Scrambling for Staff: The Teacher Shortage in Rural Schools
At a time when school districts nationwide
are experiencing teacher shortages, districts that historically have difficulty attracting and
retaining quality teachers are really scrambling for staff. This week Education World explores
the effects of the teacher shortage on remote and rural schools. Included:
What are schools doing to solve the shortage?
When Reid Riedlinger advertises for staff, he offers them subsidized housing, laptop
computers, eight computers and a copy machine for each classroom, and a full-time teaching assistant!
Riedlinger, superintendent of schools in the two-building Wellpinit School District, which serves
402 K-12 children on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington, also offers classes that average
just 17 students. Plus, he told Education World, he throws in free breakfast and lunch if teachers
eat it with students, and he promises no staff meetings longer than 30 minutes.
To try to staff the state's schools, Alaska initiated the Rural Education Partnership Program,
a one-year program that helps Alaska natives and others already living in rural districts obtain
teaching certificates. The educators work with the local school district, community, and university
while earning their credentials. Currently, about 60 percent of those enrolled are Alaska natives,
director of Alaska teacher placement Mary Ellen LaBerge told Education World.
With an aging teaching force, mandated class size reductions, and the swelling numbers of immigrants
and baby boomer children, U.S. schools will need an unprecedented number of new teachers over
the next decade. Between 2 million and 2.5 million -- an average of more than 200,000 annually
-- new teachers will be needed, according to the National Commission on Teaching and America's
Future (NCTAF). It is assumed that about half of those teachers will come from a pool of people
newly prepared for the profession, and the rest will be returnees from the reserve pool of teachers.
However, those who left teaching may not be that likely to return. In many cases, they view
their current salaries, working conditions, and opportunities for advancement much more favorably
than do those who stayed in teaching. And as for the teachers currently being prepared to teach,
in a series of reports written for the NCTAF Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond
found the following:
After they graduate, only about 60 percent of students trained as teachers actually enter
the profession.
Thirty percent of the traditionally trained teachers, 10 to 15 percent of teachers prepared
in five-year teacher preparation programs, and 60 percent of those prepared in truncated alternative
programs leave the profession by their third year.
Of those who enter the profession, most teachers in public schools are non-Hispanic Caucasian
females; the proportion of minority teachers is far less than the proportion of minority students.
More than 25 percent of those hired each year are not fully prepared and licensed for their
jobs, and those teachers are assigned primarily to the most educationally vulnerable children.
Even if new teachers have certification, they are frequently not certified in areas of greatest
need, such as math, science, and special education.
In addition, Hammond found, teachers are hesitant to move from where they are to rural or remote
regions where they may be most needed.
RURAL PENNSYLVANIA
Though some believe the current supply of teachers is inadequate, "national figures seem to indicate
that there are enough teachers to go around," Timothy Collins, director of the ERIC Clearinghouse
on Rural Education and Small Schools and coordinator of a recent symposium for the National Rural
Education Association told Education World. The problem he perceives is one of subject shortages
and geographic distribution. Once a teacher has years in a system, he or she may be reluctant to
move to a rural or remote region, starting over again on the bottom rung of a salary scale that
is not adjusted for past experience.
"That 20-year teacher has really locked himself or herself into a job by the time [the teacher
has] stayed at [a] district for four or five years," executive director Joe Bard of the Pennsylvania
Association of Rural and Small Schools told Education World. "The people teaching should have
broad exposure to and knowledge of the world. Instead you get folks who teach within 25 miles
of where they went to high school and college.
"A district that can put $14,000 behind each child can attract different teachers than a district
that can put $6,000 behind each child," added Bard.
Several years ago, Pennsylvania offered a program of forgiveness of student loans for teachers
who took jobs in rural or urban districts. "That program has sadly fallen by the wayside," said
Bard.
