In 2008, Ed Supe Tom Horne had a great idea to get more science and math teachers in the classroom. Why not have businesses let some of their STEM-based employees teach one high school class a year as part of their job? Brilliant! After Horne’s announcement, did you see the stampede of people rushing from the private sector to be volunteer teachers? No, neither did I. I never heard of anyone taking him up on his offer.
The legislature this year had a better idea: let anyone with a bachelor’s degree in a subject taught in middle or high school teach, no training, no education classes, no subject matter testing required. And if they’ve spent time working in a STEM field or teaching in a post-high school institution, the college degree isn’t even a requirement.
So how’s that working out? It’s a little early to tell, but at this point, it looks like people aren’t beating down school districts’ administration building doors demanding teaching applications.
A highly-touted law passed by the legislature earlier this year was supposed to help add candidates to the teaching pool. It loosens credentials needed to become a teacher and paves the way for qualified professionals in certain fields to get easier access to classrooms.
Wing said the impact of the law appears minimal so far.
“The Washington Elementary School District has received just a few contacts from some of those related to those certification changes,” said [Justin] Wing, who is now the human resources director for the Washington Elementary School. “From what I hear from other human resource professionals in other school systems, they have not received waves of candidates because of that new law. In my opinion, it didn’t address the root cause of the teacher shortage.”
It’s early yet. The word may not have gotten out, and when it does, school districts may still have the opportunity to fill some of their empty classrooms with unqualified, unprepared teachers. But wouldn’t it be something if the legislature threw the teacher certification doors open wide and nobody showed up? Teaching in Arizona may be so underpaid and undervalued, broadening the applicant pool won’t be much help. Maybe, if the legislators really care about addressing the state’s crisis-level teacher shortage, they’ll have to try some other ideas, like, say, increasing salaries and improving working conditions . . . if—and it’s a big “if”—they really care about addressing the state’s crisis-level teacher shortage,.
This article appears in Jun 15-21, 2017.
I suppose they can claim that supposedly “qualified” college graduates who can’t get jobs in their fields can now go to work teaching, thereby being a full-employment program for the state. Fat chance!
I think this is a worthy experiment, and we should probably give it time to play out before declaring failure. The basic problem is that teaching pays so much less than, say, engineering, so I have difficulty understanding why someone who had the test scores to be admitted to and worked hard to successfully complete an engineering programming would want to accept so much less pay than their market value. I might see people do that for lifestyle reasons, or as a sort of semi-retirement, but not right out of school with student loans to pay back.
Perhaps the solution to Arizona’s teacher shortage is to start bringing in immigrant teachers on H-1B visas (at least for STEM fields). There may just not be enough Americans to fill these jobs. Accessing a deep pool of immigrant teaching labor would also help level the balance of power with the teacher unions.
This state has had a Republican legislature for the last 24 yrs, and a Republican governor for 20 out of the last 26 yrs. Public education is not a priority for them, and the GOP here in AZ is not smart enough to figure out that strong public schools help create a vibrant economy and attract business. The voters keep sending the same kind of people to the legislature, so unless those people change, nothing will change.
Are you unwilling to let the voters have their say? There is so much more to the equation than the simplistic statement that “a strong public schools create a vibrant economy.” In fact the U of A has proven just the opposite. Most that get a good education leave Tucson for better pay and more amenities.
Like fully paved streets.
The average teacher salary in Arizona is $47,000 per year. The shortage salary is $32,000 per year. There wouldn’t be any shortage of teachers at all if you could open that average salary up. However, the legislature can only change the average salary. It can’t change the shortage salary at all, only the districts can do that.
Paradoxically, it is quite possible that an increase in the average salary would result in a reduction of the shortage salary. Systems do that when rewarded for certain behaviors.
Education is basically a thorn in the sides of most Republicans because their opinions matter more than science or mathematics. If the curriculum for Arizona schools was based strictly on biblical principles the legislature would be pouring money into the teaching profession like it was manna from heaven. The students wouldn’t learn anything but the legislature could defend their position by saying they are doing everything they can to make education in Arizona worthwhile.
Huppenthal: could you please explain why, if the legislature increased overall funding to schools significantly, it would not be possible for districts to increase BOTH the average salary and the shortage salary?
While overall funding remains this low, they can only increase “average” salaries at the expense of “novice” salaries, or vice-versa.
Would you like them to lower salaries for experienced teachers in the schools so salaries for inexperienced (and now, insufficiently qualified) novices who may not choose to remain in the profession long-term can be increased?
Steve Longariello
5/15/2017 2:22 PM MST
The real problem in Arizona is the silent war going on between the locals and the many people who are moving to Arizona from other states. The Gov. of AZ will never admit to this. So I’ll fill ya in.
Many of the people coming to live in Arizona are bigger than and more qualified, and educated than the typical Arizonian. This has outraged the locals who can not compete. Because of this the locals are attacking the out of state people and their efforts to live in Arizona. They are trying to get them to leave.
I have seen this with respect to all human matters in Arizona. Arizonians have become a nasty people with no respect for the law. Their administrators have permitted abuse of out of state children (you all remember that one) as well as other human abuses in all aspects of law and justice.
The teacher shortage in Arizona was caused by the locals in an effort to get the out of state people to leave. After the teachers left the Arizonians found the money for hiring teachers but claimed that they could not find qualified teachers. So what they did was take the money and hire unqualified locals
to cover the classroom.
