8 ms·

With teachers in short supply, states ease job requirements

41 points by lxm 4y ago

KidComputer 4y ago
- 535188B17C93743 4y ago
  My mom works in a middle school with a newly hired "severe behavior class" teacher who is woefully under-qualified. Because the new teacher is unable to adequately do her job, several administrators and other teachers routinely have to spend their extra time pitching in to take case-load from this teacher or chase kids around the school when she can't handle them. It's absolutely bonkers. If anything, hiring inept people will make the qualified folks want to stick around less. This has the opportunity to be bad-upon-bad! Yay!
  - mattmcknight 4y ago
    The thing is that is often not the lack of meeting the occupational licensing requirements that make a difference there. You can get the license without the ability to control a classroom. This may open things up to people who can do that, but lack the piece of paper.
    - phailhaus 4y ago
      And this will also open things up to people who can do neither. Lowering the bar for teachers will only be a bad thing at scale.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - dehrmann 4y ago
        One truth/joke from covid was that it made it clear the primary role of schools is daycare while parents work.
    - 535188B17C93743 4y ago
      >This may open things up to people who can do that, but lack the piece of paper. Yeah, I can't see why someone _would_ do it if they _could_ but aren't being paid well. The problem is motivating people with the skills to want to work... and it's hard to do that at borderline poverty entry-level wages.
  - rdtwo 4y ago
    I mean no amount of qualifications can prepare you for that kind of environment if the student to teacher ratio Id too high
    - 535188B17C93743 4y ago
      The previous teacher who ran the classroom for 30 years was fantastic and always had it under control.
  - frumper 4y ago
    The 4 large schools districts near my city started this school year anywhere from 50-300 teachers short, many of those positions in special education. They are hiring literally everyone that meets the qualifications on paper, including those that are working towards credentials. Edit: I should add they still do need to pass a background check.
norwalkbear 4y ago
It's seems the better option is to homeschool or use a local homeschool pod
- sovnade 4y ago
  Unfortunately hiring a private teacher to teach a small group of similarly-aged kids is reasonably affordable for families (less than half the price of private school), gives them a better education than public school (1:5 or 1:6 instead of 1:20), and takes a good qualified teacher out of the public school system (also while paying them more for working fewer hours). We've always supported public schools but as a Florida resident, a private teacher is looking more and more like the better alternative.
  - debacle 4y ago
    Many states have made this model (teacher "pods") illegal, which is terrible because I believe it is the future of education.
    - ndriscoll 4y ago
      Sounds like a good life lesson for children: if you want to live freely, don't tell the state what you're doing.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    That sounds like “fortunately” not “unfortunately.” For everyone involved, including the teacher.
    - sovnade 4y ago
      Yep. Unfortunate is for the public schools though as there are now fewer teachers available to hire. There's teacher shortages in almost every state in the country.
  - xyzzyz 4y ago
    Why is it unfortunate? If the government organized government funded meals for children in government funded restaurants, ran by government employees, would you also find it unfortunate if regular people were able to afford feeding their own kids outside of the system, without depending on what government thinks is appropriate to feed to children? If the regular people can opt out of the system, and instead pick what their like at their own expense, why is it bad?
grensley 4y ago
> And in Florida, military veterans without a bachelor’s degree can teach for up to five years using temporary certificates. That seems so weird. Why would they have to stop after five years of teaching? Shouldn't they be better at it by that point? https://www.fldoe.org/veterans/ https://www.fldoe.org/veterans/ They're trying to strongly push them to finish their bachelors (which they must have started), but what an odd program.
- bobro 4y ago
  From your link, it looks like they have a criterion requiring that the vet has about half a bachelor degree already (60 credits), so it makes sense as a fast pass for college students or an incentive for a near grad dropout to go back and finish.
- rayiner 4y ago
  The page you linked explains the rationale: > Veterans who successfully obtain their 5-year temporary teaching certificate will be assigned a mentor teacher for a minimum of two years to support their classroom teaching endeavors. They must also earn their bachelor’s degree during the 5-year period to be eligible for a full professional certificate; the temporary certificate cannot be renewed once it expires. It’s a temporary pathway for veterans to work as teachers while finishing a bachelor’s degree. (This has been widely misreported in the media.)
