Comment by catone | Hacker News Reader

Comment by catone | Hacker News Reader

Shortage doesn't seem like the right word. That implies that there are more job openings than applicants, which simply isn't true. According to the New York Times, this is one of the weakest job markets for teachers in decades: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/nyregion/20teachers.html

The applicant pool is plenty well stocked, so there is no "shortage" of teachers. What there is, perhaps, is a shortage of qualified teachers in the classroom. In other words, due to budget cuts, layoffs and position cuts (i.e., not hiring a replacement after someone retires or quits), there are not enough employed teachers to adequately teach all the students in the states with a so-called shortage.

But there are plenty of qualified people looking for teaching jobs -- more than enough for current openings and then some. So what this is, is a money problem. There's no teacher shortage, there's a budget shortage. We're not allocating enough funds to adequately fill needs in schools across the country.

Or at least, that's how I see it.

I didn't see it mentioned in the article but most of the job openings are not for class room teachers but special education and ESL (English as a second language). That means you have to have special endorsements or licensing to hold those positions. My wifes district is laying off teachers this year due to budget shortfalls yet there are still job openings. They are just all special education positions.

There are two reasons there's lots of special education positions open. The first is that many teachers don't have the necessary endorsements. The second is that many teachers have zero desire to get the endorsements. Special education in many schools is underfunded and under supported. In our overzealous attempt to prevent peoples children from being labeled as different we've hamstrung the programs. Then you have the mainstreaming of severely dysfunctional children in order to make them feel normal. This can cause greater problems for those children and negatively impact the education of every child. I'm not an expert on this topic but I've heard enough about it to see why so many teachers aren't willing to work in special education.

I'm not quite sure it's a money problem - for example in FY 2008 - Milwaukee Public schools spent $14503 per enrolled student and has a 46% graduation rate.

There are plenty of Milwaukee area private options that exceed the outcomes of the public school system for well under $14K.

It's easy to exceed public outcomes when you can refuse students who are severe behavior problems or bias the selection in some other way.

My wife is a teacher, and a severe behavior problem impacts the entire classes performance, but it takes so much of her attention away from teaching.

I don't necessarily disagree, but the premise of the parent post was that this was simply a spending/budget problem.

Spending per pupil has risen every year over the last 20 in Milwaukee and performance & outcomes have dropped dramatically. Logic dictates that there are many other forces in play.

of course there are, but I don't think one can draw the conclusion that private schools are better with less money when they have a biased sample of students.

I don't think I'd say my premise was that this was "simply" a budget problem. I was just saying that calling it a teacher shortage is a poor choice of words to describe the current problem -- we don't have a shortage of qualified teacher candidates, we have a shortage of capital necessary to hire them.

The education system and the problems therein (i.e., issues affecting student success) are certainly far more complicated and nuanced.

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