Frontline Blog

What do you do when your teacher workforce doesn’t reflect the diversity of your student body? It’s a question many education leaders have found themselves asking. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, over 50 percent of public school students identify as people of color, compared to only 20 percent of public school teachers.

Is hiring at the top of your mind right now? If you want the most outstanding teachers in your classrooms, it should be.

Of all the districts facing a teacher shortage, 34% say it’s because they have an issue with teacher turnover. You know what that means: you have to go searching for new talent each year.

Every time a position opens up in your district, whether from attrition or increased student enrollment, you need to find a qualified, talented candidate to fill the role. It’s easy to get into reaction mode, where you go from filling one position onto the next, but part of strategic recruitment is looking ahead and planning accordingly.

The hard work of attracting, engaging, growing and retaining quality teachers has got to be one of the greatest challenges facing K-12 right now. Many teachers don’t feel engaged, equipped or empowered. They’re leaving the field at alarming rates, and new graduates are not taking their place fast enough, causing a widespread teacher shortage. Meanwhile, administrators are often over-burdened with paperwork and compliance. Budget cuts and limited resources compound the problem.

No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, the Every Student Succeeds Act - all inspiring names, all painting a picture of education in which each student learns to her full potential. But what happens when well-intended laws yield unintended results? (We're looking at you, NCLB.)

Everywhere you turn, there’s a new article about the substitute teacher shortage. There just aren’t enough substitute teachers to go around, and the problem has been pinned on everything from poor pay to low unemployment rates. Districts work hard to try to pump up their substitute pools — reaching out to news outlets, posting on social media and attending job fairs.

Education has a problem. To replace retiring teachers and keep up with increasing student enrollment, schools will need to hire about 300,000 new teachers every year. But less than 5 percent of high school seniors are interested in education as a major or profession. Clearly, there’s a massive gap between the number of teachers needed to fill our classrooms, and the number of people interested in becoming teachers — and many districts are already feeling the pinch.  

America is approaching a crisis point regarding the number of available teachers. Low-income schools are seeing increasingly high turnover rates for their educators, and fewer young graduates are entering the teaching force in the first place.