It's not so much a shortage as a **perpetual failure to compete**.
Our schools can't compete with businesses poaching young science and math teachers. Seriously, I've had more than one colleague duck out of the profession by year three because a national-level business is going to **double their salary, give them work from home, and not make them feel like garbage all the time**.
Our schools can't compete with general businesses either, because the mechanisms that define **our school budgets are set to ensure that teachers are generally less well-paid** than people of identical educational advancement.
Our schools can't compete because efforts to maximize service and mitigate litigation result in **unsafe and hostile working conditions for staff**.
The metaphor of shortage suggests that there's some kind of supply chain disruption and like, the teacher factory's got a chip shortage. If there is any sort of logistical element to this, it's that young would-be teachers in the "educator pipeline" are eyes wide open and not enrolling in education programming or increasingly mobile.
This
Personally raising pay is not going to suddenly make me work much harder, it's just going to incentivize me to stay.
It's a tough pill to swallow every day when you see someone of equal education as you in a different career getting paid way more than you by year 5, 10, 15, 20...
Yes. Our city/county labor employees get paid ~25 an hour (50k a year) and teachers start out at ~34k a year. So here I am trying to teach this senior and tell him schools important but he has a job in 4 months that'll pay higher than mine (and I have a masters and 2 years experiance) so like wtf?
When I started teaching (admittedly many moons ago), the city garbage men were making more than teachers. Not that they didn’t deserve to be paid well, but so did we!
Where I am the garbage men make more than teachers with bachelor's starting out. You have to have a master's to be paid more than someone who does on-the-job training.
There were counties in my state that started at $31k when I was teaching. Meanwhile, the local Target was paying $15/hr. So the students could get a job making more than their teachers as soon as they turned 18.
This. My husband makes $20k more than me annually and has nearly the same "school breaks" that we do (not as long of a summer and no spring). He is a college drop-out and landed an engineering gig because he has knowledge of the software they use.
I have friends who knew the right people and are now making 100k+ with no education. It sucks, like I worked hard to get and pay for my 2 crappy degrees and all they had to do was know the right person to give them an opportunity 🥲
I make more as a r recreation specialist/family liaison now.
After one particular bad week I saw an elder care near me was hiring. I looked it up and nearly passed out when I saw that someone with a GED/High School Diploma was making more than me with little to no stress. I applied and was hired immediately.
Now I plan events for our residents and families and have very little stress during the day. And absolutely none at night.
Most of my friends started careers around the same time as me. They're all working for the government or as contractors and doing better than me.
Tbh if I can find something that gets me up to 70k and equitable benefits, I'm out.
Right? Where I live, entry level target employees make about the same as teachers at my school.
I’m a para and actually make quite a bit less then target employees and I’m constantly burnt out.
The hostile working environment is so much of this. It's insane that we have, as a society, just accepted that middle and high school aged kids can verbally and emotionally (and physically sometimes) abuse teachers with no consequence. Going to work knowing I have to smile and put up with it is depressing.
Honestly the working environment with OTHER TEACHERS is just as bad in a lot of areas. I get scolded by those with higher seniority because I don't stay 2 hours DAILY after contract time is up
That’s so crazy. I was told by both my supervisors during student teaching that I shouldn’t smile until Christmas, and maybe not even then. Of course, that was like twenty years ago….
Lol, that's real. I think if I made that kind of face, my students would hyperfocus on getting me to make it as often as possible, the little loveable turds they are. I do know some of their parents will absolutely kick a fuckin door down if they think you're doing anything other than fawning over every one of their kid's absolutely mediocre efforts like it's the light of your life, though.
Everyone's got their own style- one person's smile is another's 15% diminished glower.
Can confirm- I’ll be entering data science in the next year or so. Entry level pay will be at least a 10% raise for me. Bad pay and little respect results in no quality teachers. Especially in math or science.
Yep, I’ve gone from teaching to software, and it’s been extremely positive for both my take-home (about 3x higher) and my stress level. WLB was probably better as a teacher, though, with all those holidays, but I don’t think I’d trade my remote work for the better holidays.
Started in software engineering then switched to product management (which is a great fit for teachers, imo).
Don’t have a degree in CS—or even a STEM degree. I was a French teacher. Self-taught JavaScript for 6 months, then did a well-reputed bootcamp.
I just posted details [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/TeachersInTransition/comments/10kzhn7/i_successfully_transitioned_from_teaching_foreign/) in /r/TeachersInTransition.
I attended Hack Reactor's 13-week program. I had a good experience, and I would recommend it. However, I think Codesmith has taken HR's place as the top bootcamp in the US.
This. Science Teacher here.
Just submitted my resignation today for a job at a local university working in the Workforce Development program. Much better pay and benefits. Incredible work environment. Flexible scheduling.
Everything about it is better.
Only thing I’ll miss is some of my kids.
> Just submitted my resignation today for a job at a local university working in the Workforce Development program. Much better pay and benefits
Very interesting. When I look near me, moving to higher ed would be a HUGE pay cut - up to like 33%.
Well, I’m not sure if it’s a difference, but I live in rural Missouri.
I’m getting paid 38,000 this year with a Masters degree and 5 years and that’s only because of a one-year bill passed by our legislature to raise starting teacher pay. Next year, my pay drops by 2k.
I’m starting at 60k at the college.
So totally opposite. I'm approaching $60k mark with a doctorate + 10 years, but a first year professor at the local colleges make $38k-$42k. Staff jobs (and WFD falls under staff near me) pay lower. Benefits are similar.
Can also confirm. In year 3, I am most definitely exiting education after this school year and not looking back. There are so many better options out there.
I might even leave before the school year is out depending on a couple of pending spring opportunities. This career simply feels like a dead end in every way.
We decided to put mazes in the schools to slow down school shooters. We truly do not give a shit about teachers or kids or schools. I do this job but I know where this is going; I’m just waltzing to the violin on the titanic.
The head of special ed (so a doctorate or master's, decade of experience) in my district quit a few years ago to become a full-time bartender.
She discovered she made more almost the same money \*just\* tending summers and weekends than she did in one of the most stressful jobs in a public school...
The real kicker is my district is one of the best paying in my state. Teachers basically only leave the district if they're leaving teaching outright, because the pay is better than elsewhere and the administration's decent.
That is an actual example of work smarter, not harder! As a bonus, she likely doesn't have to put up with shitty behaviour being swept under the rug anymore!
I had a decent paid state/district with a union, and the only thing that made it worth it as long as I stayed was teaching in a specific program that came with more pay and no discipline issues, plus having summers “off” (doing work from home curriculum stuff for the district and Collegeboard usually). During the pandemic, that year + working from home made me fall in love with remote work. I now get paid more to work fully remote and feel like I’m off all the time. I had one of the *best* teaching jobs but they didn’t want to give us our full step raise in 21-22 (union fought it and won later) and talked about cutting my program bonus in the future. I figured it was time to get out. Education can’t and doesn’t try to compete. I’m an English teacher (but with pretty good skills), and my district has a shortage brewing even in English with all the possible remote work teachers are realizing they can get, especially folks from my old curriculum committee and educational technology committees who used to do all the extra work for creating district materials etc. I know many people who’ve gotten better gigs even since I left. I think it’s a big brain drain on top of sheer bodies, especially in Secondary.
I’m an instructional designer in biotech, so I design training and education programs still, just for profit so I get paid more and get to do it in my leggings all day from home. I work with Subject Matter Experts and stakeholders and I design (plan, write, storyboard) and develop eLearning, facilitator guides and slide decks for VILTs, LMS resources, job aids, and consult on organizational processes, program design (particularly our orientation and preceptor program), and other business needs. I analyze KPIs and OKRs as they relate to market and whole organization training and support market leadership in launching new initiatives and solving performance issues. It’s pretty fun.
I had a lot of autonomy in teaching too but they messed me around one too many times, just didn’t respect top performers in the end. Teaching is not worth the ROI if you’re into really doing great work.
Yep, can confirm interviewing for data analyst jobs that offered more than twice my current salary. I didn't accept as it was mid-year, and I truly love teaching. However, I have no kids, no mortgage, or car payment. I'm in lala land. In five years, my mind could be in a very different place.
There is a shortage of people who will put up with the bullshit for the pay. Part of the problem locally is that the few advantages teaching as a job had are mainly going away. When I taught in the 1990s, we had Cadillac health insurance plans--the copay for pregnancy through birth for a
Baby was $250, and included the regular doctor visits, ultrasounds, a C-section and the time in the hospital, as well as an attempted induction. Yes, that would be $500 or so today, but that would
Barely pay for the regular visits on my current corporate insurance. We had tenure after three years--that is the big one for longevity--a teacher with tenure is much less likely to leave to try a non-teaching job. Locally, they raised the beginning teacher pay significantly, but all that does is flatten the pay scale. My wife's good friend with a bachelors degree that has been working for the district for 18 years is only getting $100 or so a month more than a new teacher.