- Maursault 4y ago
  Florida only requires substitute teachers have a high school diploma and be trained in the school district’s school safety policies and procedures, ethics, professional responsibilities and liability laws. I strongly suspect the issue in states claiming a shortage of teachers is due to low salaries. Rather than raise salaries to attract talent, they're lowering hiring standards.
- socialismisok 4y ago
  Also, what makes soldiers good teachers? Why would we say veterans should get a pass in this particular arena?
cbreynoldson 4y ago
This can only end well.
taurath 4y ago
We need a completely new system of culture in the US - nothing important gets taken care of, the most important roles for peoples well being and enrichment like schoolteachers or nurses are treated like garbage. Ask any teacher or any nurse about what it’s like to do their jobs.
- im_down_w_otp 4y ago
  With the MBA-ification takeover of American society that seemed to start in the early 80's and reach socio-political bipartisan consensus by the mid 90's it has since seemed to me like there's been a significant and persistent priority inversion problem in most of how the US organizes its economy, industry, and investments. The most concise way I can describe it is "pathological myopia".
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    You can trace it back to Reagan, basically. Which in turn led to the fetishizing of capital you describe.
  - taurath 4y ago
    Corporations and the investment class took all the money out of the economy, and now they're about to lose it as their balance sheets dry up. It is the people who will suffer the most. It worked out okay when we had extreme levels of corporate control relative to government aka the 1950s. Privatization has made everything worse. Conservatives are tied chained to the idea that corporations provide a ladder for people but they just straight up don't, its not profitable and they can spend money on stock buybacks instead. Our economic culture is completely sick, nobody is paying attention to almost any of the real problems. A literal depression seems like the only thing that will ever make change happen at the moment.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  We spend more than Europeans but get way less in return. We should just wholesale copy a system that is working like in Finland and scrap what we have, as it's not working.
legitster 4y ago
Teaching qualifications were BS to begin with. For most subjects, having a degree in a subject actually correlates terribly with someone's ability to teach it. These restrictions had more to do with liability and protecting jobs than anything else.
- collegeburner 4y ago
  facts we had teachers teaching the same stuff 100 years ago without this BS degree requirement and a much simpler certificate program. and it's not like we're getting better outcomes per dollar so clearly it's not helping that much. nobody needs a bachelors to teach freaking high school english.
  - debacle 4y ago
    While I mostly agree with you, if you look at public vs private schools, the divide in education is not in STEM. It is in history and "English" (grammar, writing, speaking). And while private schools are doubling down on those things, public schools are reducing the focus on grammar, spelling, writing, and speaking, and changing what it means to teach "history."
    - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
      Are private schools able to attract talented History and English teachers? It could just be the circles I go in but I'm under the impression that the reasons that people go into teaching those subjects are generally better aligned with teaching the public i.e. if you're teaching rich kids with engaged parents then you're optimizing diminishing returns while a little literacy can go a really long way in an underserved community.
      - debacle 4y ago
        The sociological aspects of teaching are becoming more demanding over time, which draws teachers to private schools despite the generally lower pay.
neilv 4y ago
> For Dallas schools, “it’s about the passion, not about the paper,” said Robert Abel, the district’s human capital management chief. It's also about the paper (the Benjamins). During Covid, I know and heard of teachers who decided they just weren't getting paid enough for the conditions. Already underpaid, they were then told to do additional things, including teach before a class of germ-factory children without being allowed to wear a mask when mask advisories were otherwise in effect. Or to take additional workload to teach both in-person and remote. Or, in the case of college lecturers and professors, to record video lectures that the school could reuse without them (video streaming is even cheaper than an adjunct). It'd make sense to pay and treat teachers like the enormously important educators and nurturers of children that they are. You can still get passion, but people saying someone else should do work out of passion... always sound like they're exploiting.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
