Teacher pay is one way to boost the number of teachers, but not the only way — schools need to prioritize working conditions and supoprt for teachers to help fill teacher vacancies. (Stock.adobe.com photo by Monkey Business)
Few, if any, school problems have been more in the national and Maryland spotlight than teacher shortages. When, most recently, Gov. Wes Moore (D) proposed slashing literally billions of dollars in school funding to bail out the state’s looming fiscal deficits, he claimed that the biggest cuts were harmless; the money couldn’t be spent, he said, because of teacher shortages.
He’s right, shortages are severe, particularly for highly qualified teachers. In Maryland, there were over 1,600 vacant positions at the start of this school year (and over 6,000 teachers had conditional licenses). What’s more, our state, like others nationwide, has had very limited success – despite commendable effort – filling up the teacher pipeline.
But he’s wrong in neglecting the best way to recruit and retain more teachers. That requires less emphasis on teacher pay and much more on teacher working conditions. Yet, the governor’s budget does the exact opposite, because savings from the huge cuts could be used to improve working conditions.
The lack of support staff is a major cause of unsatisfactory working conditions. A national survey in 2020 found “that teachers value a school that provides a full-time nurse, counselor, education professional and special education co-teacher more than they value a 10 percent salary increase.” Add in the near-absence of tutors (who need not be certified teachers) who can assist teachers with students who are struggling the most.
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This scarcity of support existed even before the pandemic made classroom life dramatically harder for teachers. And it affects retention as well as recruitment.
In Maryland last year, over 10% of teachers exited, many after just a year or two. The rate was as high as 17% in Baltimore City and 14% in Prince George’s County. A 2021-2022 survey by the National Center for Education Statistics indicated that pay is not the main reason for departures.
Further, the lack of support is exacerbated as teachers suffer from what I’ve called “mission creep.” Do teachers have the time, even if they have the expertise, to be social workers, psychologists and mental health counselors? Even before COVID-19, teachers were overloaded. One survey reported, “a typical teacher works a median of 54 hours per week. But just 46% of their time in the school building is spent teaching.” An expert has asserted “Let Teachers Teach.”
What is Maryland doing now to confront the daunting teacher recruitment and retention challenges? By and large it’s doing what all other states and local school systems are doing: financial incentives, marketing campaigns and “Grow Your Own” programs. Gov. Moore aims to boost these in new legislation.
Maryland has particularly put a lot of its eggs in the GYO basket. GYO grants pay for local school system initiatives like paid residency programs for teachers, paths for teaching assistants to become teachers, attracting high school students into pursuing teaching, and special efforts for hard-to-fill positions such as math, science and special education. Grants totaling around $25 million were made to local districts for a grab-bag of initiatives. However, as best as I have been able to determine, no data or evaluations are available.
It’s also noteworthy that there’s a catch-22 to financial incentives. Other states are undertaking similar efforts, and in the process, they compete for teachers by copycatting and trying to leapfrog each other. The result tends to be a zero-sum game.
Teacher pay is a striking example. The Blueprint’s mandate for a minimum salary of $60,000 for all teachers, when it was set in 2019, was ahead of the pack. Since then, inflation has reduced the value of $60,000 by over 20%, and many other school systems have bumped salaries closer to ours.
More of the same won’t work. In all probability, only improved working conditions will — despite the fact that it takes more support staff and rollback of mission creep to significantly lift working conditions, while raising pay is much simpler to implement.
So, is a steadily increasing teacher pipeline based on improved working conditions a pipe dream?
Maybe. You have a right to be skeptical. But for sure, school reform like the Blueprint won’t succeed without it. Policymakers have no choice but to try.
Here’s how to start. First, prioritize working conditions over pay (even though salaries must be raised over time too). And second, wage a political campaign to counter the governor’s drastic budget cuts and to increase revenues.
Many teachers, no matter what, will resolutely stick it out because of their heroic dedication to kids. But the evidence is unmistakable that there aren’t enough of them. Therefore, we must rethink past priorities for how to solve teacher shortages. Without more teachers, the Blueprint will flunk.