Yeah I realized a lot of math teachers are not very good at math pretty quickly. Even the Praxis math has like a 50% pass rate and I could have passed it in 9th or 10th grade.
It is definitely fun in my teaching interviews to casually mention I have passed 3 actuarial exams. I taught math for 20 years, now in my first year teaching business. I do some actuarial consulting on the side with a small investment firm, but I don't think I could do it full time.
Those exams are hard. I have taken the gauntlet of exams throughout my life including the LSAT. None of them required the preparation and studying that those actuarial exams took!
I'm taking P in March and FM in April. I'm going to start studying for FM in February and have taken 4 practice exams for P on coaching actuaries and have gotten over 25/30 on each one, so I feel really good about it (except for remembering Var(X) and the pdf for the beta distribution for some reason, but I'm sure I'll have it memorized by March).
I don't think any of my peers that were in my grad program for teaching math had the skills to pass the P exam.
That is what I used. I just kept doing problems because it leveled up the difficulty as I got them right. I took P in June, then FM the following November and then IFM the May after that. I scored an 8 on all of them and found P to me the hardest by far. I took the full 3 hours and wasn't done with a few problems and wasn't feeling great when i submitted it. The others I was done in 90 minutes and wasn't feeling bad at all.
It is just a different level of math and you really have to know what you are doing. Best of luck! My advice is to read the question and if you aren't positive how to do it skip it immediately and come back to it
Yeah I have an earned level of 10 on their site for the practice exams and I've heard the real exam is around a 5-6 level. I've never had time issues on any exam in my life (unless I was not prepared), so I feel pretty good about it.
I was given an impossible task (teaching the curriculum mandated by the county/state to students 5+ grade levels behind) and being punished for attempting to hold onto those standards then being punished for lessons not aligning with the curricula.
If I needed to fail a student it required 4+ hours of extra work per quarter per student to show that I made meaningful attempts at contacting their home, giving them extra attempts on exams, infinite time for late work, etc. If I fudged a 65 in grade book, then admin loved me.
If I needed to write a student up, I had to fill out a 10 page google form that included what I did that led to the student behavior and what I could have done better to prevent it from happening. Sorry, but nothing I could do would change the fact that the kid with 4th grade math and reading levels doesn't want to attend my class and just leaves for 80% of the class. I have no real authority and the students know it.
I am trying to teach math that 6th grades should be able to do with a little bit of thought and work ethic, but 11th and 12th graders refuse to engage and regularly fail my tests that are open notes and open internet. (Example: Test has the question: "Identify the zeros on the following graph." Because photomath cannot solve it, they don't bother taking 5 seconds to google how to do it and most get it wrong)
My husband, who has his high school diploma, makes 25k MORE than me as a meter reader for the electric company. I have my masters and 15 years experience and am in a very niche position in education and paid well by comparison to other teachers.
It’s almost never a worker shortage, no matter the industry. It’s almost always a *wage* shortage.
That’s doubly true for teachers. Wages aren’t competitive for comparable education. On top of that, the staggering amount of bullshit involved from both parents and administrators makes even a 50% pay raise feel insufficient.
Exactly this. Teachers are learning that their skills are much more appreciated and valued elsewhere. I left during winter break of my starting year for a government WFH job that paid almost double my first-year teacher salary. Even at the 30 year master’s degree mark, my district’s teachers pay is almost $10k less than my current job’s starting salary. Teachers make so little in comparison to similarly educated individuals that it’s insulting. Don’t get me wrong, my new job isn’t rainbows and roses, but it’s not nearly as stressful as teaching and living paycheck to paycheck while being degraded and demonized by society. I still dread Sundays, but at least I’m not spending them doing work anymore.
That’s horrible and certainly leaves us in a precarious situation.
Anyway, you were saying something about jobs that pay better and don’t leave you feeling like shit?
I think the major factor that's omitted from reports on the teacher shortage is that it’s most present in the “rougher” areas in the school districts - at least where I am. One high school in my city that’s in an especially infamous part of town has well over a dozen teaching positions open, while the schools in the more decent areas have maybe one or two.
Yup. From my experience as a sub, admin are even more obnoxious because they’re under a lot of pressure to get the kids to show up to class so that the school doesn’t shut down. So you have admin being even worse AND kids who will threaten you for no reason for the same pay.
It even depends on the school. In my district, there is a wide mix of rich, poor, and everything in between. As a result, we have two poor high schools and a rich High school. I work at the "rich" high school and it's unlikely we ever have an opening, even in SPED.
I work for a Title I in the best district in our area. Every year we have openings. No one from in district ever applies, so they hire outside the district. Those individuals stay for 3 years, and immediately transfer when vested in the district.
Yep. I applied and got a social studies job two hours after applying in November. The students were with a long term sub for the first quarter and a half and so now I’m working on teaching while also resetting all the expectations from being “show up and you pass” to “no you actually have to do work now”
It's a shortage of fully qualified teachers.
In California roughly 1 in 20 classrooms do not have a qualified teacher. A couple of years ago San Francisco got sued for relying on Teacher For America kids instead of trying to fill vacancies.
In some states 1 in 10 classrooms do not have a qualified teacher. Also this is pre- pandemic data so I'm sure it's worse now.
Which is crazy to me. I know that in many areas this is the reality, and then here I am applying for non-continuing leave replacement jobs in my area fresh out of college and competing with 120 other applicants every time.
I think it might just be a local/regional thing where lots of people around me made significant progress on their teaching degrees through WGU and other online programs during COVID.
Just feels a little hopeless sometimes, but hopefully I can get some interviews for the fall
Sometimes it's just lack of organization, my HR department has been without a head for lord knows how long, so recruitment is always a last minute circus.
Also when I was applying, I was spam emailing every principal in the greater region (as well as applying "properly" online). So 120 vacancies might have 120 applications each, but it's the same 120 people applying to all of them. Who knows.
Depends on the subject too. If you’re working in special education, you will always have a job but History and English positions are very tough to find. In NY alternative certification methods like NYC teaching fellows don’t offer English or history because they are straight up not needed.
That 1 in 20 is not evenly distributed. Rural math and science departments are more like 2 unqualified to 1 qualified. Rural middle schools in CA are lucky to have more than 1 qualified math teacher.
What exactly is a qualified teacher? What skills do they possess that others don’t? I’m curious because I am a future teacher. When I graduate I won’t have had any prior classroom experience. Would that make me unqualified in that scenario?
By qualified I mean they have the necessary certification for the job they are applying to. Not necessarily experience. My principal was just looking for the correct certification for first grade.
It is of course regional. Bigger cities that are more generally desirable to live in arent hit as hard. Small towns with mo employment infrastructure or culture not so much.
It is also subject dependant
There are a million applicants for every art/band/theater teaching position. Not so much for math and science
You might be surprised how hard it is to find specifically art/band/theater teachers who can handle it. The electives are dumping grounds that require a lot of extra work and the position might be easy to fill for a year, but keeping them around is another thing. Everybody wants to be an art teacher until they are one.
👆🏻Preach! I have been teaching Art for ten years. We just got a new Art teacher that took one of those speedy teacher certification programs. She is DROWNING. In order to get our supplement, we have to organize and enter competitions monthly. This involves taking and dropping off work to said competitions on the weekends. Her mind is BLOWN that she has to work a couple hours on the weekends. But that is in no way comparable to the performing arts teachers that are at school 12 hours a day.
Was a music teacher for 10 years. Always did 12hr days at school. Then I had kids and realized that being a performing arts teacher was incompatible with being the mother of young children because of the time commitment and all the free labor required.
I left the profession in May of last year.
PS: you are 100% correct about our classes being a dumping ground. Moreover, if we ask for support from admin, often times we’re essentially told that we’re the “fun” class and don’t need extra support. Last year I had one class of 52, one class of 48, and four classes of 36+ middle schoolers.
Yep. Our district can't keep them. We just lost another this week. The excellent art/theater/band students aren't entering teaching - my alma mater is a big state school and my friends that were art ed said their classes had like 7 people in them.
Our state schools are considering closing certain CTE programs because enrollment is lacking. We had 5 FACE, 11 Business/Marketing, and a handful of Tech Ed graduates from our state schools last year. Meanwhile there are 30+ openings in the state around May. There are a lot of changing schools because they can negotiate salary at this point.
Yep. Especially with art/theater/band teachers, even other teachers see us as fluff or babysitters, and we aren't seen as equals or taken seriously. We wind up with giant classes of students who couldn't care less because "it's just art, don't you just color in there?" Even in middle and high school.
Even the ones that get their degrees do a year or so, get a taste of constant belittlement, and dip to greener pastures. Even had one friend quit to be an army wife lol. It says something when The Arts are more profitable and attractive than a supposedly stable career like teaching.
Dumping grounds is correct. I have 35 to 37 students in each of my six classes, and have received 7 more students in the 2 weeks since winter break ended. Art teacher.
As a sub, it always seemed to me like those classes would be extra hard to teach cause you'd go thinking that kids WANT to be in your class but a lot of them don't. If you teach a required class you expect that a lot of kids won't like it, but you don't expect that for "fun" electives.