IF YOU MOVED TO ARIZONA FROM ANOTHER STATE AND HAVE CHILDREN-DON’T SEND THEM TO SCHOOL. YOU WILL LATER REGRET IT. INSTEAD, BAND TOGETHER AND DEMAMD THAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TAKE OVER THE ARIZONA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION.
IF YOU ARE A TEACHER FROM ANOTHER STATE, DON’T COME TO TEACH IN ARIZONA UNTIL FEDS TAKE OVER EDUCATION SYSTEM IN ARIZONA. YOU WILL ALSO REGRET IT.
Don’t let these nasty little Neanderthals interfere with your child’s right to an appropriate education.
Steve J. Longariello
Steve Longariello
5/15/2017 2:22 PM MST
Steve Longariello
5/14/2017 2:52 PM MST
The real problem in Arizona is the silent war going on between the locals and the many people who are moving to Arizona from other states. The Gov. of AZ will never admit to this. So I’ll fill ya in.
Many of the people coming to live in Arizona are bigger than and more qualified, and educated than the typical Arizonian. This has outraged the locals who can not compete. Because of this the locals are attacking the out of state people and their efforts to live in Arizona. They are trying to get them to leave.
I have seen this with respect to all human matters in Arizona. Arizonians have become a nasty people with no respect for the law. Their administrators have permitted abuse of out of state children (you all remember that one) as well as other human abuses in all aspects of law and justice.
The teacher shortage in Arizona was caused by the locals in an effort to get the out of state people to leave. After the teachers left the Arizonians found the money for hiring teachers but claimed that they could not find qualified teachers. So what they did was take the money and hire unqualified locals
to cover the classroom.
IF YOU MOVED TO ARIZONA FROM ANOTHER STATE AND HAVE CHILDREN-DON’T SEND THEM TO SCHOOL. YOU WILL LATER REGRET IT. INSTEAD, BAND TOGETHER AND DEMAMD THAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TAKE OVER THE ARIZONA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION.
IF YOU ARE A TEACHER FROM ANOTHER STATE, DON’T COME TO TEACH IN ARIZONA UNTIL FEDS TAKE OVER EDUCATION SYSTEM IN ARIZONA. YOU WILL ALSO REGRET IT.
Don’t let these nasty little Neanderthals interfere with your child’s right to an appropriate education.
Steve J. Longariello
Steve was this you?
https://casetext.com/case/longariello-v-phoenix-union-high-school-district-3
I have no idea what the merits of the above-referenced case may be, but it’s certainly true that too many Arizonans are allergic to professionalism, proper process, and transparency. It is still “the Wild West” here, and like the lawless, chaotic frontier environment from which it evolved, it is a dangerous and damaging place to try to raise and educate children.
There is a real “market based solution” to the teacher shortage. The one party dictatorship in Phoenix famously touts “market based solutions”about everything else including an idiotic for profit mental health administrator. (Mentally ill and substance abusers famously respond to synergistic efficiencies). If teachers in Arizona districts were offered $70,000 to start plus full benefits how many candidates would you have? Voila, problem solved.
To “Raising kids”
Don’t believe what you read about education in Arizona. A few stats for you:
In 1992, juveniles in Arizona committed 70 murders. In 2012, the latest date for FBI stats, juveniles committed only 7 murders despite a tripling of our at-risk population.
The juvenile detention population has vaporized over that same time period.
In 2015, Arizona African Americans placed first in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, defeating Blacks in all 49 other states in math. Hispanics placed 11th and whites placed 6th. We didn’t do badly in reading either placing 14th, 7th and 29th.
The most scientific measure of the quality of our schools is the combined math and reading gains from 2011 4th grade to 2015 8th grade. Arizona was number one in the nation.
The nonsense you read in the general media about web sites like wallet hub are just that – nonsense from people who don’t know what they are talking about.
To jhuppent:
Many of us have observed that “too many Arizonans are allergic to professionalism, proper process, and transparency” directly, through seeing the quality of programs offered in publicly funded schools and observing and participating in governance meetings.
Yes, make the per pupil funding portable and allow it to be applied in private institutions. But no, do not strip away all regulatory oversight, all teacher credentialing standards, and anything resembling reasonable per pupil funding levels. The privates need those things to function properly as much as the publics do, as much as any institution or industry does:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/15/grenfell-tower-red-tape-safety-deregulation
(And I will note again that your position on testing is inconsistent. You can’t have your testing cake and eat it too. Those of us who’ve seen administrators manipulating programs in their schools to game the system and produce misleading testing results know that those stats mean nothing without knowing the details of how they were achieved, and that means meaningful REGULATORY OVERSIGHT that provides observation and evaluation of the actual quality of the programming in the schools that produced those test results.)
Response to Observing
What you are talking about is the normal leadership function of district offices and principals and assistant principals within a school. Unfortunately, because districts have not been subject to competition, the culture of education has not evolved. One leader will get things fairly organized and the next leader will destroy it all.
In my four years in the Superintendency, we put a comprehensive continuous improvement program in place in every division of the department of education. The core of concept was to define schools, teachers, principals, superintendents as customers and provide “knock your socks off service.”
Our ratings from the field were improving at 7 percentage points of excellence a year, as fast as I have ever seen an organization improve.
These aren’t Rocket science environments but they are somewhat complex and most public policy leaders don’t know how to create them and they degenerate fast when typical leadership takes over.