Education Week - September 21, 2016 - 11

TEACHER SUPPLY AND
DEMAND PROJECTIONS
The Learning Policy Institute
calculates that, if current
market trends persist,
U.S. schools could face
an estimated shortfall of
112,000 teachers by 2018,
with demand continuing
to grow into the 2020s. Source:

NUMBER OF
TEACHERS

Estimated Supply

New-Hire Demand

---

PROJECTED

300,000

250,000

200,000

150,000

Learning Policy Institute, interpretation

2005

2009

2013

2017

2021

2025

SOURCE: Learning Policy
Institute

Study Gauges
Teacher Market
effective strategies for putting it
to work in classrooms. That effort
has remained teacher-led as it expanded to other schools, said Tina
Jablonowski, the district's coordinator of new-teacher support and
development.
Two years ago, she incorporated
growth-mindset discussions into the
district's new-teacher-induction program, which includes summer training and follow-up with a mentor for
the first few years in the classroom.
"Teaching students how to learn
and take risks and really think
through their learning process was
something that we didn't do in the
classroom," Jablonowski said. "We
see students who struggle, and it's
almost like they're paralyzed because they don't want to fail."
An understanding of mindsets
gives new teachers a way of thinking about all kinds of classroom
practices, including how to grade,
organize student groups, and conduct classroom discussions, she said.
That's been true in the school system in Marshing, Idaho, said Ken
Price, the director of the district's
21st-century learning-center site.
After a districtwide training about
mindsets, teachers began applying
what they learned to every area of
their work, even classroom management. A 5th grade teacher put signs
in her room describing traits like
honesty and kindness. She encouraged students to pick a trait they
wanted to improve in themselves
and to identify ways to do so. She
shared her own answer, talking
about past mistakes and regrets.
"When an adult shares their vulnerabilities and their hopes, then
kids go, 'Hey, that's OK for me to do,
too,' " Price said.
While the growth mindset concept is intuitive to many teachers,
it takes time and collaboration to
incorporate it into classroom practices, he said.
"We don't have to do this perfectly
all at once and we don't have to be
comprehensive all at once."
Coverage of learning mindsets and
skills is supported in part by a grant
from the Raikes Foundation, at www.
raikesfoundation.org. Education Week
retains sole editorial control over the
content of this coverage.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

tios and reinstate classes that were reduced or
eliminated in the 2008 recession. But teacher
attrition rates are high, and teacher-preparation program enrollments have fallen 35 percent nationwide in the last five years, the report says.
If current trends persist, the group estimates
that the nation's annual teacher shortfall could
grow to 112,000 teachers by 2018, with the demand for more educators continuing to grow
well into the 2020s.
Teacher shortages themselves aren't new, the
report's authors stressed in a media call. There
have been reported shortages of math and science teachers, for example, dating back to the
Sputnik era, said Darling-Hammond.
But "unlike some other countries, the United
States has not put in place a set of policies to
address these problems, so we get these recurring waves of shortages," she said.
In addition to a high price tag attached
to teacher-replacement costs-estimated at
$8 billion annually-the shortages have led
to stopgap policy solutions like hiring teachers with emergency or temporary credentials,
increasing class sizes, or using short-term
substitutes.
Such measures hurt student learning, said
Darling-Hammond, who has long been a critic
of fast-track teacher-training programs.

The '4 Percent Solution'
In the report, the LPI offers what it sees as
more long-term, stabilizing solutions to potential teacher supply gaps. They include: more
competitive compensation packages; targeted
training subsidies, like forgivable loans and
scholarships for those who commit to teaching in a high-needs field or location for a certain period of time; improved new-teacher
mentoring and induction programs; and initiatives to create a more national teacher-supply
market, with greater support for teacher mobility across state lines.
Darling-Hammond said these proposals could
get to what she called the "4-percent solution."
The annual attrition rate for U.S. teachers is
currently at 8 percent, about twice as high
as teacher attrition rates in high-performing
countries like Finland and Singapore. If it was
halved, she said, the significant reduction in
hiring needs would virtually eliminate teacher
shortages and allow for increased selectivity
in hiring, which could improve teacher quality.
But the LPI's conclusions about the general
severity of expected teacher shortages have
been met with some skepticism.
Kate Walsh, the president of the National
Council on Teacher Quality, expressed concern

