Title: National Teacher Shortage--Why Are So Many Educators Leaving the
Profession? 

Description: The big news story when students returned to classrooms
this fall was about a national shortage of teachers. Reports about this
issue skyrocketed during COVID-19. Why are so many educators leaving the
profession and why is it hard to recruit new teachers? We'll find out
more from GAO's Jackie Nowicki.

Related GAO Work: GAO-23-105180, K-12 Education: Education Should Assess
Its Efforts to Address Teacher Shortages.

Released: October 2022

[Music]

[Jackie Nowicki:] Teacher shortages are a legitimate concern for our
country right now especially in certain geographic regions and in
certain subjects.

[Holly Hobbs:] Hi and welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for
news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm
your host, Holly Hobbs. When school started back up this year, the big
news story was about a national shortage of teachers. Questions were
raised about why so many long time educators were leaving the
profession, and why is it so hard to recruit and retain new teachers. It
may surprise many to learn that for many years, parents and policymakers
have expressed concerns about teacher shortages. However, reports about
this issue skyrocketed during COVID-19. Today, we'll find out more from
GAO's Jackie Nowicki, an expert on K-12 education, who has a new report
out about what is causing the teachers shortage and what the Department
of Education is doing to help. Thanks for joining us.

[Jackie Nowicki:] Thanks for having me, Holly.

[Holly Hobbs:] So, Jackie, what's going on here? What do we know?

[Jackie Nowicki:] So part of it is that there are fewer people entering
the teaching profession. But we also know that retaining teachers, once
they do enter, has become increasingly difficult for a variety of
reasons. And this means that increasing the supply of teachers with
better recruiting strategies isn't going to solve the teacher shortages
issue by itself. We have to work on retaining them too. 

[Holly Hobbs:] I think many, including me, thought this was an issue
related to COVID and the pressure we put on teachers, like with remote
learning. But your report found that COVID just worsened an already bad
situation, right?

[Jackie Nowicki:] Yeah, the pandemic absolutely exacerbated teacher
shortages. And the reasons are complicated. For example, despite the
initial public display of gratitude for teachers, we later saw a
widespread lack of support, and public perception of the teaching
profession declined further. Current and former teachers told us that
they felt that their school leadership disregarded their safety and
dismissed concerns about teacher wellbeing, both before and throughout
the pandemic. We noticed something else in the data too. Some schools
that hadn't reported facing shortages before, were now reporting
struggling to fill vacancies. And we also heard many examples of
teachers resigning mid-semester, which was rare prior to the pandemic.

[Holly Hobbs:] You kind of hinted at this, but for this report, we
actually interviewed current and former teachers about this issue. What
did they tell us?

[Jackie Nowicki:] They gave us a range of challenges that they face,
like disparate state licensing requirements that limit portability of
their teaching credentials and low teacher salaries, especially given
how expensive it is to become a teacher. But what really struck us was
the consistent concern we heard about the negative perception of the
teaching profession and the lack of support for teachers. Teachers
described feeling exploited, demoralized, unsafe. They've observed
increasingly aggressive behaviors from students and parents. Stress,
fatigue, deteriorating mental health--those are all pushing current
teachers to leave and dissuading others from becoming teachers. And part
of why this is so demoralizing is that they became teachers in the first
place to make a difference in the lives of kids and to contribute to
their communities.

[Holly Hobbs:] What about the people who hire teachers or lead education
efforts at the state level? What did they tell us?

[Jackie Nowicki:] We heard similar stories from them. For example, one
hiring official told us that they are seeing so much negativity coming
from the media about education, and that it is driving people away. We
also heard that many recruitment challenges are even worse for teachers
of color. The teacher workforce is overwhelmingly white and female, and
there's minimal cultural competence for those with different lived
experiences. Representation matters not only for kids, but for teachers
themselves. 

[Holly Hobbs:] So is the shortage universal, or are there some
communities or regions that are seeing it more?

[Jackie Nowicki:] So, shortages are more prevalent in the West part of
the country, in urban and rural communities compared to suburban ones.
Also in schools with predominantly nonwhite students, high poverty
schools and in subject areas like special education, foreign language
and sciences.

[Holly Hobbs:] One of the main findings from this report is that there's
this negative perception of the teaching profession and that teachers
felt unsupported. What exactly does that mean?

[Jackie Nowicki:] It really boils down to an overall sense of
disrespect. Focus group participants told us that the overall climate in
public education right now feels toxic. Some of it's pandemic related.
For example, some teachers felt personally attacked and blamed for
pandemic mitigation strategies their schools were using. But in general,
the overall climate just feels awful to teachers. They described
increasing animosity and rhetoric from community members. For example,
they frequently described parents, policymakers and politicians using
social media platforms to openly criticize and undermine them. Hiring
officials told us that that's a particular challenge for recruitment.
And we see it in areas especially struggling with shortages. For
example, teachers that could teach math and science are choosing other
employment options instead of teaching in a public school system.

[Holly Hobbs:] So most K-12 education efforts happen at the state level,
but the Department of Education does play a role in providing supports.
What is Education doing about the shortage?

[Jackie Nowicki:] Well, we've focused a good amount of effort on
supporting states and school districts by incentivizing them to use
certain discretionary grant funding on recruiting and retention efforts.
And they've also made strides in offering different resources, like
promising practices and evidence based research. They've also focused on
the need for a more diverse teacher pipeline in their new strategic
plan, for example. And they also launched a new webpage titled Elevating
Teaching, where they share education's vision to support and elevate the
teaching profession.

{MUSIC}

[Holly Hobbs:] So our new report found that nationally, public schools
are struggling to retain and recruit teachers. And that the Department
of Education has taken some steps to help public schools by providing
resources and funding to elevate teaching efforts. But shortages remain.
So, Jackie, we've talked a lot about teachers, but what effect could
this have on students? 

[Jackie Nowicki:] So kids can't learn if there's no one qualified to
teach them. We've already seen cases where shortages have led to
unqualified adults in classrooms or schools temporarily closing. And we
know from our work on pandemic learning that almost half of teachers
reported that at least half of their students ended the year a grade
level behind. And we know that low income kids and English learners and
early learners--like K-2 students--were disproportionately affected.
When you add a worsening teacher shortage to that, you have a recipe for
growing disparities between the haves and have-nots.

[Holly Hobbs:] What do we think the Department of Education should be
doing to improve its strategy for addressing the teacher shortage?

[Jackie Nowicki:] We think that that Education's efforts are promising.
What they need is to be clear about how they will know whether their
efforts are making a difference. So what does success look like? And
we'd also like to see Education make the resources it does have
available in a more organized and easily accessible way so that states
and districts can locate them. Because you can't use what you can't find
or don't know exists.

[Holly Hobbs:] And last question, what's the bottom line of this report?

[Jackie Nowicki:] Teacher shortages are a legitimate concern for our
country right now, especially in certain geographic regions and in
certain subjects. But when two of the main challenges to attracting and
retaining teachers are about negative public discourse and a general
lack of respect for teaching as a profession, it's not just about what
the Department of Education can or should do. Every one of us can choose
every day to be part of the problem or part of the solution.

[Holly Hobbs:] That was Jackie Nowicki talking about GAO's new report on
the teacher shortage. Thanks for your time, Jackie.

[Jackie Nowicki:] My pleasure, Holly.

[Holly Hobbs:] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To
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