Hello,
This fall, I returned to school for the first time in nearly a decade, pursuing my School District Business Leader (SDBL) certification. To make a long story short, my goal is to overtly deepen and demonstrate my understanding of the business side of the house through this formal pathway.
As part of a Human Resources course I’m taking, groups of students were assigned to present on various HR topics. The first presentation focused on the recruitment and retention of educators—a topic that resonates with me. If you asked me what the number one issue in education is today, I would unequivocally say it’s the shortage of educators, both teachers and administrators. Without a steady flow of qualified professionals entering and remaining in the field, it becomes nearly impossible to fill vacancies with high-quality candidates. This shortage forces districts to hire whoever is available, often compromising on quality. Furthermore, since teachers educate all other professions (at least indirectly), an educator shortage impacts every other field.
A 2022 paper titled “Is there a national teacher shortage: A systematic examination of reports of teacher shortages in the United States,” by Nguyen, Lam, and Bruno highlight the scope of this issue. They write:
By our count, at least 36,500 teaching positions are vacant nationwide. If we extrapolate the vacancy rate (i.e., on a per-student basis) to states where we were unable to find data, the national vacancy count is closer to 52,800... [Additionally] we estimate there are 163,650 positions filled by underqualified teachers. (p. 21)
While these numbers are staggering, they reflect what I’ve experienced first-hand. During my time working in charter schools, teacher turnover was a constant struggle. The nature of charter schools, with charters that are limited to five years or fewer in New York State, means that staff face uncertainty regarding the school’s future. Additionally, longer school days and years—combined with lower pay than traditional public schools—further exacerbate the challenge of recruiting and retaining staff. Without the promise of tenure or job security, turnover becomes the norm rather than the exception.
This dynamic creates a vicious cycle. Jenn Briselli’s post, “The Teaching and Nursing Crises: Two Sides of the Same Wicked Problem,” included the image to the right which resonated with my experiences in charter schools. I witnessed teachers who were only in their second year of teaching being considered "veterans" because of the high turnover rate. Students, understandably, built emotional walls, reluctant to form relationships with teachers who, they feared, would soon leave. For the teachers, this trauma-based response from students was misinterpreted as disrespect or disinterest. Regardless of the source of the students’ behaviors, teachers got frustrated, overwhelmed, and stressed–then found a job in another school or another profession.
This vicious cycle is not limited to charter schools. Private and parochial schools have high turnover issues too. Though they may not have to contend with renewing a charter, they do have to contend with maintaining enrollment and lower salaries and benefits than public school districts.
Public schools have high turnover too. In the infographic, “Why Do Teachers Leave,” by The Learning Policy Institute, they write, “Each year, more than 200,000 teachers leave the profession, with nearly two out of three leaving for reasons other than retirement.”
To put this in perspective, the May 4, 2021, EdWeek post, “Why Teachers Leave–or Don’t: A Look at the Numbers,” cites federal data that claim, “about 8 percent of teachers leave the profession every year... Younger teachers, and those early in their careers, are among the most likely to leave teaching. And while trends in turnover do vary regionally, special education teachers and science and math teachers tend to be at high risk for turnover.” That means nearly one out of every ten teachers this year will not be teachers next year.
I’m sharing all of this to highlight the problem and explain why this topic would be important to examine in a graduate-level course on educational human resources. In other words, this topic was not a surprise.
The final presenter shared some innovative suggestions on addressing recruitment and retention and recommended exploring ways to create more flexibility for educators to help create better working conditions. As I wrote about last week in the post, “Yes, And!” I strongly believe better working conditions would improve educator well-being. Therefore, you will hear no objections from me regarding this general course of action.
There were two surprises though stemming from the presentation. First, one of the possible considerations for increasing flexibility was allowing teachers to have release time from Superintendent’s Conference Days, i.e., not having to come to work on those days. This was surprising because as someone who has worked on and is deeply passionate about the teaching and learning side of the house, these days are like gold. They’re rare and valuable. By New York State law, there are only four possible Superintendent’s Conference Days per year. On Superintendent’s Conference Days, we have the opportunity to work and learn together for more than 30-60 consecutive minutes without students–I’ve always said these are the days when the adults can do the things we can’t do when we have students. As well, when educators are in session and students are not, that is a hardship for many families who have to find childcare or take time off of work. I don’t think I have ever worked in a community where they would be supportive of teachers being able to go to get their oil changed or schedule doctor’s appointments while the families have to find childcare or take time off of work.