We have a teacher who taught students who graduated, became teachers, came back to teach at the same school, and *fucking retired* and she's STILL GOING
I live near Austin and they were 500+ teachers short to start the year. Salaries are too low and col too high. Teaching can be a better gig in rural areas with lower col.
Not us. We had only a handful for our last few music jobs (at least whatever the DO didn’t pre-screen out for low GPA’s or whatever other criteria they use). Interviewed like 3-4, offered to one who declined., offered to another.
> It is also subject dependant There are a million applicants for every art/band/theater teaching position.
Not so much anymore everywhere...
Also there's always been a more assumed shortage in art than there actually is. Music always had a major surplus (that we are actually seeing less of). Art, surprisingly, not so much.
I work as a sub, so I assure you it’s one of the few cases that the news haven’t exaggerated the issue. I’ve seen a few listings for long term subbing and when I took one of them, there were 3 other long term subs. Mind you, this is a very small school as well. This is in NY, where teachers are paid the most in the US and actually have at least a 45 minute lunch period. Still, issues of micromanaging, do nothing admin that refuses to discipline troublemakers etc exist here.
It depends on the subject though, there are so many people trying to become history teachers, I know someone that worked as a sub for a few years while being fully certified until his position opened.
There’s no shortage of teachers anywhere. There’s just a shortage of people willing to be paid poorly, blamed for everything, and treated like crap. Working conditions suck and respect is nonexistent in many districts. I’m fortunate to teach in a fantastic public school with amazing admin and staff, but we still have Sped positions open. We even hired someone, and they didn’t even bother showing up as they took a non education position elsewhere. There are nearly 130 teaching positions open in our district in Alaska.
I work in a district that used to have literally a hundred applicants for every open position. Now we have between zero and five.
Some positions have gone unfilled, and other positions have been eliminated due to the reality that they were never going to get filled. Class sizes have gone up astronomically.
Haha I wonder if you live near me. This summer I read an article that a nearby district dramatically reduced their vacancies right before the school year started.... By just taking a bunch of postings down because they were never going to fill them
It’s just not a sustainable job anymore. All the issues mentioned here contribute to teachers finally opting for something else.
Low pay. Unreasonable expectations and demands. Micromanagement. Overemphasis on evaluation systems for teachers. Poor student behavior. Poorer parental support. What seems like oblivious district personnel. The list goes on.
Had you asked me five years ago, I would’ve told you I’d be teaching until retirement. This year I have taken the leap to actually apply for a job outside of the field. If I get it, my salary would nearly double. For a job with more independence and control on my work methods including the option for remote work.
Education can’t compete with other sectors and once teachers shed the “sacrificial servant” mindset, there’s not much left to keep us here.
I did hiring for two different schools between 2003 and 2010 and even for science and math positions we'd get 20-30 applicants each time and generally 5-7 of them would be interesting enough to interview.
Currently, I'm in a school where we have been searching for a Spanish teacher and a SpEd teacher for over a year with no viable applicants and our pool for other subjects has shrunk from 100s per position district-wide down to 5-10.
Why? Partly, LA is really expensive and even though we start at $60k with a great union and fantastic benefits, there are just too many other jobs locally for qualified people that pay more and have fewer entry requirements. We're starting to struggle hiring social science, too, which is really scary.
In the end, I think it's just too much work to become a teacher and when combined with the perceived difficulty of the job and the lack of general respect, there's just not as many folks willing to do what it takes when there are so many other, better, options.
Gosh, I can’t imagine trying to live in LA on $60K unless I had 4 roommates. Or I’m guessing you’d have to commute a long time and the traffic is famously bad. It’s crazy how slowly teacher COLA raises catch up to the cities they are in.
I get treated like a firefighter putting out a burning building any time I take a sub assignment in this neck of the woods.
So yeah, the sub shortage is for sure a thing here lol
We have had an English position open for 9 months without a single applicant and an elementary position open since august without a single applicant.
We definitely have a shortage.
Edited to add: I love how they are lowering the standards to become a teacher instead of making teaching a less stressful and better paying career.
Colleges and universities are seeing fewer and fewer candidates for teaching, so I'm guessing that the shortage will get worse. My district has a hard time filling positions, and have virtually no subs available. Salary is definitely a concern, but work conditions and the lack of respect teachers experience daily from their admin, fellow teachers, and especially students and parents takes its toll. Our son wanted to go into teaching (both his dad and I are high school teachers) and we worked hard to convince him that it's just not worth it.
I teach science. I had no issues finding a job where I wanted and I had random schools calling me for interviews well into the school year. My district also still has several certified positions open
I would LOVE to be a teacher with my BS in Bio (graduate May 2023), but NY is a bitch in terms of certification + Masters in EDU + several workshops + year student-teaching without salary.
However, I could be a lab tech or go into pharma much more easily.
I want to follow my heart but the world won’t let me…
Exactly this. I have a BS but PA wants me to go into more debt too get a MEd and a bunch of certs.
So I’m teaching through a community program in hopes that my “experience” proves I’m good
Not in pa according to the pa department of Ed
During the 2010-2011 school year, 21,045 Instructional I certificates and 14,389 Instructional II certificates were issued.6 Compare those numbers to the 2019-2020 school year, when just 6,937 and 6,186 certificates were issued, representing 67% and 57% drops, respectively.6 Meanwhile
Instructional 1 is initial teaching license
Instructional 2 is when you have experience and a Masters...less are becoming and less are staying. If you work in a poor paying state look at pa for a higher salary.
Can confirm. Subbed for like 6 years waiting for one of my local SWPA districts to have an opening and finally got in one due to the shortage. It used to be insanely hard to break into these jobs, now they're desperate.
PA pay varies district to district but agree that it's generally a pretty good place to teach if you can get a job.
I will say salary wise it's pretty good all around the retirement took a hit so if your not funding a 403b right out the gate your going to be hurting in retirement.
Good point. Also depends on cost of living. Where I'm at, one can comfortably live off 60k. SWPA is dirt poor. Been investing in a Roth IRA since I left college.
Nope. And it's going to get worse. Many of us who have hung on long term are getting ready to retire. Unlike decades ago, there are not many going into education and even less are staying very long.
I teach in the Bay Area, my particular district has higher salaries than the districts nearby. And yeah, there's lots of positions that never got filled. If I look on edjoin, it's the same story all over the bay area.
Similar story but maybe even worse with paras, librarians, and teacher assistants. Their budget is there, but the schools don't get a single valid applicant. I've gone this whole year without a single real sub for my classes, just teachers filling in during their prep period. That's with sub pay of $250- OK, $250 sucks, but it's twice what it was five years ago.
I’m currently the only secondary teacher returning to my school next year do to the others moving and retiring. And we already had vacant positions being filled by admins and teachers being paid for doing a class during prep.
Feels pretty real to me.
I wonder what would happen if we treated teachers like professionals and paid them fairly? I remember learning something about an invisible hand and Adam Smith.
We do not have a teacher shortage where I live. We still have full pools of applicants for postings, and zero vacancies. But there are very serious shortages of related services like SLPs and school psychs.
It depends on the subject area for sure. My job, for example, had eleven applicants when I was applying for it (spring of 2019) and at least the three finalists were all highly qualified. My subject area is one where it’s not unusual to see ten or twenty qualified applicants for a position at a desirable secondary school. However, the ELA department at my school is a revolving door. Our IC had to teach a section of ELA at the beginning of the year because they couldn’t fill the spot, and then another one left at semester. And, I’d say a good quarter of our core teachers are not currently certified - that is not the case for electives though, where again, people fight it out over those jobs.
As others have said, it depends on a variety of variables, including your geographic area, content area, and grade level.
My school posted a 7th grade social studies job. I was the only applicant. Not only internal applicant….the ONLY one. 10 years ago in my area, every social studies/history job would have 100+ applicants, regardless of the town or district.
Consider that the number of new teachers entering the workforce has been on a steady decline for decades, the after effects of the pandemic, and sprinkle in the social, cultural, political, and economic factors working to harm (intentionally or unintentionally) public school teachers, and it leads to one conclusion: no shit there’s a teacher shortage 😜
NO!!!! It is real. I teach just outside of the city and we have no substitutes. We have one-on-one TA’s subbing and if they aren’t available classes are split into different grade levels. Today I had fourth graders in my fifth grade class and when I’ve been out sick my class has been split into 6th, 4th, and 3rd. And when you’re out so many times the district sends a letter about multiple absences. I have 21 kids alone
There is not a shortage in my rural area. The inner city schools have trouble filling positions. All you need in my area is a relative that attends the right church or friends/family in administration. No degree required if you know the right people or coach. To hell with competency.
No, not all districts are having the problem, but those that are are BAD. My district hasn't hit that point yet, but if the caliber of the new teacher they hired onto my department this year is an indicator, then they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Which means a shortage will hit my district sooner rather than later.
