The American Teacher Shortage isn't because People Criticize Public School Curricula

In the last few years as districts in NJ and the United States have had increasing difficulty finding qualified teachers, one argument that many people in education have made for the teacher shortage is that staffing is a casualty of the "Culture War," ie conservative criticisms of teacher unions, individual teachers, and curriculum.

Source, New Jersey's Teacher Pipeline: The Decline in Teacher Candidates Continues" by Mark Weber
for the New Jersey Policy Perspective

People within public education say that conservative criticism of teacher unions and public schools are an "attack on public education."  People within public ed say that even criticisms that are not directly against teachers or teacher unions, like accusations of what is taught in history or criticisms of matters relating to transgender students, also demoralize teachers and produce staffing shortages.

I've seen many examples of this.  For instance, this 2022 NYTimes op-doc "Empty Classrooms, Abandoned Kids," says that accusations that teachers are indoctrinating students is the second biggest cause of staffing shortages, after low salaries.  The op-doc says teachers have been "vilified in America’s vicious culture war" and says "By putting censorship first, politicians, with their warped priorities, are deflecting from the real problem, making sure kids even have teachers."   The documentary quotes a teacher who says “It’s really frustrating to hear how we’re indoctrinating or how we’re teaching the wrong things,” and  another teacher who says "I think that's absolutely driving a ton of people out of the profession."

Here's the NEA Today also endorsing the view that criticism of curriculum hurts recruitment and retention:

What did school staff tell you about how that has affected their jobs?

JR: Educators and many, if not most, community members believe strongly in the idea that schools should promote tolerant and inclusive behavior. What we heard is that their voices have been drowned out, that they are not being heard in this political climate.

That frustration and being subject to attacks leads to more educators looking to leave the profession. Principals told us it's been very difficult to recruit and retain staff. Their teachers feel constantly under attack and their professional decisions are being questioned daily. So, more are thinking about retiring or just leaving to do something else. 

Our society usually does not do well in promoting dialogue about race and equity in ways that are meaningful, productive, and respectful. Consequently, it can be exceedingly difficult for educators to facilitate these discussions with their students. This is challenging work that requires creativity, insight, and empathy. These attacks make it harder to lean into this work. They need that support because we don't want public education to back away from its critical role in protecting our democracy. 

The Washington Post tallied 160 teachers who had been dismissed for injecting politics/"politics" into the classroom and quoted the NEA's president predicting criticism would accelerate resignations:

'Our educators,' said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, 'are being caught in the crosshairs of the culture wars.'

She said many teachers were already exhausted before the wave of high-profile conflicts over what can be taught or expressed, tired out by pandemic-induced stress and the extra demands being made on both their professional and personal lives. She predicted the wave of firings and resignations will only grow in months to come — and warned some educators will refrain from teaching sensitive topics due to fear of backlash in the meantime.

'Teachers won’t desire to stay in a profession where, when they’re just trying to do what’s right for their students, they are being verbally attacked and blamed,' Pringle said. 'It is already having an impact … in terms of a chilling effect, with teachers having to make a decision whether they can teach the curriculum.'

Although I don't think public education is above criticism, I concede it's theoretically possible that conservative criticism exacerbates staffing problems, but the limited polling on this does not support this, at least at the pipeline phase.

For one, the polling does not support the claim that conservative criticism deters recruitment.  Determining why people aren't doing something is more difficult than determining why people are doing something, but the American Physical Society did attempt this and found that the biggest reason, by far, why science majors who considered teaching weren't going into it was actually "uncontrollable or uninterested students," and that none of the respondents said it was criticism by conservative politicians.  

Science has less ideological argument in it than other subjects, but concerns about conservative ideological pressure are nowhere in these results.

What is also indicates that the anger over curriculum is a small contributor to the teacher shortage is that countries whose culture wars are much less intense and acrimonious than the American culture war also have worsening teacher shortages.

