Sometimes a crisis creates an opportunity.
The pandemic is stripping public education of its most valuable asset – veteran, professional teachers. The wear and tear of pandemic teaching is driving more teachers into early retirement and career resignations than in pre-pandemic years. And, fewer college students are enrolling in teacher preparation programs. The pool of professional teachers is being choked at both ends – decreased numbers of new teachers and increased numbers of departing teachers.
A Rand survey, fielded in early January 2021, found that nearly one-quarter of teachers indicated a desire to leave their jobs at the end of the school year, compared with an an average national turnover rate of 16% pre-pandemic, according to NCES data.
How the pandemic has changed teachers’ commitment to remaining in the classroom (brookings.edu)
These are not new phenomena. The beginning of this trend preceded the pandemic. The number of graduates of teacher preparation programs has been less than the number of teachers leaving the profession for more than a decade. However, the pandemic accelerates the trend. In the 2020-21 school year, remote teaching, overlaying mitigation procedures, and the animosity of maskers and anti-maskers became their last straw. School districts are thankful for substitute teachers willing to accept full-time teaching assignments regardless of their academic training. In too many schools, classes are combined and increased in class size because of teacher shortage. Too many upper level and elective courses are cancelled because the school cannot employ teachers prepared for those assignments. This is true in urban, suburban, and rural schools alike. What will we find in 2022-23 and beyond? Answer — greater gaps between staffing needed and staffing available and a greater number of children taught by willing adults not professional teachers.
We need different answers.
“The first step in solving any problem is understanding why it’s happening. The top three reasons for the teacher shortage, as reported by our survey respondents, are as follows:
- A lack of fully qualified applicants
- Salary and/or benefits are lacking compared to other careers
- Fewer new education school graduates”
The State of the Teacher Shortage in 2021 (frontlineeducation.com)
We may not be able to affect the lack of qualified applicants or the dearth of new teacher preparation program graduates immediately, but we can affect teacher compensation. And, when we make significant changes to teacher pay, interest in teacher preparation programs will increase and the number of veteran teachers staying in the profession will improve
My grandmother was an elementary school teacher in central Illinois in the early 1900s. She was paid $300 for the school year and was provided room and board with a local family. She knew her salary was not enough for her to live independently. It was not supposed to be. She was a single female and teaching was the plight of single women awaiting better prospects.
As ludicrous as it may seem, the attitude toward the teaching profession espoused in the early 1900s continued through the century. Because teachers are public employees paid with public tax money, teacher compensation always is restricted by conservative attitudes of “You work of the public and your pay comes out of my pocket”. Low pay meant low taxes and elected officials who run on promises to keep taxes low are more frequently elected to office.
In the 1990s a young teacher with a family of four qualified for food stamps. Not professional grade pay but consistent with the perception at that time of teachers and how much they should be paid for their professional work.
This thinking arises every year the legislature considers our state’s financing of public education. In the balance of its spending on a thousand budget items, the monies spent on improving teacher salaries are weighed against prisons and highways and social programs and professional teachers remain on the minimal public dole. At the basics level, teacher salaries do not keep pace with the costs of living.
Teachers pay in the United States has risen +.2% in the time period of 1969-70 to 2019-20 when comparing annual pay to the value of a dollar in 2020. In Wisconsin, comparative teacher pay for the same period declined by -5.9%.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_211.60.asp
The second reality is that teacher salaries do not align with other professions requiring a baccalaureate degree and professional training. The historic table of teacher salaries displaying years of experience and earned professional credits or advanced degrees rationed out annual increases requiring a teacher to work in the same school district for 25 years before realizing the district’s top salary dollar. Parallel professions access higher incomes much earlier in a career and are not “topped out” on salary tables. Topping out returns us to the overarching restriction that teachers are public employees and not expected to be paid well.
The problem is “You get what you settle for”. Today we are not able to provide a trained and duly licensed professional teacher in every classroom. Why? Because we have a shortage of teachers available to teach. The education of too many children is provided by persons willing to be in the classroom not by prepared teachers. We are not able to meet the educational needs and dreams of all children. This is the price for settling for low.
The current crisis gives us the opportunity to treat teacher pay differently and to change the direction of current trends. Begin with the work year, increase teacher pay, pay professionally, and make teaching the desirable professional employment it should be.
- Make the teacher contract a calendar year not a school year document. Pay teachers for the year not nine months of the year. What other professionals besides athletes are only professional employees for part of the year? This does not mean multiplying a teacher per diem times the 260 workdays of a calendar year. It means that teachers will be paid professionally for a calendar year and available for professional work the entire year.
Traditionally, most teachers must have summer jobs to sustain a livelihood. Teachers pay in the school year was inadequate for a full year’s living needs. How often do we see doctors, dentists, lawyers, and engineers waiting tables for three months to augment their professional salaries?
