Analysis: New Warnings of Teacher Shortage Sound Like Déjà Vu All Over Again
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Last week, the Learning Policy Institute released a report cautioning about an impending shortage of teachers. Along with the report, a daylong forum took place in Washington, D.C. The report garnered positive coverage from various media outlets such as U.S. News & World Report and National Public Radio.
Linda Darling-Hammond, the founder of the LPI and an esteemed expert in education policy, co-authored the report titled "A Coming Crisis in Teaching? Teacher Supply, Demand, and Shortages in the U.S." It is worth noting that she was considered for the role of Education Secretary under President Obama and may once again be a candidate if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency in November.
Darling-Hammond has an extensive and distinguished career in the field of education policy, dating back to her time as a researcher at the Rand Corporation in the 1980s. In 1984, she wrote a report for Rand titled "The Coming Crisis in Teaching," which also warned of an imminent shortage of teachers. Let’s compare the two warnings:
1984: "If substantial changes are not made to the teaching profession’s structure, making it an appealing career option for talented individuals, we will face significant shortages of qualified teachers within a few years."
2016: "Unless there are significant changes in teacher supply or a decline in the demand for more teachers in the coming years, we could experience annual shortages of up to 112,000 teachers by 2018, which would persist at similar levels thereafter."
Both reports depicted charts illustrating the intersection of teacher supply and demand. First, the 1984 chart:
Source: The Rand Corporation, "The Coming Crisis in Teaching"
Next, the 2016 chart:
Source: U.S. Department of Education, "A Coming Crisis in Teaching"
The 1984 report attributed the teacher shortage to high levels of attrition caused by unfavorable working conditions. Teachers were leaving the profession due to low salaries, dissatisfaction with their working environment, lack of input, and the prevalence of standardized testing.
As a result, the report predicted that the teacher shortage would worsen to the point where less academically qualified individuals would have to be hired, becoming the tenured teaching force for the next two generations of American students.
So, what actually happened?
A review of the National Center for Education Statistics archives reveals that the number of K-12 public school teachers grew from 2,168,000 in 1984 to 2,401,000 in 1990. This means that all the teachers who left were replaced, and an additional 233,000 were hired. Was this increase necessary due to a rise in enrollment? No, as the pupil-teacher ratio actually decreased during that period, going from 18.1 to 17.0.
The number of teachers has continued to grow, even after a severe recession. According to estimates from the National Education Association, U.S. public schools currently employ almost 3.2 million K-12 classroom teachers.
How did we avoid the first predicted "coming crisis in teaching"? If we consider Darling-Hammond’s 1984 recommendations, we must have addressed the issues of low teacher salaries, dissatisfaction with working conditions, lack of input, and standardized testing. Alternatively, we have been hiring academically underqualified individuals for the past 32 years.
However, since there is substantial evidence to show that neither of these scenarios is true, the answer must lie elsewhere. In her 2016 report, Darling-Hammond unintentionally provided a possible explanation:
"For instance, during the Great Recession, the actual demand for teachers decreased due to budget cuts, and schools could not afford to hire new teachers or even retain the ones they already had. In this case, the actual demand decreased, while the ideal demand remained the same. Ideally, schools would want to maintain the number of teachers and revert to the class sizes and course offerings they had before the recession."
In other words, the shortage is not a result of a disparity between supply and demand, but rather a disparity between supply and "ideal demand." Darling-Hammond defines ideal demand as a return to pre-recession conditions at the very least.
However, the problem is that we do not live in an ideal world. In an ideal scenario, schools would strive to have one teacher, or even more, for each student. Yet, this ideal demand can never be met under normal circumstances in a democratic society. Would that mean a teacher shortage of 50 million?
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