas, even need a Nevada, a bachelor's degree.

So you need to dig, and that's what the authors of this paper are saying is. It's very difficult to just say what exactly is the teacher vacancy rate here because of all of the weird stuff that the school districts are doing right now to put warm bodies in these seat. And also too, the bigger issue here is that precisely the students that need the best of us are getting the newest and most stressed out of us.

And that's a, that's a civil rights issue, but the data. To fully quantify the vacancy rates is missing and accurate and incomplete across the states. The data is a mess. This is a mess. They also say that you just can't look at raw numbers. I love this. The authors of our article say that we need to have nuance in this conversation about the data, and that's what I'm always saying to people.

Nuance is lost upon K 12 educational leadership, and I'm always being told You write too much. You say too much. You think too much. You read too much. Uh, no. Uhuh. We need to be reading a lot, talking a lot, writing a lot, and thinking a lot. We are not doing enough. Simply checking a box and moving on and making things look right on paper is how we got here.

Stop it right now. Educational leaders, stop it. We have to get into the nuance. Your concept of let's just keep it simple. Is the oppressive thing that has gotten us to this, that's gotten us to this point. So we need to examine the data from multiple perspectives. That's what the authors are arguing for.

They're saying we need to consider vacancies per per pupil ratios. And what they mean by that is they're trying to quantify the real impact of the vacancy rates in the state, given the population of the students. So if you have like for example, a really densely populated state, their overall numbers may look really high to you, but the actual impact on the ground floor, 'cause they have a lot of students, a lot of people in that state is not as impacted as a less populated state.

So you need to look at it, the number as a ratio. And when you do this, the data. Shifts radically. That's what the authors are saying here. If you adjust it as a ratio for per pupil vacancies, the states that look like they were in the lead for having the biggest problem fall way down, and some of the states that look like they were doing better shift way up.

So it's really important that we take a nuanced approach when we consider the data. Right. We don't have a lot of this data, and that's another thing is that. The authors have categorized three types of datas, amounts of datas that they have on the state. They've lumped some states together, which they feel like they have pretty reliable data directly from school districts.

It's a mix. You guys of red, purple, and blue states. This is not a political thing. That's why I'm telling you from the beginning, this is an apolitical problem. Everybody on both sides of the political, political divide can get behind this problem. Then there's a middle category. It was like iffy data.

They're not really sure. Most of the states pretty much fell in the iffy category. And then there's some states where they're like, we're just taking a shot in the dark here. We're having to go to the media to try to get at these numbers. And California is in there. My state, Gavin Newsom. I, I'm a fan. Okay.

I, I'm cool with you. Um, you were so, so supportive during COVID. I loved hearing your nightly reports. I felt safe, I felt taken care of. Thank you. But, and I'm speaking directly to you, Mr. Newsom. You wanna know why we have a teacher vacancy problem in California? You hired the CTC to tell you. It's like asking the devil to tell you why there's so many sinners.

The CTC is part of the oppression, Mr. Newsom. It's part of why we as teachers leave the profession, and when I get in the teacher preparation, I. Themes and what we have to go through to become teachers and how the CTC is like a big brother overlord. You're asking the wrong people. You don't even have the data you need.

Mr. Newsom, has Tony Thurman told you that? Does he know? Have you read this paper? Because holy cannoli, I mean, ask the teachers, we'll tell you why you have the shortage crisis, but you don't even know how bad it is. And that's the major finding of all of these, these three authors, is that we don't even know how bad it is.

So they take a very conservative estimate. They use the conservative methodology. They give us some best guesstimates, which are admittedly underestimates, but they want to be as credible as possible, as measured as possible. Not me. I'm mad. They're cool-headed in their paper. It's scholarly. So they conducted a very exhaustive, very creative search to get at the data.