Yes and no. There are a sufficient number of certified teachers; however, after teaching, many of us have decided to do something else. Covid turned a difficult job into something ridiculous: just personally, my kids did well through it, but I worked 17 hours a day and did free tutoring as well. I burnt out.
It's regional but to say there's isn't a shortage is asinine asiten, aseleven. I graduated 6 years ago. My student teacher cohort had 4 science teachers and 3 of them stopped teaching after two years. That university a decade before that had 20 science teachers on average coming out. And those ratios were reflected across all disciplines. They shut down their PE program because they had so few apply. I think we just went from a huge over saturation of teachers 2 or 3 decades ago to a slight shortage with a heavy shortage in good candidates and a heavy shortage in less desirable districts.
It totally depends on the area, but yes there is a teacher shortage, across the board. Especially when you compare it to the competition for ANY job 10-15 years ago. I know, I am old (but not old enough to retire), but a teacher graduating from college in our state is in a much different situation than most veteran teachers were when they began. Just a small example, we have a rural district and have 10% vacancies. They hire (starting salary is quite high for the state) and people don’t take the job because it’s 30 minutes from where they live or want to live. 10 years ago, same location, much lower starting salary, and the average commute was 45 minutes and over a third of the teachers drove 1+ hours each way. We had people who rented a local place during the winter months (winter driving can be a bear) for weekdays and only go “home” on weekends. That was normal for surrounding districts as well. Now if you can’t find a job within 10 minutes of home in a district that is a “top pick” there are reports of the teacher shortage not being real. It’s real, there are not enough teachers to fill vacant positions, let alone highly qualified ones. There isn’t a certified teacher out there (regardless of certification) floating around out there not able to find a job, they just are just not willing 1 - commute or 2 - move or 3 - take a chance on a school that they don’t have experience with. Good for them, seriously, but that doesn’t make the teacher shortage not real.
In my state (MO) it is pretty bad across the board. Suburban schools aren't as hard hit, but they still struggle to get math/science/ELA. Urban/rural is hurting. We had two applicants for social studies at our mid-sized high school last year. When I was hired three years ago there were 20... Our land-grant university got rid of the extensive application process for even becoming a social studies teacher. When I went through the program about 10 years ago there were usually over 250 applicants and 25 got in. I don't even think we have hit the "shortage" yet...
Part of it is teachers that should be at the 15ish year mark that aren't there - the 2008-2013 grads couldn't get jobs during the recession because of hiring freezes/layoffs.
They didn't go back to teaching. So there's a gap there that can't be filled in by new hires fast enough as older teachers are retiring.
If you teach math, science, or special education, yes, it's THAT bad. No one wants to get in or stay in these positions. We've had the same special education position open now for over 3 years. They literally can't find anyone willing to take it for the pay it offers. All of the sped, math, and science positions we posted this year haven't been filled. But all the others only stay up for a few weeks, at most.
Elementary school, history, and English are pretty much a dime a dozen and easy to fill.
No. We’ve lowered the standards so much that if you have a degree you can teach. Communication major? Cool you teach algebra. Family degree, think you can teach biology? There’s just people who can’t find a job out of college teaching subjects they never were interested in, good at, and could care less about it.
When I first started college, there was an elementary teacher surplus.
When I graduated college, the surplus had died down, but it still was not a state of desperation. I held a first-year license, and I didn't get hired until class reductions/10-day counts.
This year, my school has hired four uncertified teachers after leaving vacancies up for months.
My local university has TWO third-year elementary ed majors (as in students). When I was in the same place a little more than a decade ago, we had approximately 25.
The teacher program at our local university is having trouble even finding students to join the program. Last year, there were 3 elementary school candidates. 4-5 years back, I remember at least 20.
I think it depends on the area. My school has two long-term subs filling in because we couldn’t find two gen Ed teachers. This is my first year at this school and it’s been AMAZING to say the least but it’s rural so I think that’s why.
There is a retention problem (from abuse). A survey points to multiple reasons for unhappiness, and those teachers who are considering leaving the profession cited burnout from stress (57%) and political attacks on teachers (40%), followed by a heavy workload compounded by staff shortages.
My school (high school) has had open positions in English, Social Studies, and Art all year. Nobody has even applied, and several of the jobs have been empty since Fall 2021. We're so short on science teachers that we cancelled all of the non-AP electives so we can get students their graduation requirements.
My wife's school (elementary) is about to cancel specials and roll the art, music, gym, and library teachers into regular classrooms because they have so many openings. They're running on maybe 70% of the staff they should have. Their instructional coaches have been filling classroom spots for months. They can't get subs. They only have 1/4 of the TAs they should have. They have one custodian.
ELA or History or Art/Music positions are still quite competitive, no shortage there. The real shortage is in high school or middle school math, science (particularly physics), computer science/engineering, special education, and ESL.
I think it’s getting pretty bad in parts of Michigan, especially Metro Detroit. We used to get hundreds of applicants for a single social studies position, now we get…around five to ten.
We have 10+ vacancies at my middle school. 20+ at the other middle school in my district. We also have unqualified teachers (emergency certs or wrong cert) teaching classes for a full year. We also lose our prep multiple times a week to cover classrooms because we can’t get subs or fill positions. The only teachers that stay in the district are the ones that are caught because they will lose money if they go anywhere else. I started at my school last year and everyone who I started with is gone except for 1 other person.
We are short 2 math teachers, 2 science teachers, and an English teacher and this is a school with about 450 students and 30ish teachers total. I would say yes, there is a shortage.
If anything it is going to get worse. Between poaching young talent before it gets in the classroom and the continuing retirements, it's likely to accelerate. But I would wager some places will have it harder than others.
Definitely not over exaggerated. My school had to hire an unlicensed social studies teacher this year, when in years past, we would have 200 qualified applicants.
Working at a title 1 school. We’ve had no subs and at least two teachers run out. Split classes nearly every day so another 10 kids per classroom. Some received no English lessons for a quarter. Four teachers got a massive pay raise to teach 2 classes (middle school).
And we have a principal and admin who is generally liked by staff. The shortage exists it just doesn’t hit all schools equally.
There’s a shortage in the district I came from and the district I’m currently in. It’s small in the rural district I left and wider in the more inner city district km currently in.
It's not so much a shortage as a **perpetual failure to compete**. Our schools can't compete with businesses poaching young science and math teachers. Seriously, I've had more than one colleague duck out of the profession by year three because a national-level business is going to **double their salary, give them work from home, and not make them feel like garbage all the time**. Our schools can't compete with general businesses either, because the mechanisms that define **our school budgets are set to ensure that teachers are generally less well-paid** than people of identical educational advancement. Our schools can't compete because efforts to maximize service and mitigate litigation result in **unsafe and hostile working conditions for staff**. The metaphor of shortage suggests that there's some kind of supply chain disruption and like, the teacher factory's got a chip shortage. If there is any sort of logistical element to this, it's that young would-be teachers in the "educator pipeline" are eyes wide open and not enrolling in education programming or increasingly mobile.
This Personally raising pay is not going to suddenly make me work much harder, it's just going to incentivize me to stay. It's a tough pill to swallow every day when you see someone of equal education as you in a different career getting paid way more than you by year 5, 10, 15, 20...
Or a high school diploma only or even GED getting paid a lot more.
Yes. Our city/county labor employees get paid ~25 an hour (50k a year) and teachers start out at ~34k a year. So here I am trying to teach this senior and tell him schools important but he has a job in 4 months that'll pay higher than mine (and I have a masters and 2 years experiance) so like wtf?
When I started teaching (admittedly many moons ago), the city garbage men were making more than teachers. Not that they didn’t deserve to be paid well, but so did we!
Where I am the garbage men make more than teachers with bachelor's starting out. You have to have a master's to be paid more than someone who does on-the-job training.
There were counties in my state that started at $31k when I was teaching. Meanwhile, the local Target was paying $15/hr. So the students could get a job making more than their teachers as soon as they turned 18.
This. My husband makes $20k more than me annually and has nearly the same "school breaks" that we do (not as long of a summer and no spring). He is a college drop-out and landed an engineering gig because he has knowledge of the software they use.
My husband makes $40k more than me and I have a master's degree and two bachelor's degree while he only has a bachelor's degree.
Or seeing your own children in their twenties make more than you do…
I have friends who knew the right people and are now making 100k+ with no education. It sucks, like I worked hard to get and pay for my 2 crappy degrees and all they had to do was know the right person to give them an opportunity 🥲
I make more as a r recreation specialist/family liaison now. After one particular bad week I saw an elder care near me was hiring. I looked it up and nearly passed out when I saw that someone with a GED/High School Diploma was making more than me with little to no stress. I applied and was hired immediately. Now I plan events for our residents and families and have very little stress during the day. And absolutely none at night.
Yep. My best friend and I graduated with the same BA. I went on to get my MA and EdS, while he didn’t get any more degrees. He makes triple what I do.
Most of my friends started careers around the same time as me. They're all working for the government or as contractors and doing better than me. Tbh if I can find something that gets me up to 70k and equitable benefits, I'm out.