- Maintain 180 days of classroom teaching. There is no compelling research that says year-round student attendance causes improved learning or is good for the whole development of children. Instead of adding quantity to the days, add quality. There is a compelling reality that it takes significant time to teach and learn an annual curriculum. A school year must have adequate time to teach, assess learning, adjust teaching to ensure learning, and time to practice and reinforce learning.
Districts have “caved in” by diminishing the number of days in a school year as acquiescence to complaints a school year is too long. There is no evidence that a district exhausted the teaching of its approved curriculum before the end of the school year. To the contrary, district assessments consistently display students who did not successfully learn their annual curriculum.
- Add quality control-thinking to school. Every school intends for each child to achieve one year’s growth in learning each school year, but few schools ever make this mark; some children yes, but all children no. And children with exceptional needs, almost never.
Children and teachers today are on a 180-day conveyor belt of teaching and learning and testing. Break the “belt” and place clusters of professional days throughout the school year. Allow teachers time to consider what they have taught, what they have taught well, and what they need to adjust and teach again to cause quality learning for all children. Children need a break from the constancy of school to consider what they have learned well, what they have not learned well enough, and what they need to learn anew. Weekends are not enough time. Weekends should be non-school time for everyone.
Additionally, the pandemic is teaching us to allow mental health breaks for everyone in the school and school families. Social-emotional health has gained our attention and, when the pandemic is over, we need to practice what we have learned and extend our learning into the future. Four-day weekends or a week with no school attendance dispersed in the school year is good mental health, and good instructional practice.
- Develop teacher in-service based upon the observed needs of the school year. Traditionally, schools provide each teacher with several days of preparation time before the first day of the school year. A teacher begins to know how the children in the class learn in September, but often first impressions of student needs do not pan out in October. Quality control of student learning means teachers have the time to adjust their teaching to the changing student demands. After school and weekends fail to give teachers adequate time to understand the problems students present and find solutions. Quality controls take time.
Use the dispersed breaks in the school year for teacher preparation. This does not need to be time in school, but time on task. It is not vacation time for the teacher but fulfillment of the yearlong, professional contract and professional compensation package.
- Create a probationary teacher salary (years 1 -3), a teacher salary (year 4 to year 10), and a professional teacher salary (post-advanced degree). Historically, a new teacher was on probation for 2-3 years depending upon state and district. During probation, the teacher does not have a continuing contract only an annual contract. The administration makes decisions on whether the teacher warrants a continuing contract. This is professional try-out time. The continuing contract award should be based upon the probationary teacher’s meeting the quality standards of the district.
- The probationary teacher salary will be the current base wage per diem x 220 days. The base salary will be raised by annual cpi increments during the probationary period.
- Create a teacher salary to be 80% of the professional teacher salary. The teacher salary is not meant as a career salary but a step between a probationary salary and a professional teacher salary.
- Require a teacher to obtain an advanced degree by their 10th year of employment in the district. Historically, too many career teachers obtain no more than the required baccalaureate degree. The BA-teacher fulfills all the district requirements for minimal professional development to maintain a contract. Teachers stuck in the BA-minimum range comprise the majority of who leave teaching early and annually.
The Wisconsin legislature removed the DPI issuance of successive teaching license based upon a teacher’s professional development. Once licensed, responsibility for the maintenance of the license was assigned to the local school board.
The definition of professionalism includes continuing education in the professional field. A school board should not confuse required PD for contract maintenance with required PD for professional advancement. A teacher is obligated to stay current with curricular changes to maintain a contract. A teacher who achieves significant professional education advancement warrants professional advancement in salary.
The board should consider ending a continuing contract for teachers who do not advance professionally – ten years is enough time for this advancement.
- Pay all professional teachers a top salary (100% of the current top teacher salary) when they are awarded an advanced degree.
It would look like this.
A newly hired teacher will be paid the district’s beginning salary plus an annual cpi increase for their first three years of employment. During that time, the administration will supervise and evaluate the teacher’s professional work for the purpose of awarding a continuing contract.
The district should expect 80% or more of its teachers to be paid professional teaching salaries with 20% or fewer working for professional teacher status.
A change to professional pay for professional teachers in combination with changes in school calendaring and scheduling of district-required professional development will cause
- more college students to consider teaching as significant professional career,
- mid-career teachers to remain in the profession, and
- veteran teachers to complete a career as a professional teacher.
Example:
Probationary teacher salary $42,000
Teacher salary $72,000 (available in the 4th – 10th year of employment)
Professional Teacher salary $90,000 (available upon completion of an advanced degree)
All salaries adjusted annually for cpi.