THE SITUATION IS CRITICAL IN ALASKA
Like those in Pennsylvania, Alaska's "Anchorage and Matanuska-Susitna school districts hurt themselves
a few years ago when they stopped giving new hires monetary credit for their years of experience,"
Alaska's teacher placement director Mary Ellen LaBerge told Education World. "Unless you are in
a specialty area, teachers coming into the systems come in at entry level." Not recognizing past
experience, not providing inducements to relocate, and paying a flat salary certainly do not help
a rural or remote area's teacher recruitment, said LaBerge.
In October of the current school year, there were 84 teaching vacancies in Alaska. About half
of those were in the Anchorage area, and more than a third of the vacancies were in special education,
John Holst, superintendent of the Sitka (Alaska) School District told Education World.
"We are experiencing extreme shortages in special education," said Holst. "Recent changes in
the federal laws guiding special education programs have made it much more difficult to be in
simple compliance with student discipline, meeting paperwork requirements, and dealing with providing
for the needs of what appears to be a growing population of students who qualify for special services."
"We have many teachers in our regular classrooms who previously taught special education and
even have maintained their certification," Holst added. " Most of them would quit or move elsewhere
if they were required to do special education. We do not have the ability to differentiate pay
for such positions as special education."
In addition to the 84 teaching vacancies, "we have 42 teachers on waivers right now," added
LaBerge. "That means special education teachers who haven't finished their degrees are in the
classroom as full-time teachers. Districts are becoming very creative -- using aides and paraprofessionals
for teachers."
In addition, noted LaBerge, many of the rural districts are forced to use teachers endorsed
in one area to teach classes in other areas. "This in turn causes retention problems," she told
Education World. "Teachers required to teach out of their endorsement area reach stress levels
much faster and become discouraged and/or overwhelmed much easier. Morale can be low, and turnover
is much greater in districts that have to resort to this."
One other trend that LaBerge has noticed is that teachers seem to be "jumping" contracts. "We
have had more teachers walk out on contracts this year than ever before," she said. "Signing bonuses
-- generally, we don't have them."
BONUSES AND CREDITS DON'T ALWAYS HELP
Although most Alaskan schools do not offer signing bonuses or adjust pay to reflect a teacher's
past experience, even rural schools that do are having trouble finding and retaining quality teachers.
"Several schools [in Nebraska] offered signing bonuses, and almost all schools are now allowing
unlimited years of experience to new teachers," Matt Fisher, principal of Chase County High School
(Imperial, Nebraska), told Education World. Yet "here in rural Nebraska we are definitely seeing
a shortage of qualified teachers."
ADDING TO THE SHORTAGE …
"Our University Board of Regents has just mandated that [the four-year] Bachelor of Education Program
will be terminated by the spring of 2002," said LaBerge. A new five-year program will take its place.
"The only concern here is that there is a possibility that the number of students graduating through
this program could be cut as much as 50 percent. This would dramatically affect the ability to fill
teaching positions in Alaska's rural sites. As it is already at a critical stage, this prospect
is frightening."
"In Iowa, larger districts often successfully recruit the new teachers because a spouse may
have more employment opportunity in a larger district or because young people often prefer larger
communities," Dr. Victoria Robinson told Education World. Robinson is coordinator of student teachers
at the University of Northern Iowa and a member of the National Rural Education Association panel
currently studying the rural teacher shortage.
Attracting teachers to teach on Indian reservations presents unique challenges too. If the local
community and tribe support bilingual and bicultural education, then teachers hired must learn
how to integrate the local tribal language and culture into the regular school curriculum. Isolation,
salary, housing, social life, educational opportunities for children, and employment issues for
spouses often lead to high turnover.
"This year over half the faculty is new," Sister Kathleen Kajer, principal of St. Michael Indian
School -- located on a Navajo reservation in St. Michaels, Arizona -- told Education World. Some
who work here "find they miss family and the big city too much to stay … and we have a low pay
scale."
NO SURPLUS IN CONNECTICUT
Some believe with the right offer, they might be able to recruit surplus teachers from states that
have them -- states such as Connecticut. But do any states really have a surplus of teachers?