Examples abound of how globally widespread the teacher shortage is:

Here's the United Kingdom, reported by the Guardian:

Teacher-training courses across the country are warning of a rise in the number of trainees opting for international posts for their first job, attracted by higher salaries, more respect in and out of the classroom – and an escape from Ofsted.

The trend will exacerbate the teacher shortage crisis already hitting UK schools. Teacher vacancies in England have nearly doubled since before Covid. Vacancies posted by schools earlier this year were 93% higher than at the same point in 2019, data from the National Foundation for Educational Research shows.

But the government is missing its teacher-training targets year on year. The undershoot for secondary trainee entrants was 41% in 2022-23, with just 12,356 students enrolling. At primary level, 6,527 applicants were on courses in April this year, down from 8,100 in 2022.

Desperate headteachers are increasingly forced to use non-specialist teachers and long-term supply cover to teach classes, driving down pupil attainment and heaping extra work on already overstretched staff. 

Here's Australia:

Australian students shun education degrees as fears grow over ‘unprecedented’ teacher shortage:

Graduating high school students are continuing to turn away from teaching degrees in huge numbers, early application data shows, as concern grows over “unprecedented” workforce shortages.

The data, provided to Guardian Australia from the Universities Admissions Centre, showed education degrees received just 1,935 first preferences this year, a 19.24% decline compared with 2023 and the lowest rate since at least 2016, when public records became available.

Overall, education was ranked seventh out of 11 major areas of study.

Here's the Netherlands, where "one in nine children [does] not have a teacher."

"there are currently tens of thousands of vacancies in Dutch schools totalling 9,700 full time jobs. Primary schools are worst hit, with a shortage of some 13,000 teachers: 

 

Teaching union AOb is calling on the government to increase teacher salaries because one in nine children will not have a teacher as the new school year starts.

Schools have spent the last weeks trying to fill vacancies and exploring other ways of ensuring teaching can go ahead, such as employing unqualified staff, combining classes or introducing a four-day week.

“That is not going to solve the teacher shortage,” AOb spokeswoman Floor de Booys told Nu.nl. “Schools have been improvising to get their schedules into some sort of order but what we need are long-term solutions,” she said. 

 

There are currently tens of thousands of vacancies in Dutch schools totalling 9,700 full time jobs. Primary schools are worst hit, with a shortage of some 13,000 teachers.

Here's Germany, "Germany's Teacher Shortage Puts Schools in a Crisis Mode":

The Education Ministers' Conference, the body of the 16 state education ministers who attempt to coordinate education policies, estimates that 14,000 full-time teaching positions are currently vacant.

Economists, education researchers and the GEW teachers' union all consider that figure too low. "By 2035, the gap in the supply and demand of teachers will grow to 56,000 full-time positions," said Anja Bensinger-Stolze, who heads up GEW. She bases that conclusion on a GEW study released in September, which forecast that the total number of vacant teaching positions in Germany's schools, including part time, could reach half a million by 2035.

Here's Ireland, "Where Have All the Teachers Gone?"

Teacher shortages are plaguing Ireland as the school year begins. At the end of 2022, the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) said teacher shortages had reached 'emergency levels'. Last month the the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) warned schools are under 'enormous strain' as hundreds of teaching positions were still unfilled ahead of the new term. An ASTI survey shared in April found nearly half of secondary schools had teaching vacancies. It found three quarters of the second-level school principals who participated in the survey said they had received no applications for an advertised teaching post or posts in the current school year (2022/2023).

As of September 5, there were more than 600 primary and post-primary positions being advertised on recruitment website educationposts.ie. So why are we experiencing such a severe shortage of teachers?

Here's Canada:

Students across Canada have begun a new school year, but even as they crack open their books teachers and those who represent them are raising concerns there’s still not enough being done to fix ongoing teachers shortages from coast to coast to coast.

The shortages vary from province to territory. Some like Nova Scotia say most full-time roles are filled but they’re having issues in terms of substitute teachers. In the north, Nunavut is reporting a nine- to 10-per cent vacancy rate at the beginning of the school year, and while some schools are fully staffed, other communities are struggling.

