Yet another article about the drop in the number of students in the nation’s teacher preparation programs. Nationwide, the number has slipped from 725,518 in the 2009-10 school year to 465,536 during the 2013-14 school year. That’s a 36 percent drop. The bit of good news is, the downward slide leveled out a bit in 2013-14. The numbers still went down, but at a slower rate.
The enrollment decreases at UA and ASU are similar, though a bit less dramatic. At the UA College of Education, enrollment went from 1,135 in 2009 to 900 in 2013, a 21 percent drop. And if I’m reading the numbers right on the ASU website, the numbers at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College are down from 3,756 in 2009 to 2,737 in 2013, a 28 percent drop.
None of this bodes well for dealing with the dual problems of filling current classroom vacancies and replacing teachers who will retire or just plain leave the profession over the next few years. It’s hard to improve the quality of the teacher workforce, which everyone would like to see, when there aren’t enough teachers moving through the teacher preparation pipeline just to take care of current vacancies.
It gets kind of old saying this, but . . .
•If we don’t pay our teachers a wage which is close to salaries earned by others with a similar amount of college education;
•If we don’t provide funds to keep our school buildings in working order;
•If we don’t provide funds to buy classroom supplies and technology;
•If we continue to berate teachers for educational failures which have more to do with socioeconomic conditions than what they’re doing in their classrooms;
We won’t attract enough people to the profession, let alone the best and the brightest of the current generation. Which means the public-education-haters will continue to convince people that our schools are failures and don’t deserve adequate funding, which means the problems facing schools, especially schools working to educate the hardest-to-reach students, will escalate.
This article appears in Mar 24-30, 2016.
We have a bigger problem coming with the shortage of law enforcement. You can’t treat people like they have treated law enforcement and expect people to want those jobs.
We don’t need more teachers, we need less children of illegals filling the seats.
There is no shortage of teachers in charter or private schools. In fact, as they grow, many are returning to teaching and leaving the public schools for a far friendlier work place.
Could it be that teachers are tired of the educrats sucking all the money out of the classrooms and running it like their own personal fiefdom?
Or was it the politics of the left demonizing everybody else that made them leave?
A friend who teaches in the Catholic system says they have a shortage of qualified applicants, Rat T.
Could it be that when the right wing blood suckers running our state “starve the beast” to the point where the public school salaries are poverty level and the private schools expect you to accept $10K less per year than the public schools do because the working conditions are “better” there, fewer and fewer people find it makes sense to accept such a raw deal? I wonder.
The poverty level has been increased to sustainable levels. I understand why Catholic Schools are still having problems.
As a 13 year teacher, with a Bachelor’s from UA and a Master’s from NAU, I can say that I, personally, went from mentoring student interns and student teachers annually (oftentimes, more than once per school year), to choosing not to mentor at all because I could no longer honestly share a passion for the profession with those going into the profession, because I no longer feel like it IS a profession. Every teacher I know agrees that they’d not encourage anyone to go into teaching, which is just plain sad. I didn’t used to feel that way, at all. Even the poor pay wasn’t THAT big of a deal, because I had the respect and appreciation of people when I’d tell them what I did. That’s all changed. Now, we’re villified and exhausted. More and more is being asked, on less and less funding. And, as the article says, everything wrong with education in America is now our faults. Nothing about the way teachers are treated, even by their own administrators and school boards, feels like you’re a respected, valued professional any longer. Who’d wish that on anyone?
Administrators, hear the word! Lynn Marble’s comments highlight a dirty little secret of the shortage on teachers….that there are improvements that can be made even withOUT money. Not that that’s right, or even all right–as teachers deserve to be highly paid for the incredible value they add to society. But those funding decisions are in the hands of people (in Arizona)who spend their days talking about punitive laws to ban plastic bag banners, and ways to make sure that no municipalities have “home rule”! IN THE MEANTIME local administrators and school boards could be treating teachers like the professionals they are–instead of coming up with crazed “lower the standards/certifications” schemes to game the system and further devalue the profession.
My point exactly. Thanks for saying it.
We don’t need more educrats. We don’t need more education majors. Let the math and physics majors teach without requiring pointless certification. The same for the non-sciences.
I had a bachelors and two masters degrees in subject areas from a top-ranked university when I decided I wanted to teach elementary school and entered the post-baccalaureate teacher certification program at the University of Arizona. I would absolutely not have been able to step into a classroom properly prepared to teach without the methods coursework I took the trouble to enroll in at UA.
Why? Because to understand content-areas as an adult is not the same as knowing how to effectively teach these subjects to children at the different developmental stages that they go through. This is true in all the subject areas, but it is particularly true of math, where understanding how to give students the concrete experience with math manipulatives they need in the early developmental stages can make the difference between students leaving your classroom with a sound basis for abstract reasoning or with a shaky foundation that will produce math anxiety and math failure at later stages of development.
Education is a profession with a distinct knowledge basis that teachers, for the sake of our children, should be given the opportunity to master before they step into a classroom and take responsibility for 9 months of advancing a group of students’ learning. Attempts to weaken teacher credentialing are misguided and don’t serve the best interests of our children. There are no valid “shortcuts” to becoming a responsible professional educator.
