Education Week - August 5, 2015 - 6

GROWTH IN TEACHER NUMBERS: The number of public school teachers hit its peak right before the
Great Recession. But while there are an estimated 150,000 fewer teachers now than in 2008, the teacher-to-student
ratio has remained relatively unchanged.

By Ross Brenneman
With a new school year approaching, districts
around the country are issuing urgent pleas for
teachers to come work for them.
The words on many people's lips are "teacher
shortage," and in some places, they have the
ring of crisis to them.
"There are 467 current job openings, and
we're all trying to pull from the same applicant
pool," said Beverly Mortimer, superintendent
of the Concordia, Kan., school district. "Out in
the rural areas it becomes harder and harder
to pull those applicants."
Regionally, stories of teacher shortages have
been prevalent this summer, perhaps best exemplified by the Clark County, Nev., school
district's launch of a nationwide campaign to
entice both new and retired teachers with hiring bonuses of up to $5,000.
Districts in California, Arizona, and Indiana,
among many other states, are also facing highprofile recruitment challenges.
Yet available data from the National Center
for Education Statistics paint a complicated
picture of the current supply of teachers: Yes,
there are fewer teachers compared to previous
years, but nationally, the student-teacher ratio
has remained relatively consistent. The problem appears to be that available teachers aren't
always located where they're needed most.

Regional Differences
The most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education have in fact shown significant drops in teacher-education enrollment
in many states, including in large states like
Texas, New York, and California. Many experts
chalk up such declines, as well as regional
teacher shortages, to the Great Recession and
ensuing cutbacks in public spending. Others

■ Number of Teachers

Projected >

■ Student Enrollment

49.7 49.8 49.8 49.8

■ Pupil-to-Teacher Ratio

52.1

50.0

5.0

3.6

25.8

22.3

18.7

17.2

16.0

3.1

1.4
1960
YEAR

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

The San Francisco school district announced
last month that it will phase in computer
science instruction for all
students at all grade levels.
It's an ambitious plan.
Chicago is the only other
major urban district
attempting to integrate
computer science instruction
in similarly broad scope-and
San Francisco's plan goes
even further by bringing the topic to students as
young as prekindergarten.
Funding for the computer science
expansion will come from the district,
industry partnerships, and a deal with the
Salesforce.com Foundation that brought the
school system $5 million to increase resources
for science, technology, engineering, and
math.
Education Week spoke last month with
James Ryan, the district's executive director for
STEM, about the new initiative. The interview
has been edited for length and clarity.
6 | EDUCATION WEEK | August 5, 2015 | www.edweek.org

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2012

3.1
2013

16.0

3.1
2014

3.1
2015

15.3

3.2
2016

3.4
//

2023

Source: National Center for Education Statistics

have charged that poor teacher working conditions, such as low salaries and test-driven
school cultures, are nudging existing and potential educators toward other professions, especially with the economy improving.
"Morale is low because not only salaries are
low, but there's a feeling [among educators] that
'we have to hold all the teachers accountable because they don't know what they're doing,' " said
Cecilia Johnson, an associate superintendent
for the Arizona department of education. "They
want to be valued more."
Drops in education-school enrollments don't
necessarily equal shortages, though. According
to data from its state education department, for
instance, New York has a major surplus of certified teachers.
In shortage areas, demographic trends and
school-enrollment changes tend to combine
with other factors to spur greater demand for
teachers.
But while the national teacher supply is often
described as a "pipeline," that belies the fact
that it's not always easy for teachers to move to
a new state to teach.
"A lot of teachers want to teach where they go
to school or where they live," said Karen Gallagher, the dean of the University of Southern

Computer Classes Get
Boost in Calif. District

16.0

Number of Teachers/Student Enrollment in Millions

Districts Face
Uneven Supply
Of Teachers

California's Rossier School of Education. "They
don't go to the very best places to be a teacher
in the country; they want to work in their community."
Another problem: Teaching licenses are not
always easily portable, due to differing state requirements and procedures.
Better coordination of data would likely help
districts become more strategic in their recruiting efforts, observers say. While the federal government collects many kinds of information on
new teachers, data tracking teachers' job statuses or transitions once they are in the profession remain elusive.