  Paying teachers more will bring talent. Oklahoma had this problem when Texas started paying more a few years ago and Oklahoma experienced a brain drain of good teachers[0]. Texas is discussed a lot in this article. Texas has a problem with lack of teachers that could easily be alleviated by offering higher teacher salaries. Texas can afford to pay more. Texas gets a flush of money that could easily go to paying teachers more through its recapture system that is supposed to go to education but instead due to corruption is used to balance the general fund[1]. The general fund is used, among other things, to fund oil and gas subsidies. 0:https://www.npr.org/2018/04/07/600322769/he-was-oklahomas-teacher-of-the-year-then-moved-to-texas-for-better-pay-now-what https://www.npr.org/2018/04/07/600322769/he-was-oklahomas-te... 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20220212004001/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kut.org%2Feducation%2F2022-02-11%2Faustin-isd-paid-hundreds-of-millions-more-than-other-districts-in-texas-recapture-program https://web.archive.org/web/20220212004001/https%3A%2F%2Fwww...
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > Texas gets a flush of money that could easily go to paying teachers more through its recapture system that is supposed to go to education I'd be curious about how popular a straight-up pay raise for teachers is with voters. Not an education budget boost. Just raising pay on the argument that it will let the district/state attract the best candidates.
debacle 4y ago
With inflation being what it is, civil service workers (including teachers) are going to be feeling a bit of a squeeze. We are already seeing it with bus drivers and teacher aides - there is no way for the public sector to keep up with private sector wages during high inflation (the tax levy can't grow fast enough). What will be interesting is if having non-certified teachers doesn't impact education outcomes, which for K-5 gen ed classes seems at least a possibility. Then the core argument for teacher pay (that they have masters degrees) will go out the window.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  The tax rate doesn't need to go up: with the same tax rate, the revenues will increase with inflation because the costs of things will go up, so of course the amount of tax will also go up. Governments simply don't want to pay enough to attract and retain talent, inflation or not.
  - debacle 4y ago
    I am highly involved in local and statewide policymaking in this field. The property tax levy is fixed year to year, and makes up the majority of the revenue for school districts in my state. That levy can only go up by law 2% yoy without an exemption from the state (which is difficult to secure). And with property values declining due to higher interest rates, the landscape of the levy itself is going to change drastically, putting much more burden on commercial property than residential (which doesn't bode well for a struggling local economy).
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      >The property tax levy is fixed year to year, and makes up the majority of the revenue for school districts in my state. I'm sorry, I don't understand this. What do you mean by "levy"? Every place I've ever seen had property taxes based on assessed property values; there was a tax rate, which is a percentage of the property value. (And yes, the assessed value is almost always lower than the market value, but it still rises with the market values.) Property values have shot up tremendously over the past ~5 years, so local governments have gotten a windfall in property tax revenues. Did they use this to pay teachers better and make the teaching profession more attractive? No. Now, all of a sudden, property values are declining and you're complaining about revenues falling?
vinnymac 4y ago
This school year, is the first that my wife hasn't taught, since she became a teacher. I watched over the last two years, as the pandemic beat her down, until she had to move on. You can only get physically and mentally abused, while being underpaid, for so long, before it becomes too much of a sacrifice.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Or you know they could just make job conditions and pay better? The single most important factor in children's education is an afterthought to the administrators and politicians.
GoodJokes 4y ago
WalterBright 4y ago
Instead of spending the money on unqualified teachers, provide some vouchers so that students can attend a private school.
dirtyid 4y ago
Students also getting good at easing their own education requirements as well. >The internet ruined homework which hurt test scores. >When students did their homework in 2008, it improved test grades for 86% of them, but only helped 45% in 2017. Why? A majority of students are now copying internet answers. The benefit of homework requires doing it yourself! https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1553369439353069568 https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1553369439353069568
not_enoch_wise 4y ago
Imagine a world where higher pay attracts higher quality. Not that the quality of education could possibly have long term consequences!