The state of Connecticut equalized salaries to help rural areas attract teachers. Though that
mitigated the situation, "Connecticut does not have a plethora of teachers," Jane Tedder, executive
director of Education Connection, an education service center conducting online recruiting for
31 districts in western Connecticut, told Education World.
"While there is for the moment an ample supply of elementary candidates, severe shortages are
beginning to cause havoc in higher levels. We have been protected to date by our comparatively
high salaries, but even that protection is waning in view of the opportunities that appear in
other employment sectors," Tedder said.
TROOPS TO TEACHERS PROGRAM
One program that apparently does work at effectively attracting males and minorities into teaching,
and specifically into the shortage areas, is Troops to Teachers (TTT). The program is designed to
help military personnel interested in a second career in public education to locate certification
programs and employment opportunities, John Gantz, chief of the Troops to Teachers program, told
Education World.
"Over 25 percent of TTT participants are employed as math or science teachers, and 24 percent
are teaching in rural school districts," said Gantz. "The same percentage [24 percent] are teaching
in inner city school districts.
"In addition, TTT participants are predominantly male [85 percent] and one-third are from racial
or ethnic backgrounds," continued Gantz. "Many of these people may be interested in 'going home'
or specifically look for a rural or small-town environment in which to raise their families. Others
have come from an inner city or poverty situation and specifically seek to teach in these communities
because they believe they can make a difference."
Unfortunately, though, "the future of Troops to Teachers is uncertain," Meryl Kettler, coordinator
of the Texas Military Initiative/TTT, told Education World. "We have been given enough federal
funds to continue the operation of the state offices [only] through September 2000."
Personnel who were already unable to recruit enough talented teachers shudder as they contemplate
dealing with the teacher shortages expected over the next decade. Successful programs do exist
for recruiting quality teachers (targeting males, minorities, and people with specialties) in
high-need areas; eliminating barriers for them to move to where they are needed; and increasing
the ability of low-wealth districts to pay for them. But as long as states and/or the federal
government increase demands on teachers while canceling some of these very programs, the problem
rural and remote schools face in attracting and retaining quality teachers is just not likely
to fade.
Small, Rural Schools
Education Initiative From the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) Web site,
this source provides links to special funding available for rural schools and other information
on rural education issues.
Uneven Distribution
Contributes to Teacher Shortages This 1998 Education Week article discusses how some states
have dealt with their teacher shortages; for example, Connecticut and Kentucky equalized salaries
to help their rural and urban areas reduce teacher shortages. The article links to many other
resources on the topic.
Promising Practices:
New Ways to Improve Teacher Quality This 1998 Department of Education article discusses
the current teacher shortage and some of the programs designed to reduce it, many of which specifically
target minority candidates.
ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural
Education and Small Schools This interesting site includes an area where visitors can sign
up to interact with authors of books published recently by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural and
Small Schools. Each week, different authors discuss topics from their books. Sample topics for
November included Indian education and the education of Mexican-origin children.
Academic Employment Network School
districts can log on to the Internet to find qualified applicants by searching resumes posted
in educational Web sites such as this one. They can also post their vacancies on these sites.
Academic Employment Network (AEN) consultant Carole Roche told Education World that up to 5,000
people visit her site each day.
Sitka (Alaska) School District This
site lists job openings, applications, and impressive salary schedules for interested educators.
ADDITIONAL ONLINE RESOURCES
Should PTAs Be Allowed
to Fund School Staff Positions? This February 1999 National Education Association Today
story debates whether PTA groups should be permitted to fund school positions not covered by
the regular school budget.
Recruiting New Teachers, Inc. Recruiting
New Teachers, Inc. is a national nonprofit organization formed in 1986, to raise esteem for
teaching, expand the pool of prospective teachers, and improve the nation's teacher recruitment,
At a time when school districts nationwide
are experiencing teacher shortages, districts that historically have difficulty attracting and
retaining quality teachers are really scrambling for staff. This week Education World explores
the effects of the teacher shortage on remote and rural schools. Included:
What are schools doing to solve the shortage?