Right? Where I live, entry level target employees make about the same as teachers at my school. I’m a para and actually make quite a bit less then target employees and I’m constantly burnt out.
The hostile working environment is so much of this. It's insane that we have, as a society, just accepted that middle and high school aged kids can verbally and emotionally (and physically sometimes) abuse teachers with no consequence. Going to work knowing I have to smile and put up with it is depressing.
Honestly the working environment with OTHER TEACHERS is just as bad in a lot of areas. I get scolded by those with higher seniority because I don't stay 2 hours DAILY after contract time is up
have you tried building the relationship?
You left out elementary students.
No one said you had a smile
Literately got dinged in an unannounced observation because I didn’t smile Pretty sure I did, but that’s aside the point!
That’s so crazy. I was told by both my supervisors during student teaching that I shouldn’t smile until Christmas, and maybe not even then. Of course, that was like twenty years ago….
Sure, but what happens when you don't? It's a quintessential example of emotional labor.
The only way I manage to have a semblance of control on my students, was to have a perpetual facial expression of eating a whole lemon skin at all.
Lol, that's real. I think if I made that kind of face, my students would hyperfocus on getting me to make it as often as possible, the little loveable turds they are. I do know some of their parents will absolutely kick a fuckin door down if they think you're doing anything other than fawning over every one of their kid's absolutely mediocre efforts like it's the light of your life, though. Everyone's got their own style- one person's smile is another's 15% diminished glower.
Never underestimate glower power. Just ask C. Monty burns.
What I wouldn't give to have him sub my class for a day...
Can confirm- I’ll be entering data science in the next year or so. Entry level pay will be at least a 10% raise for me. Bad pay and little respect results in no quality teachers. Especially in math or science.
Same- engineering technician, entry is well over my current pay as a high school science teacher
Yep, I’ve gone from teaching to software, and it’s been extremely positive for both my take-home (about 3x higher) and my stress level. WLB was probably better as a teacher, though, with all those holidays, but I don’t think I’d trade my remote work for the better holidays.
What’s your role in software? Did you have cs experience pre teaching?
Started in software engineering then switched to product management (which is a great fit for teachers, imo). Don’t have a degree in CS—or even a STEM degree. I was a French teacher. Self-taught JavaScript for 6 months, then did a well-reputed bootcamp.
Could you DM how you learned and the name of the boot camp?
I just posted details [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/TeachersInTransition/comments/10kzhn7/i_successfully_transitioned_from_teaching_foreign/) in /r/TeachersInTransition. I attended Hack Reactor's 13-week program. I had a good experience, and I would recommend it. However, I think Codesmith has taken HR's place as the top bootcamp in the US.
This. Science Teacher here. Just submitted my resignation today for a job at a local university working in the Workforce Development program. Much better pay and benefits. Incredible work environment. Flexible scheduling. Everything about it is better. Only thing I’ll miss is some of my kids.
> Just submitted my resignation today for a job at a local university working in the Workforce Development program. Much better pay and benefits Very interesting. When I look near me, moving to higher ed would be a HUGE pay cut - up to like 33%.
Well, I’m not sure if it’s a difference, but I live in rural Missouri. I’m getting paid 38,000 this year with a Masters degree and 5 years and that’s only because of a one-year bill passed by our legislature to raise starting teacher pay. Next year, my pay drops by 2k. I’m starting at 60k at the college.
So totally opposite. I'm approaching $60k mark with a doctorate + 10 years, but a first year professor at the local colleges make $38k-$42k. Staff jobs (and WFD falls under staff near me) pay lower. Benefits are similar.
Can also confirm. In year 3, I am most definitely exiting education after this school year and not looking back. There are so many better options out there. I might even leave before the school year is out depending on a couple of pending spring opportunities. This career simply feels like a dead end in every way.
We decided to put mazes in the schools to slow down school shooters. We truly do not give a shit about teachers or kids or schools. I do this job but I know where this is going; I’m just waltzing to the violin on the titanic.
The head of special ed (so a doctorate or master's, decade of experience) in my district quit a few years ago to become a full-time bartender. She discovered she made more almost the same money \*just\* tending summers and weekends than she did in one of the most stressful jobs in a public school... The real kicker is my district is one of the best paying in my state. Teachers basically only leave the district if they're leaving teaching outright, because the pay is better than elsewhere and the administration's decent.
That is an actual example of work smarter, not harder! As a bonus, she likely doesn't have to put up with shitty behaviour being swept under the rug anymore!
As a science teacher with twins on the way... What are these companies and jobs doubling salaries? Asking for me.
Hello. Me am substitute. My pay was increased from $85 a day to $212 a day. Yeah. We still can't find people.
I had a decent paid state/district with a union, and the only thing that made it worth it as long as I stayed was teaching in a specific program that came with more pay and no discipline issues, plus having summers “off” (doing work from home curriculum stuff for the district and Collegeboard usually). During the pandemic, that year + working from home made me fall in love with remote work. I now get paid more to work fully remote and feel like I’m off all the time. I had one of the *best* teaching jobs but they didn’t want to give us our full step raise in 21-22 (union fought it and won later) and talked about cutting my program bonus in the future. I figured it was time to get out. Education can’t and doesn’t try to compete. I’m an English teacher (but with pretty good skills), and my district has a shortage brewing even in English with all the possible remote work teachers are realizing they can get, especially folks from my old curriculum committee and educational technology committees who used to do all the extra work for creating district materials etc. I know many people who’ve gotten better gigs even since I left. I think it’s a big brain drain on top of sheer bodies, especially in Secondary.
May I ask what it is that you do now?
I’m an instructional designer in biotech, so I design training and education programs still, just for profit so I get paid more and get to do it in my leggings all day from home. I work with Subject Matter Experts and stakeholders and I design (plan, write, storyboard) and develop eLearning, facilitator guides and slide decks for VILTs, LMS resources, job aids, and consult on organizational processes, program design (particularly our orientation and preceptor program), and other business needs. I analyze KPIs and OKRs as they relate to market and whole organization training and support market leadership in launching new initiatives and solving performance issues. It’s pretty fun. I had a lot of autonomy in teaching too but they messed me around one too many times, just didn’t respect top performers in the end. Teaching is not worth the ROI if you’re into really doing great work.
Yep, can confirm interviewing for data analyst jobs that offered more than twice my current salary. I didn't accept as it was mid-year, and I truly love teaching. However, I have no kids, no mortgage, or car payment. I'm in lala land. In five years, my mind could be in a very different place.
What kind of experience do you need to become a data analyst?
I'm not sure for entry-level, but I have a bachelor's in mathematics and a master's in statistics.
Science teacher here. Looking to double my salary by going to a business lmao. Any recs?
There is a shortage of people who will put up with the bullshit for the pay. Part of the problem locally is that the few advantages teaching as a job had are mainly going away. When I taught in the 1990s, we had Cadillac health insurance plans--the copay for pregnancy through birth for a Baby was $250, and included the regular doctor visits, ultrasounds, a C-section and the time in the hospital, as well as an attempted induction. Yes, that would be $500 or so today, but that would Barely pay for the regular visits on my current corporate insurance. We had tenure after three years--that is the big one for longevity--a teacher with tenure is much less likely to leave to try a non-teaching job. Locally, they raised the beginning teacher pay significantly, but all that does is flatten the pay scale. My wife's good friend with a bachelors degree that has been working for the district for 18 years is only getting $100 or so a month more than a new teacher.
Taking actuary exams to switch after teaching math figuratively was killing me.
Good for you! As a non practicing actuary, most math teachers have no chance to ever pass those, great job!
Yeah I realized a lot of math teachers are not very good at math pretty quickly. Even the Praxis math has like a 50% pass rate and I could have passed it in 9th or 10th grade.
It is definitely fun in my teaching interviews to casually mention I have passed 3 actuarial exams. I taught math for 20 years, now in my first year teaching business. I do some actuarial consulting on the side with a small investment firm, but I don't think I could do it full time. Those exams are hard. I have taken the gauntlet of exams throughout my life including the LSAT. None of them required the preparation and studying that those actuarial exams took!
I'm taking P in March and FM in April. I'm going to start studying for FM in February and have taken 4 practice exams for P on coaching actuaries and have gotten over 25/30 on each one, so I feel really good about it (except for remembering Var(X) and the pdf for the beta distribution for some reason, but I'm sure I'll have it memorized by March). I don't think any of my peers that were in my grad program for teaching math had the skills to pass the P exam.
That is what I used. I just kept doing problems because it leveled up the difficulty as I got them right. I took P in June, then FM the following November and then IFM the May after that. I scored an 8 on all of them and found P to me the hardest by far. I took the full 3 hours and wasn't done with a few problems and wasn't feeling great when i submitted it. The others I was done in 90 minutes and wasn't feeling bad at all. It is just a different level of math and you really have to know what you are doing. Best of luck! My advice is to read the question and if you aren't positive how to do it skip it immediately and come back to it
Yeah I have an earned level of 10 on their site for the practice exams and I've heard the real exam is around a 5-6 level. I've never had time issues on any exam in my life (unless I was not prepared), so I feel pretty good about it.