41 points by lxm 4y ago

KidComputer 4y ago

535188B17C93743 4y ago
My mom works in a middle school with a newly hired "severe behavior class" teacher who is woefully under-qualified. Because the new teacher is unable to adequately do her job, several administrators and other teachers routinely have to spend their extra time pitching in to take case-load from this teacher or chase kids around the school when she can't handle them. It's absolutely bonkers. If anything, hiring inept people will make the qualified folks want to stick around less. This has the opportunity to be bad-upon-bad! Yay!
- mattmcknight 4y ago
  The thing is that is often not the lack of meeting the occupational licensing requirements that make a difference there. You can get the license without the ability to control a classroom. This may open things up to people who can do that, but lack the piece of paper.
  - phailhaus 4y ago
    And this will also open things up to people who can do neither. Lowering the bar for teachers will only be a bad thing at scale.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - dehrmann 4y ago
      One truth/joke from covid was that it made it clear the primary role of schools is daycare while parents work.
  - 535188B17C93743 4y ago
    >This may open things up to people who can do that, but lack the piece of paper. Yeah, I can't see why someone _would_ do it if they _could_ but aren't being paid well. The problem is motivating people with the skills to want to work... and it's hard to do that at borderline poverty entry-level wages.
- rdtwo 4y ago
  I mean no amount of qualifications can prepare you for that kind of environment if the student to teacher ratio Id too high
  - 535188B17C93743 4y ago
    The previous teacher who ran the classroom for 30 years was fantastic and always had it under control.
- frumper 4y ago
  The 4 large schools districts near my city started this school year anywhere from 50-300 teachers short, many of those positions in special education. They are hiring literally everyone that meets the qualifications on paper, including those that are working towards credentials. Edit: I should add they still do need to pass a background check.

norwalkbear 4y ago

It's seems the better option is to homeschool or use a local homeschool pod

sovnade 4y ago
Unfortunately hiring a private teacher to teach a small group of similarly-aged kids is reasonably affordable for families (less than half the price of private school), gives them a better education than public school (1:5 or 1:6 instead of 1:20), and takes a good qualified teacher out of the public school system (also while paying them more for working fewer hours). We've always supported public schools but as a Florida resident, a private teacher is looking more and more like the better alternative.
- debacle 4y ago
  Many states have made this model (teacher "pods") illegal, which is terrible because I believe it is the future of education.
  - ndriscoll 4y ago
    Sounds like a good life lesson for children: if you want to live freely, don't tell the state what you're doing.
- rayiner 4y ago
  That sounds like “fortunately” not “unfortunately.” For everyone involved, including the teacher.
  - sovnade 4y ago
    Yep. Unfortunate is for the public schools though as there are now fewer teachers available to hire. There's teacher shortages in almost every state in the country.
- xyzzyz 4y ago
  Why is it unfortunate? If the government organized government funded meals for children in government funded restaurants, ran by government employees, would you also find it unfortunate if regular people were able to afford feeding their own kids outside of the system, without depending on what government thinks is appropriate to feed to children? If the regular people can opt out of the system, and instead pick what their like at their own expense, why is it bad?

grensley 4y ago

> And in Florida, military veterans without a bachelor’s degree can teach for up to five years using temporary certificates. That seems so weird. Why would they have to stop after five years of teaching? Shouldn't they be better at it by that point? https://www.fldoe.org/veterans/ https://www.fldoe.org/veterans/ They're trying to strongly push them to finish their bachelors (which they must have started), but what an odd program.