Taking Chances
Public relations campaigns have helped
some districts land new hires. The San Francisco school district, for instance, has managed
to fill many of its gaps, although it is still looking for bilingual and high school math teachers, according to a district spokesperson. Those
fields, along with special education, are common
shortage areas across the country.
The Clark County district, meanwhile,
has managed to recruit well over half of the
more than 2,000 additional teachers it wants

What was the impetus behind this change?
Why did the school board vote to make this happen?
Mr. Ryan: Computer science currently in the district is a few

courses students can take in high school, mostly when they're
either juniors or seniors, some as sophomores. But it's 5 percent
or less of the students [taking it] and not even at every high
school. In middle school, it's less than half a percent of kids who
get exposed to computer science or coding courses, and essentially
zero at the K-5 level.
As we look at who actually takes advantage of computer
science in high school, it is a bit of the likely suspects-mostly
male, and few Latino and African-American students. We
recognize that if we actually want not only more students to
take advantage of the computer science opportunities they have
in pre-K-12 schooling, but we want that demographic to look like
the city as a whole, then we're going to have to start exposure to
the subject matter, concepts, and skills much, much earlier.
The other driving force is the recognition that this is
essentially becoming a new basic skill-that computers being
used solely for consumption rather than creativity is not
where the marketplace is going to be hiring people. They're
looking for people who can use technology to create.

How much computer science will students get
at each grade level?
Mr. Ryan: Our initial structure is that pre-K-5th grade will get

20 hours a year-once a week for a semester. That's considerable
exposure. Middle school will get about 45 hours a year, or
essentially a quarter-long course. In high school, we recognize
that if we actually add another requirement, the plate is already
too full and something spills over. So what we're looking at there
is not making it mandatory for everybody to take it, but to make
it available at every high school.

to have in place by fall.
Some districts have experimented with
changing their licensure rules. In Kansas, the
state board of education passed a measure in
July allowing unlicensed teachers to work in
six "innovative coalition" districts. That move
followed earlier rules easing licensure requirements for teachers in STEM subject areas.
The changes infuriated many educators over
what was perceived as a slight on the need for
formal teacher training.
"In light of the political climate in Kansas,
I think teachers feel like it's 'one more thing
they're going to come after us with,' " Ms. Mortimer, the Concordia, Kan., superintendent, said.
But Ms. Mortimer, whose district is in the innovation coalition, defended the new rules, saying school systems like hers face difficult odds
in recruiting teachers with degrees in highly
employable subjects like science and math.
"With the cost of going to college today, to then
be paid a very low salary and take a long time
to pay off your college debt ... kids are smart,"
she said.
And so districts have to provide channels for
the candidates who are available.
"You can't rule anybody out that might help
make your kids successful," Ms. Mortimer said.

Our bet, and we think it's a strong bet, is that if every
student gets exposure to computer science every year through
8th grade, we're going to get a great many more students
wanting to continue on and wanting to do more with coding
once they get to high school. We'll start to bridge those gender
gaps of who we see in those courses.

You're starting to implement at middle schools and building
out from there. When do you expect to be fully
implemented across the grades?
Mr. Ryan: I'd love to do not next year but the following year
[2016-17], but I don't think that's realistic. But less than five
years. It might be three years.

What are some of the major challenges associated
with implementing at all grade levels?
Mr. Ryan: One of the largest barriers is having enough adults

who can teach this at a rich and rigorous level. So we have
to "school up" the people who are going be teaching it, and
the union partnered with us on that. Through a grant from
American Federation of Teachers, they've created a position to
help us build the teacher capacity to be able to teach this new
basic skill.
The other barriers that we're going to work to overcome are
more structural-finding time in the school day that is already
[packed] with other topics, making sure we have enough of the
tools, the hardware and software, available to do this.
Then the other piece is keeping our parent community
on board with this-making sure we're transparent all the way
so they value it as well as everyone else valuing it. -LIANA HEITIN
The CURRICULUM MATTERS blog tracks news and trends on this issue.
www.edweek.org/go/curriculummatters

http://www.Salesforce.com http://www.edweek.org/go/curriculummatters http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - August 5, 2015

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