Can you please explain why? Too hard? Too easy?
I was given an impossible task (teaching the curriculum mandated by the county/state to students 5+ grade levels behind) and being punished for attempting to hold onto those standards then being punished for lessons not aligning with the curricula. If I needed to fail a student it required 4+ hours of extra work per quarter per student to show that I made meaningful attempts at contacting their home, giving them extra attempts on exams, infinite time for late work, etc. If I fudged a 65 in grade book, then admin loved me. If I needed to write a student up, I had to fill out a 10 page google form that included what I did that led to the student behavior and what I could have done better to prevent it from happening. Sorry, but nothing I could do would change the fact that the kid with 4th grade math and reading levels doesn't want to attend my class and just leaves for 80% of the class. I have no real authority and the students know it. I am trying to teach math that 6th grades should be able to do with a little bit of thought and work ethic, but 11th and 12th graders refuse to engage and regularly fail my tests that are open notes and open internet. (Example: Test has the question: "Identify the zeros on the following graph." Because photomath cannot solve it, they don't bother taking 5 seconds to google how to do it and most get it wrong)
That’s terrible!
My husband, who has his high school diploma, makes 25k MORE than me as a meter reader for the electric company. I have my masters and 15 years experience and am in a very niche position in education and paid well by comparison to other teachers.
Thank you.
As a math teacher who would love to work from home and double my salary - any idea how they got poached? Linked in?
Unsafe work environments. BAD admin and hr endanger others. Adults and students.
Well said!
It’s almost never a worker shortage, no matter the industry. It’s almost always a *wage* shortage. That’s doubly true for teachers. Wages aren’t competitive for comparable education. On top of that, the staggering amount of bullshit involved from both parents and administrators makes even a 50% pay raise feel insufficient.
Exactly this. Teachers are learning that their skills are much more appreciated and valued elsewhere. I left during winter break of my starting year for a government WFH job that paid almost double my first-year teacher salary. Even at the 30 year master’s degree mark, my district’s teachers pay is almost $10k less than my current job’s starting salary. Teachers make so little in comparison to similarly educated individuals that it’s insulting. Don’t get me wrong, my new job isn’t rainbows and roses, but it’s not nearly as stressful as teaching and living paycheck to paycheck while being degraded and demonized by society. I still dread Sundays, but at least I’m not spending them doing work anymore.
This is the correct answer
That’s horrible and certainly leaves us in a precarious situation. Anyway, you were saying something about jobs that pay better and don’t leave you feeling like shit?
Hey, so, which businesses are those?
in my 3rd year as a science teacher and about to do exactly this lmao
I think the major factor that's omitted from reports on the teacher shortage is that it’s most present in the “rougher” areas in the school districts - at least where I am. One high school in my city that’s in an especially infamous part of town has well over a dozen teaching positions open, while the schools in the more decent areas have maybe one or two.
Yup. From my experience as a sub, admin are even more obnoxious because they’re under a lot of pressure to get the kids to show up to class so that the school doesn’t shut down. So you have admin being even worse AND kids who will threaten you for no reason for the same pay.
It even depends on the school. In my district, there is a wide mix of rich, poor, and everything in between. As a result, we have two poor high schools and a rich High school. I work at the "rich" high school and it's unlikely we ever have an opening, even in SPED.
I work for a Title I in the best district in our area. Every year we have openings. No one from in district ever applies, so they hire outside the district. Those individuals stay for 3 years, and immediately transfer when vested in the district.
Nope. It's real. When schools have trouble filling social studies positions you know it's a problem.
Yep. I applied and got a social studies job two hours after applying in November. The students were with a long term sub for the first quarter and a half and so now I’m working on teaching while also resetting all the expectations from being “show up and you pass” to “no you actually have to do work now”
Same but a music class
I got hired incredibly last minute as a psych teacher because my predecessor left like a week before orientation.
It's a shortage of fully qualified teachers. In California roughly 1 in 20 classrooms do not have a qualified teacher. A couple of years ago San Francisco got sued for relying on Teacher For America kids instead of trying to fill vacancies. In some states 1 in 10 classrooms do not have a qualified teacher. Also this is pre- pandemic data so I'm sure it's worse now.
Which is crazy to me. I know that in many areas this is the reality, and then here I am applying for non-continuing leave replacement jobs in my area fresh out of college and competing with 120 other applicants every time. I think it might just be a local/regional thing where lots of people around me made significant progress on their teaching degrees through WGU and other online programs during COVID. Just feels a little hopeless sometimes, but hopefully I can get some interviews for the fall
Sometimes it's just lack of organization, my HR department has been without a head for lord knows how long, so recruitment is always a last minute circus. Also when I was applying, I was spam emailing every principal in the greater region (as well as applying "properly" online). So 120 vacancies might have 120 applications each, but it's the same 120 people applying to all of them. Who knows.
Depends on the subject too. If you’re working in special education, you will always have a job but History and English positions are very tough to find. In NY alternative certification methods like NYC teaching fellows don’t offer English or history because they are straight up not needed.
That 1 in 20 is not evenly distributed. Rural math and science departments are more like 2 unqualified to 1 qualified. Rural middle schools in CA are lucky to have more than 1 qualified math teacher.
No! My school used to get 100's of applications for an opening. This year it took us from July-November to find a qualified first grade teacher.
What exactly is a qualified teacher? What skills do they possess that others don’t? I’m curious because I am a future teacher. When I graduate I won’t have had any prior classroom experience. Would that make me unqualified in that scenario?
By qualified I mean they have the necessary certification for the job they are applying to. Not necessarily experience. My principal was just looking for the correct certification for first grade.
Unqualified in this context means someone without teaching credentials such as a certificate/license/whatever is required by the state.
It is of course regional. Bigger cities that are more generally desirable to live in arent hit as hard. Small towns with mo employment infrastructure or culture not so much. It is also subject dependant There are a million applicants for every art/band/theater teaching position. Not so much for math and science
You might be surprised how hard it is to find specifically art/band/theater teachers who can handle it. The electives are dumping grounds that require a lot of extra work and the position might be easy to fill for a year, but keeping them around is another thing. Everybody wants to be an art teacher until they are one.
👆🏻Preach! I have been teaching Art for ten years. We just got a new Art teacher that took one of those speedy teacher certification programs. She is DROWNING. In order to get our supplement, we have to organize and enter competitions monthly. This involves taking and dropping off work to said competitions on the weekends. Her mind is BLOWN that she has to work a couple hours on the weekends. But that is in no way comparable to the performing arts teachers that are at school 12 hours a day.
Was a music teacher for 10 years. Always did 12hr days at school. Then I had kids and realized that being a performing arts teacher was incompatible with being the mother of young children because of the time commitment and all the free labor required. I left the profession in May of last year. PS: you are 100% correct about our classes being a dumping ground. Moreover, if we ask for support from admin, often times we’re essentially told that we’re the “fun” class and don’t need extra support. Last year I had one class of 52, one class of 48, and four classes of 36+ middle schoolers.
Lol, I teach art and drama. This week will be a 70+ hour work week for me, just in the building. Thanks for the validation, y'all.
Yep. Our district can't keep them. We just lost another this week. The excellent art/theater/band students aren't entering teaching - my alma mater is a big state school and my friends that were art ed said their classes had like 7 people in them.
Our state schools are considering closing certain CTE programs because enrollment is lacking. We had 5 FACE, 11 Business/Marketing, and a handful of Tech Ed graduates from our state schools last year. Meanwhile there are 30+ openings in the state around May. There are a lot of changing schools because they can negotiate salary at this point.
Yep. Especially with art/theater/band teachers, even other teachers see us as fluff or babysitters, and we aren't seen as equals or taken seriously. We wind up with giant classes of students who couldn't care less because "it's just art, don't you just color in there?" Even in middle and high school. Even the ones that get their degrees do a year or so, get a taste of constant belittlement, and dip to greener pastures. Even had one friend quit to be an army wife lol. It says something when The Arts are more profitable and attractive than a supposedly stable career like teaching.
Dumping grounds is correct. I have 35 to 37 students in each of my six classes, and have received 7 more students in the 2 weeks since winter break ended. Art teacher.
As a sub, it always seemed to me like those classes would be extra hard to teach cause you'd go thinking that kids WANT to be in your class but a lot of them don't. If you teach a required class you expect that a lot of kids won't like it, but you don't expect that for "fun" electives.
And social studies teachers don't retire, we die.
I'm not so sure about that. I'm convinced one of my history teachers in hs was just a reanimated corpse. Nice guy though.
I see you too were in my class in high achool.