To comprehend the drop in student achievement and teacher enthusiasm over the last 40 years, one must examine the history of govt policy from at least 100 years ago. You will find that the various billionaires’ foundations steered policy away from the European educational model and towards “freedom”. In addition, they steered entertainment and news media to educate parents in undisciplined childrearing practices. Results: a stupid population, easily led into serfdom. Why? Because the elites’ long term goal has been a weak USA subjected to world government. -from advanced degree(s) former teacher.
I am saddened by some of the comments posted. If teachers are running down the profession and telling college students not to go into education, then who will teach the next generations of students. Being a thirty year veteran, I can say that education has gone through many changes over the years. Some years were challenging, but it did not matter. The changes have always been an attempt to help students not cause teachers stress. Education should not be about the teacher, but about the student occupying the seat in the classroom; education in a service profession. I know it is difficult in the trenches, but we have to start sharing the positives of education and why we went into the profession. If you have lost your passion for working with students, you need to find a way to rekindle that passion or leave the profession; our young teachers and students deserve it!
Cheryl Griggs teachers cannot continue in their chosen profession if they cannot afford to support themselves. I drive a vehicle that is 25+ years old, live in a very affordable home, do not take vacations, and still had to borrow money from a family member to have surgery on my spine because my healthcare from my district has been cut so much due to cuts to education. I have not gotten even an inflationary increase in the past 6 years due to our great state of Arizona refusing to fund education as they have been court ordered to do, and now struggle to pay my utilities. I am a tenth year teacher in good standing who graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Arizona. There is a difference between difficulties in the trenches and impossible to continue on and support oneself. I love teaching and I love my students; however, I also love my family and need to be able to support them. As a professional with a university degree I should earn enough to live modestly comfortably. It is not too much to ask. The people of Arizona need to stand up and say enough is enough. People like Rat T. have no idea what is going on or what the reality of it all really is.
Fellow Teacher, I am so sorry that you are having such a hard time in Arizona; my heart goes out to all of you. If I am hearing you correctly, Arizona needs to do a much better job of financially supporting their teachers, and you are right. I had not heard what your state in going through, and the post did not mention that; they just bashed the profession. However, it still does not give current educators the right to tell young adults not to go into education; the profession they chose should be their own choice. Is it okay to share the frustrations and challenges you have faced? Absolutely. As a veteran, maybe you could come up with ways to communicate the challenges you are facing in a more neutral manner. Don’t get me wrong, I am sure it will not be easy. You obviously love teaching; you are still in the classroom. This speaks to your professionalism, so why would you discourage novice teachers? You know what a joy it is to teach. Just prepare them, and let them choose. You too have a choices too. They may not be the best, but they are available.
Proud to teach, you ought to see the health care plans administrators have. They are robbing you.
Rat T may I suggest that you read Teacher Wars? It is very enlightening and will provide you with some history.
Cheryl Griggs, I never stated that I tell people they should not become teachers. That was something someone else posted.
One commenter who, it seems, does not live in Arizona, asks, “why would you discourage novice teachers?”
Perhaps this commenter should read Lynn Marble’s excellent post again, with more attention to detail. Ms. Marble did not “bash the profession.” She talked about the insurmountable challenges chronic underfunding, “blaming the teacher” mentalities, and lack of support from administration, school boards and the general public present to professional educators who, like Ms. Marble, took the trouble to gain an advanced degree in her field and used to love her work with students.
Unfortunately, in this country, conditions and funding levels in our schools can vary so much from state to state that while it may be quite reasonable to encourage young people in Minnesota or Vermont to enter the teaching profession, in states like Arizona and Wisconsin, it has increasingly become bad and irresponsible advice.
A possible alternative to advising Arizona youth not to enter the profession may be to do what one former Arizona Supreme Court Justice who knows the Arizona legislature and its behavior vis a vis publicly funded schools in this state very well has done with a member of his own family who is currently training to become a teacher: he has advised her to complete her training, and then move to another state.
Unlike the casually flippant who seem to know so much without ever being there, the job is not an easy one, and the pressures generated by political winds, tighter budgets and insulting public commentaries keep young people from even considering it. Now that I got that in, I can honestly say that some of the nicest and most decent people that I have known in my life have been public school teachers. They don’t get much good press these days.
Thank you Honesty and Thinking Allowed for your thoughtful and insightful comments.
I grew up in AZ in a time (The 60s) when teachers were paid somewhat well and very well respected. There were issues. The main one being most teachers knew their subjects well but had no idea how to teach the subject.. Perhaps a math teacher should have failed math in order to understand why some students do not catch on to how math works?? That issue left a harden heart toward teachers. I recall a history teacher, a subject I loved, saying she was a harden dis-likable person because she wanted to make sure she was remembered. I also had teachers whom names I make myself remember because they were caring knowledgeable adults and loved what they were doing even if it was a subject they knew very little about . Times hopefully have changed but maybe just maybe it is far more important for teachers to know more about children and learning then say calculus. A Masters in teaching and a handy computer for answering a question is perhaps an option. By the way. I moved to Iowa. they have some of the best teachers in the USA and are also paid much better. So tell AZ to stuff it. Move to Iowa . The cost of living is awesome just bring your LONG underwear!
While talking about the need to respect teachers and pay them a competitive wage for someone with their level of education and experience is appreciated, there is much more chasing teachers away from the profession. One of the biggest complaints goes unacknowledged: it’s not the teacher’s fault if a student is absent, lazy, or misbehaving. Teaching is hard enough, don’t make us babysit as well.