The second, and even more surprising aspect of this presentation was how most of my classmates embraced this idea. Many felt that Superintendent’s Conference Days were a waste of time, with teachers often sitting through irrelevant sessions. Some said it was deprofessionalizing to be required to attend such days, and they noted that many teachers take those days off anyway.
In a 2019 speech by Randi Weingarten, the President of the American Federation of Teachers, said, “This deprofessionalization is killing the soul of teaching.” What is deprofessionalization of teachers? According to the same speech, Weingarten explains:
It’s being micromanaged—told that the only decorations allowed in your classroom are the motivational posters provided by a textbook publisher.
It’s worrying about the pacing calendar that requires teachers to follow a predetermined schedule for teaching each topic, even if students need more time to understand the content.
It’s the systemic fixation on standardized testing that dictates virtually every decision about student promotion, graduation, and school accountability, instead of authentic assessments of student learning, like research papers and project-based learning.
Just as the fixation on testing makes teachers’ hair stand on end, so does excessive paperwork—data collection, data entry, and data reporting. One focus group participant summed it up this way: “Teachers are drowning in a sea of paperwork; just let us do our jobs.”
In contrast, in the post “6 Ways to Prevent Deprofessionalization from Devaluing Great Teachers,” on DistrictAdministration.com, TJ Hoffman, a former teacher, curriculum writer, new teacher mentor coordinator and program manager at Pasadena and Houston ISDs in Texas, described deprofessionalization in a slightly different manner. Beginning with an analogy, Hoffman wrote,
Imagine you’re getting prepped for heart surgery when your surgeon says she’ll perform the procedure the same way she did on someone in 2000. You’d call the whole thing off and demand a medical professional who will conduct the operation based on the research and practices developed in the last 23 years. I certainly would.
His concept of deprofessionalization is premised on teachers not having access to professional development. “At its most insidious, [a lack of quality PD] becomes a mindset as educators stop thinking of themselves as professionals. If you have teachers who are isolating from colleagues or expressing sentiments like ‘just tell me what you want me to do’ and ‘it doesn’t matter,’ you have a deprofessionalization problem.” Please note, that Hoffman is not saying teachers start out that way; he’s saying the deprofessionalization is a deleterious response stemming from a lack of high-quality PD over time.
I think it was educational groundbreaker (researcher, teacher, and administrator), Rick DuFour who said, “resist the temptation of ‘or’ and embrace the possibility of ‘and.’” By this he meant, if we confine ourselves to an either/or dichotomy, then we deny ourselves the wealth of possibilities that exist in the mindset of both/and. In other words, I think it’s likely that both things are true. Yes, there are some districts and schools that have low-quality (awful) PD that is not focused on the growth of teachers and is checking the boxes. And, yes, it is critical for teachers to have access to high-quality PD that treats them like professionals–both in terms of high levels of autonomy (Weingarten) and quality (Hoffman).
In that vein, I’m hoping to think through the concept of teacher flexibility and professionalism with a both/and mindset, and I hope you will help me push my boundaries. In other words, please email me or comment on this post below with your thoughts on how we can achieve both high-quality PD on Superintendent’s Conference Days and how to increase teacher flexibility/feeling like they’re treated as professionals. I’m excited to learn from you!
~Heather
P.S. In my hunt for facts and figures to support this post, I stumbled across “15 Teacher Shortage Statistics (2024)” by Devlin Peck. Peck has done a terrific job compiling some really eye-opening data and that is why this post is my Catch of the Week! For example, did you know the stats below which were included at the first statistics Peck provided?
86% of public school struggle to hire educators
Less than 2 in 10 teachers are satisfied with their jobs
51,000 teachers quit their jobs in the United States during 2023
62% of teachers don’t want their children to become teachers
35% of teachers plan to quit in the next 2 years, down from 44%
There are more than 36,500 teacher vacancies in the United States
Only 20% of the teaching workforce are those of color
P.P.S. Please remember to...
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