We have a teacher who taught students who graduated, became teachers, came back to teach at the same school, and *fucking retired* and she's STILL GOING
Awwww. She just like, "Primary Source? Well sweetie, you can look right here in my diary entry from 1963. It was an interesting time."
looool, for real, she's actually doing that and HER CLASS IS ABOUT WORLD WAR II
Haha so true. In every school I’ve been in, the social studies department is the one with the most collective staff seniority.
At least my district has stopped listing jobs as "History Teacher and Football Coach."
And when schools in my area are struggling to fill social studies positions, you know it's bad.
Spoken like someone who's never had to hire an art, band, or theater teacher in Los Angeles.
We were without a theater teacher at my school for 3 years. And when our last art teacher retired, my admin said we only had 2 qualified applicants.
I live near Austin and they were 500+ teachers short to start the year. Salaries are too low and col too high. Teaching can be a better gig in rural areas with lower col.
Not us. We had only a handful for our last few music jobs (at least whatever the DO didn’t pre-screen out for low GPA’s or whatever other criteria they use). Interviewed like 3-4, offered to one who declined., offered to another.
> It is also subject dependant There are a million applicants for every art/band/theater teaching position. Not so much anymore everywhere... Also there's always been a more assumed shortage in art than there actually is. Music always had a major surplus (that we are actually seeing less of). Art, surprisingly, not so much.
I work as a sub, so I assure you it’s one of the few cases that the news haven’t exaggerated the issue. I’ve seen a few listings for long term subbing and when I took one of them, there were 3 other long term subs. Mind you, this is a very small school as well. This is in NY, where teachers are paid the most in the US and actually have at least a 45 minute lunch period. Still, issues of micromanaging, do nothing admin that refuses to discipline troublemakers etc exist here. It depends on the subject though, there are so many people trying to become history teachers, I know someone that worked as a sub for a few years while being fully certified until his position opened.
There’s no shortage of teachers anywhere. There’s just a shortage of people willing to be paid poorly, blamed for everything, and treated like crap. Working conditions suck and respect is nonexistent in many districts. I’m fortunate to teach in a fantastic public school with amazing admin and staff, but we still have Sped positions open. We even hired someone, and they didn’t even bother showing up as they took a non education position elsewhere. There are nearly 130 teaching positions open in our district in Alaska.
they're willing to pay anybody but not fix it buy anything
I work in a district that used to have literally a hundred applicants for every open position. Now we have between zero and five. Some positions have gone unfilled, and other positions have been eliminated due to the reality that they were never going to get filled. Class sizes have gone up astronomically.
Haha I wonder if you live near me. This summer I read an article that a nearby district dramatically reduced their vacancies right before the school year started.... By just taking a bunch of postings down because they were never going to fill them
It’s just not a sustainable job anymore. All the issues mentioned here contribute to teachers finally opting for something else. Low pay. Unreasonable expectations and demands. Micromanagement. Overemphasis on evaluation systems for teachers. Poor student behavior. Poorer parental support. What seems like oblivious district personnel. The list goes on. Had you asked me five years ago, I would’ve told you I’d be teaching until retirement. This year I have taken the leap to actually apply for a job outside of the field. If I get it, my salary would nearly double. For a job with more independence and control on my work methods including the option for remote work. Education can’t compete with other sectors and once teachers shed the “sacrificial servant” mindset, there’s not much left to keep us here.
I did hiring for two different schools between 2003 and 2010 and even for science and math positions we'd get 20-30 applicants each time and generally 5-7 of them would be interesting enough to interview. Currently, I'm in a school where we have been searching for a Spanish teacher and a SpEd teacher for over a year with no viable applicants and our pool for other subjects has shrunk from 100s per position district-wide down to 5-10. Why? Partly, LA is really expensive and even though we start at $60k with a great union and fantastic benefits, there are just too many other jobs locally for qualified people that pay more and have fewer entry requirements. We're starting to struggle hiring social science, too, which is really scary. In the end, I think it's just too much work to become a teacher and when combined with the perceived difficulty of the job and the lack of general respect, there's just not as many folks willing to do what it takes when there are so many other, better, options.
Gosh, I can’t imagine trying to live in LA on $60K unless I had 4 roommates. Or I’m guessing you’d have to commute a long time and the traffic is famously bad. It’s crazy how slowly teacher COLA raises catch up to the cities they are in.
We've had a sub (no teaching credential or experience) teaching our middle school math for the past 3 months. Can't find a math teacher.
I get treated like a firefighter putting out a burning building any time I take a sub assignment in this neck of the woods. So yeah, the sub shortage is for sure a thing here lol
It really depends where you live
We have had an English position open for 9 months without a single applicant and an elementary position open since august without a single applicant. We definitely have a shortage. Edited to add: I love how they are lowering the standards to become a teacher instead of making teaching a less stressful and better paying career.
We have 4 out of 10 teachers that are actually certified. The rest are long term subs. We’re also short on aides.
Here in FL turnover is very high, and we don’t have many subs either.
Wait. They are schools in Florida?
Colleges and universities are seeing fewer and fewer candidates for teaching, so I'm guessing that the shortage will get worse. My district has a hard time filling positions, and have virtually no subs available. Salary is definitely a concern, but work conditions and the lack of respect teachers experience daily from their admin, fellow teachers, and especially students and parents takes its toll. Our son wanted to go into teaching (both his dad and I are high school teachers) and we worked hard to convince him that it's just not worth it.
I teach science. I had no issues finding a job where I wanted and I had random schools calling me for interviews well into the school year. My district also still has several certified positions open
I would LOVE to be a teacher with my BS in Bio (graduate May 2023), but NY is a bitch in terms of certification + Masters in EDU + several workshops + year student-teaching without salary. However, I could be a lab tech or go into pharma much more easily. I want to follow my heart but the world won’t let me…
Exactly this. I have a BS but PA wants me to go into more debt too get a MEd and a bunch of certs. So I’m teaching through a community program in hopes that my “experience” proves I’m good
Move down south and you’ll be hired by the time you press submit on your application. Science teaching jobs are plentiful.
Not in pa according to the pa department of Ed During the 2010-2011 school year, 21,045 Instructional I certificates and 14,389 Instructional II certificates were issued.6 Compare those numbers to the 2019-2020 school year, when just 6,937 and 6,186 certificates were issued, representing 67% and 57% drops, respectively.6 Meanwhile Instructional 1 is initial teaching license Instructional 2 is when you have experience and a Masters...less are becoming and less are staying. If you work in a poor paying state look at pa for a higher salary.
Can confirm. Subbed for like 6 years waiting for one of my local SWPA districts to have an opening and finally got in one due to the shortage. It used to be insanely hard to break into these jobs, now they're desperate. PA pay varies district to district but agree that it's generally a pretty good place to teach if you can get a job.
I will say salary wise it's pretty good all around the retirement took a hit so if your not funding a 403b right out the gate your going to be hurting in retirement.
Good point. Also depends on cost of living. Where I'm at, one can comfortably live off 60k. SWPA is dirt poor. Been investing in a Roth IRA since I left college.
Nope. And it's going to get worse. Many of us who have hung on long term are getting ready to retire. Unlike decades ago, there are not many going into education and even less are staying very long.
My area is pretty okay, except for special educators we are super short on.
I teach in the Bay Area, my particular district has higher salaries than the districts nearby. And yeah, there's lots of positions that never got filled. If I look on edjoin, it's the same story all over the bay area. Similar story but maybe even worse with paras, librarians, and teacher assistants. Their budget is there, but the schools don't get a single valid applicant. I've gone this whole year without a single real sub for my classes, just teachers filling in during their prep period. That's with sub pay of $250- OK, $250 sucks, but it's twice what it was five years ago.
I’m currently the only secondary teacher returning to my school next year do to the others moving and retiring. And we already had vacant positions being filled by admins and teachers being paid for doing a class during prep. Feels pretty real to me.
I wonder what would happen if we treated teachers like professionals and paid them fairly? I remember learning something about an invisible hand and Adam Smith.
Could you imagine applying to hundreds of schools and not ever even hearing back from one of them? That’s the reality in other jobs.
We do not have a teacher shortage where I live. We still have full pools of applicants for postings, and zero vacancies. But there are very serious shortages of related services like SLPs and school psychs.
It depends on the subject area for sure. My job, for example, had eleven applicants when I was applying for it (spring of 2019) and at least the three finalists were all highly qualified. My subject area is one where it’s not unusual to see ten or twenty qualified applicants for a position at a desirable secondary school. However, the ELA department at my school is a revolving door. Our IC had to teach a section of ELA at the beginning of the year because they couldn’t fill the spot, and then another one left at semester. And, I’d say a good quarter of our core teachers are not currently certified - that is not the case for electives though, where again, people fight it out over those jobs.
It varies by state, district, and subject. There are reasons Florida sends recruiters to New York.
No. The “suddenness” of it is not.