And that's what I wanna come, um, why I want them to come on and explain it. 'cause they were not able to get data at a state level. It's not, does not exist at a national level. We don't have a national professional teacher workforce. We don't even have a state level teacher workforce. Our workforces are siloed into LEAs local education agencies, AKA school districts, and there's no oversight on, on reporting the vacancies.

There's very little oversight with a lot of stuff, with a lot of stuff. I was pretty freaked out that the US Department of Education hasn't done something before now to fully curate this data. I was impressed with the US Department of Education when I was trying to get at the actual literacy rates because they weren't being reported accurately.

And I then from there I found out 'cause they were being hidden through the CIA World Fact Book for for the United States Literacy rates. And that's where I was able to find the staggering truth that was being hidden from us about our actual literacy rates. But the US Department of Education hasn't taken the time to research this carefully.

Okay? And you can see why it's an impossible, it's an impossible endeavor. So these, these three men sat down and got super created. They're very, very low ball estimate for the actual unfilled teaching positions, purely unfilled. Was 36,500 vacancies. And that's a lot considering all the things I was explaining.

This is for last year, I think maybe 2022, considering all the, all the things, all these crazy weird tools that, um, LEAs have at their disposal to throw warm bodies in a classroom. So that's why they say that about 163,650 positions were filled by underqualified teachers. And there's a range of what they mean by that.

There's several different categories that they describe as quote unquote underqualified, and those are really, those are really well explained in the paper. I don't wanna go into the weeds on that right now. But getting back to this vacancy rate, the ratio, this is what they're saying is critically important.

They give one important example. For example, the vacancy rate per 10,000 students is more than 150 times as high in Mississippi as it is in Missouri. Crazy right? Really weird. Both red states both have very similar political leanings, yet have radically different vacancy rates, but you can only see that if you adjust it as a ratio.

So don't just look at the raw numbers. You have to have this nuance. The efforts to characterize the national teacher supply is impossible is what the authors say too, because like I said a moment ago, there is no professional body of teachers. And they stopped short of saying that we need to form a national body of teachers.

But I'm saying it, and that's what's in the petition. Of course. So not only would a national professional teacher workforce. Allow us to get a handle and a read on what the actual vacancy rates are. It would allow us to standardize the requirements for teaching, streamline it. 'cause in some places there's almost no requirements in other places, like in California, it's an onerous list of, um, some bullshit and agonizing, it doesn't actually help us.

But if we are all governed under the same standardized protocol, standardized professional education, I. That would streamline it and we would have all of us working on it together would be only the most useful information. And I honestly it should be free because if we're not gonna pay teachers even when they get to a complete salary, 'cause most of us don't earn a complete salary, we earn in a fraction of what we will eventually, within a few decades time.

If we choose to earn more advanced degrees, the equivalent of two full master's in ES district, you have to have a PhD. So the establishment of a national professional workforce of teachers solves a number of problems here. It would allow us to be able to get a quick read on actual vacancy rate. It would allow us to standardize the professional preparation requirement.

It would form a body that would create additional oversight and accountability for the districts, because right now they're getting away with a, I refer to K 12 as the beast sometimes. You may hear me for, refer to it as such in the future, like the belly of the beast or the beast within the beast. Right.

Okay. So the highest vacancy rate according to AI is Florida. The lowest is Utah. This is problematic and I'm gonna talk to you about that. Why in a minute. I do want you to look into the article yourself and take a look at it on the website. 'cause it'll show you. And one of the things that stood out to me.

Again, the variety of political leanings going on here, like the biggest vacancy, red, blue, purple state in the, um, lowest vacancy red, blue, purple state in between red, blue, purple states. Like this is not a political problem. I know you guys think it is, but it really isn't. So let's take a look at what the authors are sharing out.

Okay. Of the first category of states. That have clear vacancy rates, that report well, these are 11 states, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Utah. I told you it's a mix. These states are the ones that are actually reporting their vacancy rates more clearly.

