The Teacher Shortage is Coming

We just saw an article that had two interesting pieces of information about an impending teacher shortage.   The first really interesting piece of information is that in a four year period, people enrolled in teacher education majors went from 79,000 to 42,000 in New York State.  That’s an enormous decline.  It wouldn’t matter so much if teacher turnover had declined or if alternative paths to certification had grown during this period.  But they haven’t.

The second interesting piece in the article was the anecdotal evidence of an increase in the request for waivers from New York State trained teachers to go teach in other states with less onerous certification requirements. The information comes from the manager of teacher certification at NYU.  So if NYU students are finding the certification process in New York to be a disincentive to teaching here, how much the more so are students from less selective schools with fewer financial resources.

The regents, fortunately, now seem to realize this.  They have launched an extended review of the current certification process and extended the “safety net” through June 2017 whereby students who fail certification tests but are otherwise qualified can be certified. They are lobbying to change the law the state legislature passed in August 2015 that will limit the ability of a number of people to enter the field or to gain their professional certification.

I still think a teacher shortage is coming and it is going to be ugly.

Here’s the link to the article, which also has an interesting discussion about diversity and possible issues of fairness in the teacher tests. 

Jared Gellert is the Executive Director for CITE. 

CITE is the Center for Integrated Training and Education . For over 25 years, CITE has and continues to train TEACHERS (Early Childhood, Professional Certification, Special Ed, Grad Courses, DASA); COUNSELORS (School, Mental Health Masters, Advanced Certificate); and ADMINISTRATORS (SBL, SDL, Public Admin, Doctorate) in all five boroughs of NYC, Yonkers, and Long Island.

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