To Tackle the Teacher Shortage, Start the Path to the Profession in High School

By Mark Baxter, The 74

This story first appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.

Teaching has a retention problem, especially for educators from diverse backgrounds — and the problem could grow even worse. Last month, the U.S. Department of Education withheld funding to states for preparing, training and recruiting teachers, and though it released the funds after facing significant backlash, there is now tremendous uncertainty about the commitment to the quality of educators at the federal level. It is up to states and districts to redouble their efforts to address shortage and retention issues that have impacted schools for far too long.

In my home state of Delaware, 30% of teachers overall and 37% of nonwhite teachers leave public education within five years, and the numbers are similar in other states. It’s a big reason why teacher shortages remain such a persistent challenge, particularly in special education and STEM classrooms and in poor and predominantly Black communities.

These trends are not new, but the nationwide decline in reading and math achievement over the last 10 years makes addressing them more urgent than ever. The administration’s recent actions have only made that work harder.

Even in this fractured political environment, though, there’s continued bipartisan support for career pathway programs that can address these issues by helping young people develop skills that lead to good-paying jobs. Classrooms are filled with talented young people with the potential to become great teachers who understand, through firsthand experience, their communities’ needs. Instead of making them wait until after college to choose teaching as a career, the path to the profession should start in high school.

Efforts to connect high school and educator preparation already exist, through organizations like Educators Rising and the Center for Black Educator Development. But school, district and state leaders should seize the opportunity to expand these models much more widely. Here are the first three steps that could make it happen.

First, states should use federal policy and strategic funding to address low starting pay and the high cost of training, which are both barriers for aspiring teachers. For example, Delaware has found innovative ways to boost starting salaries for both new teachers and aspiring educators participating in residency programs, in which they spend a year in classrooms observing and learning from veterans. Districts in Delaware have combined state and local funding to increase stipends for teacher residents from $20,000 to over $40,000 in some districts by using strategic staffing models to shift unused budget allocations into funding for these programs.

Additionally, the state recently introduced new Grow Your Own grant programs, which help districts or charter schools establish their own teacher pathways. It also registered teaching as an apprenticeship to help lower the upfront costs of certification by placing aspiring teachers in paid positions in schools while they’re completing their training.

Second, districts should look to career and technical (CTE) programs as pathways into teaching. CTE leaders, teacher recruitment teams and district career counselors must work together, meeting regularly to identify high school students with potential to become strong teachers and encouraging them to take advantage of education pathways programs. They should also monitor the progress of pathways participants, troubleshoot any issues and brainstorm ways to make programming more relevant and meaningful. These can include offering hands-on learning opportunities, such as tutoring and job-shadowing educators at neighboring schools, that allow students to earn college credit. This, in turn, would help colleges recruit high-achieving students into their education programs to take the next step toward teacher certification.

Third, schools must recruit passionate educators to support aspiring teachers of all backgrounds. Students need teachers who reflect their identities and experiences. It’s not news that the U.S. has a teacher diversity problem — nationally, only about 20% of educators at public schools are people of color. But districts and states can work toward staffing high school teacher pathway courses with educators who can build culturally affirming environments that inspire the next generation of teachers.

Through its year-long high school CTE course for students interested in teaching, the Center for Black Educator Development has shown that this strategy works. The program, which includes high school students in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Michigan, provides a culturally affirming curriculum and pairs students with passionate educators as mentors. Students who completed the program showed an increased interest in teaching — and, specifically, in teaching Black students.

Schools can nurture the next generation of education changemakers — teachers who will reflect the diversity of their future students — even before they graduate.

If education leaders and policymakers are serious about solving the teacher recruitment, retention and diversity challenges that have bedeviled schools for generations, they must move beyond isolated initiatives and build a cohesive, systemic approach that starts in high school. By fully integrating teacher pathway programs into high schools, they can ignite a passion for teaching among students, create seamless transitions into the profession and ensure more classrooms are led by educators who reflect and understand the communities they serve. The pieces of the puzzle already exist — education leaders just need the collective will to see the big picture and put them together.

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This story was produced by The 74, a non-profit, independent news organization focused on education in America.

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