bobro 4y ago
From your link, it looks like they have a criterion requiring that the vet has about half a bachelor degree already (60 credits), so it makes sense as a fast pass for college students or an incentive for a near grad dropout to go back and finish.
rayiner 4y ago
The page you linked explains the rationale: > Veterans who successfully obtain their 5-year temporary teaching certificate will be assigned a mentor teacher for a minimum of two years to support their classroom teaching endeavors. They must also earn their bachelor’s degree during the 5-year period to be eligible for a full professional certificate; the temporary certificate cannot be renewed once it expires. It’s a temporary pathway for veterans to work as teachers while finishing a bachelor’s degree. (This has been widely misreported in the media.)
Maursault 4y ago
Florida only requires substitute teachers have a high school diploma and be trained in the school district’s school safety policies and procedures, ethics, professional responsibilities and liability laws. I strongly suspect the issue in states claiming a shortage of teachers is due to low salaries. Rather than raise salaries to attract talent, they're lowering hiring standards.
socialismisok 4y ago
Also, what makes soldiers good teachers? Why would we say veterans should get a pass in this particular arena?

cbreynoldson 4y ago

This can only end well.

taurath 4y ago

We need a completely new system of culture in the US - nothing important gets taken care of, the most important roles for peoples well being and enrichment like schoolteachers or nurses are treated like garbage. Ask any teacher or any nurse about what it’s like to do their jobs.

im_down_w_otp 4y ago
With the MBA-ification takeover of American society that seemed to start in the early 80's and reach socio-political bipartisan consensus by the mid 90's it has since seemed to me like there's been a significant and persistent priority inversion problem in most of how the US organizes its economy, industry, and investments. The most concise way I can describe it is "pathological myopia".
- socialismisok 4y ago
  You can trace it back to Reagan, basically. Which in turn led to the fetishizing of capital you describe.
- taurath 4y ago
  Corporations and the investment class took all the money out of the economy, and now they're about to lose it as their balance sheets dry up. It is the people who will suffer the most. It worked out okay when we had extreme levels of corporate control relative to government aka the 1950s. Privatization has made everything worse. Conservatives are tied chained to the idea that corporations provide a ladder for people but they just straight up don't, its not profitable and they can spend money on stock buybacks instead. Our economic culture is completely sick, nobody is paying attention to almost any of the real problems. A literal depression seems like the only thing that will ever make change happen at the moment.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
We spend more than Europeans but get way less in return. We should just wholesale copy a system that is working like in Finland and scrap what we have, as it's not working.

legitster 4y ago

Teaching qualifications were BS to begin with. For most subjects, having a degree in a subject actually correlates terribly with someone's ability to teach it. These restrictions had more to do with liability and protecting jobs than anything else.

collegeburner 4y ago
facts we had teachers teaching the same stuff 100 years ago without this BS degree requirement and a much simpler certificate program. and it's not like we're getting better outcomes per dollar so clearly it's not helping that much. nobody needs a bachelors to teach freaking high school english.
- debacle 4y ago
  While I mostly agree with you, if you look at public vs private schools, the divide in education is not in STEM. It is in history and "English" (grammar, writing, speaking). And while private schools are doubling down on those things, public schools are reducing the focus on grammar, spelling, writing, and speaking, and changing what it means to teach "history."
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    Are private schools able to attract talented History and English teachers? It could just be the circles I go in but I'm under the impression that the reasons that people go into teaching those subjects are generally better aligned with teaching the public i.e. if you're teaching rich kids with engaged parents then you're optimizing diminishing returns while a little literacy can go a really long way in an underserved community.
    - debacle 4y ago
      The sociological aspects of teaching are becoming more demanding over time, which draws teachers to private schools despite the generally lower pay.

neilv 4y ago

> For Dallas schools, “it’s about the passion, not about the paper,” said Robert Abel, the district’s human capital management chief. It's also about the paper (the Benjamins). During Covid, I know and heard of teachers who decided they just weren't getting paid enough for the conditions. Already underpaid, they were then told to do additional things, including teach before a class of germ-factory children without being allowed to wear a mask when mask advisories were otherwise in effect. Or to take additional workload to teach both in-person and remote. Or, in the case of college lecturers and professors, to record video lectures that the school could reuse without them (video streaming is even cheaper than an adjunct). It'd make sense to pay and treat teachers like the enormously important educators and nurturers of children that they are. You can still get passion, but people saying someone else should do work out of passion... always sound like they're exploiting.

SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
Paying teachers more will bring talent. Oklahoma had this problem when Texas started paying more a few years ago and Oklahoma experienced a brain drain of good teachers[0]. Texas is discussed a lot in this article. Texas has a problem with lack of teachers that could easily be alleviated by offering higher teacher salaries. Texas can afford to pay more. Texas gets a flush of money that could easily go to paying teachers more through its recapture system that is supposed to go to education but instead due to corruption is used to balance the general fund[1]. The general fund is used, among other things, to fund oil and gas subsidies. 0:https://www.npr.org/2018/04/07/600322769/he-was-oklahomas-teacher-of-the-year-then-moved-to-texas-for-better-pay-now-what https://www.npr.org/2018/04/07/600322769/he-was-oklahomas-te... 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20220212004001/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kut.org%2Feducation%2F2022-02-11%2Faustin-isd-paid-hundreds-of-millions-more-than-other-districts-in-texas-recapture-program https://web.archive.org/web/20220212004001/https%3A%2F%2Fwww...
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > Texas gets a flush of money that could easily go to paying teachers more through its recapture system that is supposed to go to education I'd be curious about how popular a straight-up pay raise for teachers is with voters. Not an education budget boost. Just raising pay on the argument that it will let the district/state attract the best candidates.

debacle 4y ago

With inflation being what it is, civil service workers (including teachers) are going to be feeling a bit of a squeeze. We are already seeing it with bus drivers and teacher aides - there is no way for the public sector to keep up with private sector wages during high inflation (the tax levy can't grow fast enough). What will be interesting is if having non-certified teachers doesn't impact education outcomes, which for K-5 gen ed classes seems at least a possibility. Then the core argument for teacher pay (that they have masters degrees) will go out the window.

midoridensha 4y ago
The tax rate doesn't need to go up: with the same tax rate, the revenues will increase with inflation because the costs of things will go up, so of course the amount of tax will also go up. Governments simply don't want to pay enough to attract and retain talent, inflation or not.
- debacle 4y ago
  I am highly involved in local and statewide policymaking in this field. The property tax levy is fixed year to year, and makes up the majority of the revenue for school districts in my state. That levy can only go up by law 2% yoy without an exemption from the state (which is difficult to secure). And with property values declining due to higher interest rates, the landscape of the levy itself is going to change drastically, putting much more burden on commercial property than residential (which doesn't bode well for a struggling local economy).
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    >The property tax levy is fixed year to year, and makes up the majority of the revenue for school districts in my state. I'm sorry, I don't understand this. What do you mean by "levy"? Every place I've ever seen had property taxes based on assessed property values; there was a tax rate, which is a percentage of the property value. (And yes, the assessed value is almost always lower than the market value, but it still rises with the market values.) Property values have shot up tremendously over the past ~5 years, so local governments have gotten a windfall in property tax revenues. Did they use this to pay teachers better and make the teaching profession more attractive? No. Now, all of a sudden, property values are declining and you're complaining about revenues falling?

vinnymac 4y ago

This school year, is the first that my wife hasn't taught, since she became a teacher. I watched over the last two years, as the pandemic beat her down, until she had to move on. You can only get physically and mentally abused, while being underpaid, for so long, before it becomes too much of a sacrifice.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

Or you know they could just make job conditions and pay better? The single most important factor in children's education is an afterthought to the administrators and politicians.

GoodJokes 4y ago

WalterBright 4y ago

Instead of spending the money on unqualified teachers, provide some vouchers so that students can attend a private school.

dirtyid 4y ago

Students also getting good at easing their own education requirements as well. >The internet ruined homework which hurt test scores. >When students did their homework in 2008, it improved test grades for 86% of them, but only helped 45% in 2017. Why? A majority of students are now copying internet answers. The benefit of homework requires doing it yourself! https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1553369439353069568 https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1553369439353069568

not_enoch_wise 4y ago

Imagine a world where higher pay attracts higher quality. Not that the quality of education could possibly have long term consequences!