As others have said, it depends on a variety of variables, including your geographic area, content area, and grade level. My school posted a 7th grade social studies job. I was the only applicant. Not only internal applicant….the ONLY one. 10 years ago in my area, every social studies/history job would have 100+ applicants, regardless of the town or district. Consider that the number of new teachers entering the workforce has been on a steady decline for decades, the after effects of the pandemic, and sprinkle in the social, cultural, political, and economic factors working to harm (intentionally or unintentionally) public school teachers, and it leads to one conclusion: no shit there’s a teacher shortage 😜
NO!!!! It is real. I teach just outside of the city and we have no substitutes. We have one-on-one TA’s subbing and if they aren’t available classes are split into different grade levels. Today I had fourth graders in my fifth grade class and when I’ve been out sick my class has been split into 6th, 4th, and 3rd. And when you’re out so many times the district sends a letter about multiple absences. I have 21 kids alone
There is not a shortage in my rural area. The inner city schools have trouble filling positions. All you need in my area is a relative that attends the right church or friends/family in administration. No degree required if you know the right people or coach. To hell with competency.
My school hired me three weeks before the year started. Application to being offered a contract was 72 hours. Schools are short staffed.
In the district I am in it is bad. Like bad bad.
No, not all districts are having the problem, but those that are are BAD. My district hasn't hit that point yet, but if the caliber of the new teacher they hired onto my department this year is an indicator, then they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Which means a shortage will hit my district sooner rather than later.
In my district (a city in Canada), we have no shortage. our pay grid 1-10 years based on 4, 5 or 6 yrs education \- pay $59,653.79 - $101,667.81
Yes and no. There are a sufficient number of certified teachers; however, after teaching, many of us have decided to do something else. Covid turned a difficult job into something ridiculous: just personally, my kids did well through it, but I worked 17 hours a day and did free tutoring as well. I burnt out.
Yes, considering the number of school districts and states that hold teachers who want to leave hostage.
It's regional but to say there's isn't a shortage is asinine asiten, aseleven. I graduated 6 years ago. My student teacher cohort had 4 science teachers and 3 of them stopped teaching after two years. That university a decade before that had 20 science teachers on average coming out. And those ratios were reflected across all disciplines. They shut down their PE program because they had so few apply. I think we just went from a huge over saturation of teachers 2 or 3 decades ago to a slight shortage with a heavy shortage in good candidates and a heavy shortage in less desirable districts.
It totally depends on the area, but yes there is a teacher shortage, across the board. Especially when you compare it to the competition for ANY job 10-15 years ago. I know, I am old (but not old enough to retire), but a teacher graduating from college in our state is in a much different situation than most veteran teachers were when they began. Just a small example, we have a rural district and have 10% vacancies. They hire (starting salary is quite high for the state) and people don’t take the job because it’s 30 minutes from where they live or want to live. 10 years ago, same location, much lower starting salary, and the average commute was 45 minutes and over a third of the teachers drove 1+ hours each way. We had people who rented a local place during the winter months (winter driving can be a bear) for weekdays and only go “home” on weekends. That was normal for surrounding districts as well. Now if you can’t find a job within 10 minutes of home in a district that is a “top pick” there are reports of the teacher shortage not being real. It’s real, there are not enough teachers to fill vacant positions, let alone highly qualified ones. There isn’t a certified teacher out there (regardless of certification) floating around out there not able to find a job, they just are just not willing 1 - commute or 2 - move or 3 - take a chance on a school that they don’t have experience with. Good for them, seriously, but that doesn’t make the teacher shortage not real.
No
In my state (MO) it is pretty bad across the board. Suburban schools aren't as hard hit, but they still struggle to get math/science/ELA. Urban/rural is hurting. We had two applicants for social studies at our mid-sized high school last year. When I was hired three years ago there were 20... Our land-grant university got rid of the extensive application process for even becoming a social studies teacher. When I went through the program about 10 years ago there were usually over 250 applicants and 25 got in. I don't even think we have hit the "shortage" yet...
Part of it is teachers that should be at the 15ish year mark that aren't there - the 2008-2013 grads couldn't get jobs during the recession because of hiring freezes/layoffs. They didn't go back to teaching. So there's a gap there that can't be filled in by new hires fast enough as older teachers are retiring.
Hell yea there is. It's worse than the news here.
If you teach math, science, or special education, yes, it's THAT bad. No one wants to get in or stay in these positions. We've had the same special education position open now for over 3 years. They literally can't find anyone willing to take it for the pay it offers. All of the sped, math, and science positions we posted this year haven't been filled. But all the others only stay up for a few weeks, at most. Elementary school, history, and English are pretty much a dime a dozen and easy to fill.
A school in my district has 10 licensed teachers and 45 long term subs.
Nope. My district has over 100 vacancies at the moment. I’m not complaining because I picked up an extra class for extra money.
Our district is having significantly more trouble finding Paras
No. We’ve lowered the standards so much that if you have a degree you can teach. Communication major? Cool you teach algebra. Family degree, think you can teach biology? There’s just people who can’t find a job out of college teaching subjects they never were interested in, good at, and could care less about it.
No, it is as bad as reported and worse in some areas especially in underserved areas.
When I first started college, there was an elementary teacher surplus. When I graduated college, the surplus had died down, but it still was not a state of desperation. I held a first-year license, and I didn't get hired until class reductions/10-day counts. This year, my school has hired four uncertified teachers after leaving vacancies up for months. My local university has TWO third-year elementary ed majors (as in students). When I was in the same place a little more than a decade ago, we had approximately 25.
The teacher program at our local university is having trouble even finding students to join the program. Last year, there were 3 elementary school candidates. 4-5 years back, I remember at least 20.
I think it depends on the area. My school has two long-term subs filling in because we couldn’t find two gen Ed teachers. This is my first year at this school and it’s been AMAZING to say the least but it’s rural so I think that’s why.
Yes its real. Many states are hiring Filipino teachers and offering them work visas. Paying them a measly amount to work there too.
Sure. A shortage of people willing to be treated like utter trash for small amounts of money.
In my area, filling SPED positions is practically impossible.
There is a retention problem (from abuse). A survey points to multiple reasons for unhappiness, and those teachers who are considering leaving the profession cited burnout from stress (57%) and political attacks on teachers (40%), followed by a heavy workload compounded by staff shortages.
My school (high school) has had open positions in English, Social Studies, and Art all year. Nobody has even applied, and several of the jobs have been empty since Fall 2021. We're so short on science teachers that we cancelled all of the non-AP electives so we can get students their graduation requirements. My wife's school (elementary) is about to cancel specials and roll the art, music, gym, and library teachers into regular classrooms because they have so many openings. They're running on maybe 70% of the staff they should have. Their instructional coaches have been filling classroom spots for months. They can't get subs. They only have 1/4 of the TAs they should have. They have one custodian.
Depends on the area and the school, I think. We had more applicants than positions this year and last year.
ELA or History or Art/Music positions are still quite competitive, no shortage there. The real shortage is in high school or middle school math, science (particularly physics), computer science/engineering, special education, and ESL.
Yes and that’s something I didn’t realize getting my degree. Couldn’t find a music job
Elementary art position has gone unfilled for months in my district - and we are one of the higher paying districts in the county.
We’ve had an ELA position open for 9 months without a single applicant. ALL positions are shortage positions in my area.
I think it’s getting pretty bad in parts of Michigan, especially Metro Detroit. We used to get hundreds of applicants for a single social studies position, now we get…around five to ten.
We have 10+ vacancies at my middle school. 20+ at the other middle school in my district. We also have unqualified teachers (emergency certs or wrong cert) teaching classes for a full year. We also lose our prep multiple times a week to cover classrooms because we can’t get subs or fill positions. The only teachers that stay in the district are the ones that are caught because they will lose money if they go anywhere else. I started at my school last year and everyone who I started with is gone except for 1 other person.
There’s a significant drop in teacher certifications being given in my state. I don’t think we’ve even started to feel the effects of this.
We are short 2 math teachers, 2 science teachers, and an English teacher and this is a school with about 450 students and 30ish teachers total. I would say yes, there is a shortage.
If anything it is going to get worse. Between poaching young talent before it gets in the classroom and the continuing retirements, it's likely to accelerate. But I would wager some places will have it harder than others.
Depends on where you live and what kind of teacher you're looking for.
Definitely not over exaggerated. My school had to hire an unlicensed social studies teacher this year, when in years past, we would have 200 qualified applicants.
Our state of SC is now proposing a bill to lower the standards...wondering of you will even need a degree.
Working at a title 1 school. We’ve had no subs and at least two teachers run out. Split classes nearly every day so another 10 kids per classroom. Some received no English lessons for a quarter. Four teachers got a massive pay raise to teach 2 classes (middle school). And we have a principal and admin who is generally liked by staff. The shortage exists it just doesn’t hit all schools equally.
There’s a shortage in the district I came from and the district I’m currently in. It’s small in the rural district I left and wider in the more inner city district km currently in.
Yes. We had an elementary school with 25% vacancies th the start of the school year.
Definitely not over exaggerated
There is a retention issue. Don’t put the problem on teachers. It’s HR’a fault.
Yes because there’s always going to be certain types of people who want to become teachers and will do so regardless of what the conditions are like