A long-term solution is available in every K-12 school district
By Greg Rockhold and Hans Andrews
“Empowering community colleges to train future educators is not just a win for education but a giant leap toward diversity and representation in our classrooms.” —Tom Dreyer, CIPD Award-Winning Program Director.
For over a decade, school boards throughout the 50 U.S. states have struggled to find ways to keep their classrooms staffed with highly qualified teachers. The 2024-25 school-year opened with 55,000 teacher shortages. In addition, some 270,000 classrooms were staffed by non-credentialed personnel. The following is what has been happening to solve these problems and needs to be changed.
Solving teacher shortages need to move beyond using patches, and unqualified persons. The previous pipelines of university and four-year public and private colleges are down some 50 percent from a decade ago. It is time to consider developing a new pipeline. What has been utilized in recent years must be considered mainly as “patches” rather than providing long-range solutions. We provide the following as descriptions:
Patches approved: Short-term solutions have included the passing of legislation in numerous states allowing unqualified non-certified persons into classrooms until enough certified teachers can be found and hired. Remaining teachers are assigned overloads and/or, retired teachers are encouraged to return to work until highly qualified teachers can fill classroom teacher vacancies. “Patches” approved for school districts in a number of states
The following are examples of how states have provided patches to help cover their classrooms in recent years:
1) California and its rural schools: The expanding teacher shortages throughout California, especially in rural areas, have become a significant concern. The report “California’s Teacher Education Deserts: An Overlooked & Growing-Equity Challenge,” profiles nine counties where the education office is over 60 miles from the nearest teacher education program. Indicating a shortage of teachers and the difficulties schools have in hiring and retaining fully prepared teachers, eight of nine counties have rates of underprepared teachers that exceed the average in California and higher rates of those teaching outside their authorized subject field (Mathews, 2024).
2) Michigan approved the following: Michigan’s governor signed a bill allowing school district employees, including administrative staff, bus drivers, janitors and cafeteria workers, to serve as substitute teachers as long as they had high school diplomas. State law typically requires schools to hire substitute teachers with at least 60 semester hours of college credit. The bill allows districts to hire any school employee as a substitute for the current school year only if the person has a high school diploma (Mauger, 2021).
3) Texas patches still expanding: The latest data from TEA show that 72 percent of new teachers hired in rural schools and 73 percent in town schools are unlicensed which reveals a disturbing trend in rural schools:
Fifty five percent of new hires lack teaching licenses and are unprepared to teach. This hiring practice negatively impacts student learning in both English and Math. The consequences of hiring unprepared and unlicensed teachers are financially costly and academically detrimental (Overschelde, 2024).
4) Florida: Florida continued facing a teacher shortage, with over 5,000 teaching positions remaining unfilled at the beginning of the 2023-24 school-year. The shortage is attributed to various factors, including low wages, political pressures in the classroom, and increased stressors. According to a report by the Florida Education Association, there is a shortage of more than 4,000 teachers in Florida.
During the 2023-24 school year there were 27 Florida community colleges offering baccalaureate degrees in teacher preparation. These colleges are helping to slow down the state’s teacher shortages as well as prepare teachers in those teaching areas most in need.
Texas has had a ‘wake-up’ call from a recent learning loss study
New research from Dr. Jacob Kirksey shows that students lose out on months of learning amid a surge in uncertified teachers across Texas. The analysis, conducted by Texas Tech University’s College of Education, reviews student performance as Texas public school districts stray from typical state-mandated certification requirements to fill teacher vacancies. The key highlights of the study included:
- Nearly half of first-time new teacher hires are uncertified.
- Uncertified teachers made up over 80 percent of new hires in 55 counties.
- 72 percent of uncertified new teachers have no prior experience working in Texas public schools.
- Nearly 1 in 5 uncertified new teachers do not hold a bachelor’s degree.
- Students with new uncertified teachers perform significantly worse in reading and math unless the teacher has previous experience working in a Texas public school (Kirksey, 2024).
Teaching shortages and the need to draw in community colleges
Universities and four-year colleges can no longer draw in enough students to fill the teacher shortage gap, which is nearing a decade-old crisis. Secondly, they have been unable to attract the diverse number of students needed to become teachers.
Community colleges already have a robust and diverse student body and are helping fill the diversity gap in many other career and vocational fields. Community college’s diversity percentages include:
- Enrolling 57 percent of the Native American students and 52 percent of Hispanic students across all colleges and universities.
- Black student percentage of community college students was 12 percent, and Hispanic student enrollments were 27 percent.
Closing comments
Community colleges need to be brought into preparing baccalaureate degree teachers. There are nearly 1,200 community and technical colleges in the country. With the previous pipelines of university and four-year universities now down near 50 percent of the number of teachers they were preparing a decade ago this change needs to happen.
A few years ago the community colleges in a number of states started offering the Baccalaureate Degree in Nursing (BSN). They responded to a national need to help fill the shortages they were experiencing across the country.
If the K-12 leadership of school boards and administrators and the community college trustees and college presidents decide to meet they can do much to help close the severe gap that presently exists in the teacher shortages. Time to move in this direction should be now!
Dr. Greg Rockhold, a former superintendent, has served on the National Association of Secondary School Principals board as president of the New Mexico Coalition of School Administrators and executive director of the New Mexico Association of Secondary School Principals.
Dr. Hans Andrews is a distinguished fellow in community college leadership through Olney Central College (Illinois) and a former president of the college. He started the first dual-credit program between community colleges and secondary schools in the country.
References
Dreyer, Tom (2024, July). CIPD Award-Winning Program Director. Retrieved August 12, 2024 at www.linkedin.com/in/drtom-dryer/
Mathews, K. (2024, Apr.23). New study by the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools Identifies Nine Rural California Counties as Teacher Education “Deserts.” Retrieved August 8, 2024, at A new study by the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools Identifies Nine Rural California Counties as Teacher Education “Deserts” – UCLA School of Education & Information Studies.
Mathews, K. (2024) UCLA Center for School Transformation. Retrieved September 28, 2024 at California’s Teacher Education Deserts: An Overlooked & Growing Equity Challenge – UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools
Mauger, C. (2021, Dec. 27). Whitmer signs bill expanding who can substitute teach amid shortage. The Detroit News. Retrieved August 10, 2024, at Whitmer signs bill expanding who can substitute teach amid shortage (detroitnews.com)
Overschelde, J. V. ( 2024). Texas Education Agency. Unlicensed teachers now dominate new teacher hires in rural Texas schools. Retrieved July 28, 2024, at Unlicensed Teachers Now Dominate new teacher hires in Rural Texas schools : Newsroom: Texas State University (txst.edu)
Kirksey, Jacob (Summer 2024) Amid Rising Number of Uncertified Teachers, Previous Classroom Experience Proves Vital in Texas. Policy Brief, No. 1. Retrieved August 9, 2024 at https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/items/e8d785a0-2be3-4942-bb43-d71705fb2d4f
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