Looking south

Declining preservice enrolment, high attrition have led to teacher shortages in the U.S.

The fall 2022 edition of Looking Abroad explored five trends impacting the composition of the teaching profession. These trends help researchers understand the teacher workforce to predict its needs and to plan. What scholars found by looking at data over a 29-year period is that the teacher workforce is growing, getting grayer and younger at the same time, and becoming more feminized and racialized (Ingersoll et al. 2018).  

These trends help policy-makers plan for teacher supply, but they do not help predict whether there is or will be a shortfall between the number of teachers available to work and the number of teachers who are needed to fill teaching positions. Sutcher, Darling-Hammond and Carver-Thomas, in their comprehensive 2016 report, examined teacher supply, demand and attrition to predict whether a teacher shortage was on the horizon in the United States. Finally, they considered policy mechanisms for addressing the demand for high-quality teachers. This article will focus on Sutcher et al.’s 2016 predictions for teacher supply in the U.S. and consider what has happened to that supply since the pandemic began. 

Teacher supply 

Predicting how many teachers are needed in the United States in any given year depends on a number of variables. For example, following the Great Recession of 2008, austerity budgets were imposed on public education. This resulted in approximately 120,000 teacher layoffs nationwide in the subsequent four years. Kraft and Bleiberg (2022) note that “the Great Recession and its consequences for K–12 education provide a sobering case study about the repercussions of teacher layoffs” (p. 368) because the cuts had differential impacts on racialized and poor students, and student achievement was negatively affected. In addition, efforts to recruit teachers and diversify the teacher workforce were undermined because of widespread teacher layoffs.  

As the American economy began to rebound, school authorities hired more teachers to address student enrolment growth and reinstate previously eliminated programming. As a result of these interrelated factors, the demand for teachers across the United States has grown. Sutcher et al. (2016), using modelling of available data, predicted that “unless major changes in teacher supply or a reduction in demand for additional teachers occur over the coming years, annual teacher shortages could increase to as much as 112,000 teachers by 2018” (p. 1). Unfortunately, the predictions made in 2016 are being realized as we continue to move through the COVID-19 pandemic. Carver-Thomas et al. (2022) observed that “around the country, severe teacher shortages have put greater pressure on teachers and administrators to scramble to cover positions that lack permanent teachers” (p. 1). This raises the question, what is driving the gap in teacher supply in the U.S.? 
Sutcher et al. (2016) identify four main drivers of shortages in teacher supply in the U.S.: declining enrolment in preservice training programs, increased funding for school authorities, increased student enrollment and high teacher attrition.  

First, the pool of newly graduated teachers in the U.S. is getting smaller because of declining enrolment in teacher preparation programs. Sutcher et al. (2016) wrote that “between 2009 and 2014 . . . teacher education enrolments dropped from 691,000 to 451,000, a 35 per cent reduction” (p. 3). The decreasing enrolment and graduation rates in teacher preparation programs suggest that teaching is becoming a less attractive career option in the U.S. How the status of the profession relates to the increasingly feminized demographic composition of the profession (Ingersoll and Merrill 2010, p. 18) is not well understood, but Irvine (2013) points out that a consequence of the feminization of the teaching profession is “wage inequality and a decline in occupational status” (p. 281). A potential avenue for future research is understanding why young men do not consider teaching a viable career choice.  

In the years following the austerity budgets, school authority budgets in the U.S. gradually increased, and school authorities sought to restore previous student–teacher ratios as well as programming that had been previously cut. COVID-19 relief funding also supplemented school authority budgets, allowing for further hiring of teachers and other support workers (Carver-Thomas et al. 2022). Coupled with budgetary improvement was increased student enrolment in schools, and these two factors combined to increase demand for teachers in the U.S.  

Teacher attrition is the fourth factor impacting teacher shortages. Sutcher et al. write that in the U.S., attrition rates for teachers exceed those of other professions as well as those of many other countries, including Canada. Further, these rates cannot be attributed solely to retirement as “contrary to common belief, retirements generally constitute less than one-third of those who leave teaching in a given year” (Sutcher et al. 2016, p. 4). If school authorities could reduce attrition rates, this would go a long way toward resolving teacher shortages in the U.S. Sutcher et al. point out that “in theory, the pool of former teachers is large, but estimates suggest only a third of teachers who exit the profession ever return” (p. 4).  

Understanding why teachers leave the profession is an important task for researchers and policy makers. The next article in this series will consider the reasons why teachers leave teaching and outline what can be done to encourage teacher retention while raising the status of the teaching profession.  

---

References

Carver-Thomas, D., D. Burns, M. Leung-Gagné and N. Ondrasek. 2022. Teacher Shortages During the Pandemic: How California Districts Are  Responding. Learning Policy Institute. https://doi.org/10.54300/899.809 

Ingersoll, R., and L. Merrill. 2010. “Who’s Teaching Our Children?” Education Leadership 67: 14–20.  

Ingersoll, R., E. Merrill, D. Stuckey and G. Collins. 2018. Seven Trends: The Transformation of the Teaching Force—Updated October 2018. University of Pennsylvania: Consortium for Policy Research in Education Research Reports. https://repository.upenn.edu/cpre_researchreports/108/ 

Irvine, L. 2013. “Feminization of Work.” In vol 1 of Sociology of Work: An Encyclopedia, 280–283. Ed. Vicki Smith. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.  

Kraft, M. A., and J. F. Bleiberg. 2022. “The Inequitable Effects of Teacher Layoffs: What We Know and Can Do.” Education Finance and Policy 17, no. 2: 367–377. https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00369 

Sutcher, L., L. Darling-Hammond and D. Carver-Thomas. 2016. A Coming Crisis in Teaching? Teacher Supply, Demand, and Shortages in the U.S. Palo Alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute. 

 

Three-part series This is the second part of a three-part series exploring teacher shortages and the impact of COVID-19 on teachers, as well as policy solutions to the shortage. The first part appeared in the fall 2022 issue of the ATA Magazine.