The number one vacancy rate, the state of these 11 that has the highest vacancies, Arizona, followed by Colorado, then Connecticut, and then a descending order ending in Utah. So Utah being on the low side makes sense. Ai, I'll give you that one. Okay. But that's only of the category of state that is reporting.

Well, okay. So Utah, good job, but it's a pretty low bar. Utah low bar. Okay. Group two. These are states with less clear vacancy. This is 26 states, including dc I'm not gonna read them all off. Again, my state, California, not in this category either, but I, I can tell you again, it's a mix of red, blue, and purple states.

We've got states like Alabama, Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New Mexico, all over the country, 26 states. All with meh reporting the top of this category, and I'm looking at the table, it does appear that Alabama's in the top, followed by Delaware, and see if you look at the wrong numbers, you can see that.

Like if I'm looking at this table, uh, North Carolina, Texas is in this category. They, there are bigger numbers, raw data, but I believe that this. Is being presented to us as a ratio. So again, that vacancy rate per 10,000 students. It tells you here in this table too, where the authors had to get this information.

It's it's news sources. So we don't even know how clear or accurate this reporting is. It could be worse. We don't know. Next we are going down to the last category. This is 13 states with pretty much they're just calling it unknown vacancy rates. Uh, there's 13 states, and I'm gonna read you off again, red, blue, and Purple States, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Iowa.

Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming for shame. All 13 of you. Why haven't you been reporting your vacancy rates? So the authors are trying hard to sort of get at what they might look, and they put Alaska at the top, California's third. The bottom of this category is Wyoming.

But look, this is a guesstimate. We. We don't know. So everybody, including, I'm sorry, an investigative journalist, shame on you. You're running around reporting on this problem, asking the wrong questions, not getting to the center of the onion. Why you forced us to do this. I kept waiting every year, every time the vacancy rates, the teacher shortage crisis is covered in the media the last five or six years.

You do such a cursory investigation. You don't ask teachers, you don't ask the right questions. You don't go deep enough. You don't go far enough. Sorry, I think I just touched the mic. Ugh. Sorry, Amanda. I know Amanda's my little audio guru. Thanks for teaching me what little I know and for being patient with me, Amanda, and everyone.

'cause my audio is not always perfect. Um, I, I will say that they do put out a raw count, color coded map at the bottom of their paper. You can see if you keep scrolling down, if you have it up while you're listening to this, you can take a look at that now. And the darkest blue are the four heavy hitter states.

Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. But again, we have to keep in mind that, and we have all the gray states. Those four, shame 13, uh, they don't even know how to place them in this thing. That's the entire west coast, Washington, Oregon, and California. We don't know your vacancy rates. Wyoming, Iowa, Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio.

New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Jersey get with the program. You are politically varied. You are all across the map and you're all not reporting your vacancy rates. We are years away from being able to effectively solve the teacher shortage crisis 'cause we don't even know the extent of it.

And it is shameful and has been hidden from all of us. That are hard earned taxpayer dollars that are being poured into our local education agencies. Are being spent on, people are being spent on districts that are not even accurately reporting the extent of the problem here. We need to be able to grapple with nuance.

As I say, we need to talk and write, and think, and read a lot. We need to do this, and this podcast series is forcefully inserting teachers' voices into this conversation. Remember, I'm a tenured teacher. I am the only person in this beast that has the ability to speak freely. And I have the leadership training and I have intentionally stayed into the teaching world 'cause I keep my tenure so I can do this exactly this.

Right now my family is losing out on big money. Not that administrators make a lot, but they do make a lot more than I do and I have big loans. That is how important this is to us, that we be able to keep telling everyone the truth of the problem here. Okay? So that's it for now. Uh, until next time, take care of yourselves and I hope you have a better year this year than last.

If you're a teacher.

Thank you for listening. Everyone, please go to rebel teachers rising.com to contact us if you would like to be a guest on a future episode and to sign the petition to save K12 schooling and our precious and fragile democracy.