And in Quebec two weeks ago, Education Minister Bernard Drainville confirmed that with school just around the corner, the province was lacking 1,859 full-time teachers and 6,699 part-time — coming to a total of 8,558 teachers missing.

Here's Italy, Norway, Portugal, Israel, Japan, France, Switzerland, Finland, and Austria, if you want more examples.  

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So whatever is driving the NJ and US teacher shortages, it's probably not entirely things specific to NJ and the US, and that means it's probably not criticisms by conservative politicians.   Several of the above countries have left-wing, even Woke, governments, eg Canada, so blaming Ron DeSantis for teacher shortages seems incompatible with evidence from other countries.  

To the extent politicization is a staffing problem, problems from the politicization of public schools affect recruitment/retention of conservatives and moderates too.  The Washington Post research above actually documented as many cases of people being fired for conservative beliefs as liberal ones.  NPR usually repeats progressive narratives, but NPR found teachers who quit because they disagreed with the left-wing orientation of public education.  

It's theoretically possible that efforts by conservative politicians actually help some conservative or moderate people go into or stay in teaching who disagree with the Woke/social justice orientation that would otherwise prevail if public education were left to its own devices and not influenced by democratic pressure.

Although I don't deny that political arguments could harm staffing overall, it's far from the biggest cause.

Given the global nature of the teacher staff shortage, there may also be a fundamental shifts in values by Millennials and Generation Z.

 

Sometimes it's hard to separate causation from correlation, but in the last few years in the US, fewer people have gone to college in the first place and of those who do, fewer major in the liberal arts subjects that teachers tend to major in, including education itself.  

History, the subject history teachers obviously often major in, is down by nearly a third, the most of any major listed here.

Perhaps these subjects don't have the same attraction to today's young generation as they did 20+ years ago and that correlates with fewer people loving the subjects so much that they would dedicate their careers to teaching it to young people, or perhaps fewer 18 year olds want to become teachers and so they major in other things anyway.  Whatever cause came first, the decline of "teacher-heavy majors" is a facet of the teacher shortage I haven't seen discussed.  

Obviously lagging pay is a reason for inadequate teacher recruitment, but the complexity is that people assume teacher pay is lower than it really is.

Part of the problem is an erroneous perception that teacher salaries are much lower than they really are, as Education Next found.

The American Physical Society, focusing on STEM majors and potential STEM teachers, found a similar result where people underestimate how much teachers actually earn.

The salary misperception problem for STEM teachers is even more inaccurate than for teachers in other areas because the "lockstep salary guide," where a physics teacher would be paid the same as an art teacher, is actually a semi-myth.  STEM teachers commonly are started at higher steps on the salary guide, so they do outearn non-STEM teachers.  

As the NJSBA reported:

The starting salary in Paterson, he said, is around $58,000, but [Assistant Superintendent Luis] Rojas has no qualms about offering the right candidate with the right experience more. 'It depends on the vacancy itself and how much of a need we have to fill the position,' he said. 'The guide is nice, but realistically, very seldom is anyone starting in Paterson at step one.'

For instance, if you are a chemistry teacher – even if you just graduated from college – there may be a school district that will hire you at step 10 since there is so much demand, Rojas said. 'Are we going to squabble over $10,000?' he asked. 'At the end of the day, the education of 30 students is more important than $10,000.' The alternative, he noted, is having someone who isn’t certified in that subject area teaching students or relying on a substitute – and neither are good options.

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This post isn't meant to be a comprehensive look at why fewer people are going into teaching or a comparison of staffing problems in different countries, but it is meant as useful context that the problem isn't restricted to the United States, let alone New Jersey, and it exists under multiple political cultures and ideological climates.  

Criticism by conservative politicians may or may not be justified (I think it sometimes is legitimate), but based on how other countries also have worsening teacher shortages, the evidence doesn't support a claim that it's a large factor in American staffing problems.