about "allowing anecdotes and hearsay to drive
a national agenda."
"Nobody has any national data that is justification for declaring a teacher shortage," she
said. "Everyone is going off anecdotes."
For its study, the LPI used data from the
National Center for Education Statistics,
including the Schools and Staffing Survey
and Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal
Study.
Walsh noted that the NCES data are three
to four years old, making it "useless in our
ability to do any real-time measurements of
shortages."
Indeed, available projections on teacher hiring from the NCES can also be read to suggest that the overall supply of teachers will
increase over the next several years in conjunction with decreases in student-teacher
ratios.
There could be a teacher shortage, Walsh
said, but there's not enough firm data to say for
sure, and headlines are driving other headlines.
"States get worried, people get worried-hysteria sets in," she said.
Only about one-third of teacher attrition is
due to retirement, the LPI report notes. The
most common reasons for leaving the profession are unsatisfactory teaching conditions
(like class sizes and salaries), unhappiness

Unlike some other
countries, the United States
has not put in place a set
of policies to address these
problems, so we get these
recurring waves of
shortages."
LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND
The Learning Policy Institute

with administrators, and policy issues, such
as high-stakes testing and accountability
pressures.
And teachers of color leave both schools and
the teaching profession at particularly high
rates, with a turnover rate of 18.9 percent in
2012-13, compared to 15 percent for white
teachers, according to the report.
A companion report released by the LPI
notes that black and Hispanic teachers report
autonomy and influence on school decisions
to be the strongest factors for staying in the
profession-more so than salary, useful professional development, or the availability of
classroom resources.
Math teachers also point to a lack of class-

room autonomy and discretion as a main factor for leaving the profession, said Richard M.
Ingersoll, a professor of education and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and an
author of the LPI report on minority teachers,
during the media call.
"You can have standards and goals, you can
even have standardized textbooks, but if you
go a step further and micromanage and script
how teachers have to do it, that becomes
a source of complaint," he said. "That would
not take money to fix, that is an issue of
management."
Ingersoll also highlighted schools' "unheralded success" in improving the numbers of
teachers of color in the profession. Only 18
percent of teachers are not white, which has
spurred national, state, and local efforts to
better recruit and retain teachers of color.
The LPI report on minority teachers found
that the growth of Hispanic, black, and Asian
teachers has outpaced the growth in the number of nonwhite students and was over twice
the growth rate of white teachers, signaling
success in recruitment efforts. But those efforts
have been undermined by the high turnover
rate of teachers of color.

State Rankings
LPI researchers also used available federal
data to assign states "teaching attractiveness
ratings," which are meant to indicate how supportive the state is of improved teacher recruitment and retention, and "teacher equity ratings," which show the extent to which students,
particularly students of color, are assigned uncertified or experienced teachers.
Arizona, a state that has battled severe
teacher shortages, received the lowest teaching-attractiveness rating, due to factors like a
low average starting salary, large class sizes,
and high attrition rate.
Meanwhile, Oregon received the highest rating, with a high degree of teacher autonomy
and other positively ranked working conditions,
and a low percentage of teachers who are not
certified.
Colorado had the lowest teacher-equity rating, with about 21 percent of teachers in highminority schools holding emergency or temporary certifications, compared to 4.5 percent of
uncertified teachers in low-minority schools.
And Vermont had the highest teacher-equity rating, with a low ratio of the percentage
of both uncertified and inexperienced teachers
in high-minority versus low-minority schools.
In conjunction with the report, the LPI
produced an interactive 50-state map to better examine the states' ratings and the varying conditions that influence the supply of
teachers.
Coverage of policy efforts to improve the teaching
profession is supported by a grant from the Joyce
Foundation, at www.joycefdn.org/Programs/
Education. Education Week retains sole editorial
control over the content of this coverage.

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Education Week - September 21, 2016

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