Teachers and school staff members have some of the most important jobs in the world. They are responsible for helping teach and shape the children who will someday be in charge of running the country. Despite their importance, teachers are often underpaid and underappreciated. Over the past few years, the United States has seen a drastic shortage of teachers across the country. This article is going to discuss why this shortage of teachers is important and what school districts can do about it.
Many researchers agree that increasing numbers of students, smaller class size requirements, and impending retirements are going to lead to the need for more teachers. However, researchers dispute over how drastic the shortage of teachers is and why there is such a shortage.
It is clear that the shortage does lie in the way teachers are distributed. Unfortunately, there are not enough teachers who are both qualified and willing to teach in urban or rural schools. Furthermore, there is a shortage of teachers in specific areas in the country as well as in specialties like special education, bilingual education, and science. Some states are seeing teachers flee to other areas due to lack of funding or budget cuts too.
With the moderate salaries and low status teachers often face, it’s no surprise that young people are choosing career paths other than education. In fact, according to the Condition of Education, the number of education majors dropped from 179,000 to 164,000 between 2011 and 2012. With fewer people choosing the path to become school staff members, schools are well below the recommended ratio by the American School Counselor Association of a student-to-counselor ratio of 250:1.
Because of the teacher shortage, states and school districts are having to invest considerable resources to recruit potential candidates. Without being able to efficiently fill open positions, students are facing a decreasing quality in their education from not having qualified teachers or being forced into cramped classrooms.
So what can school districts do to address this shortage? Fortunately, today’s technology offers many online resources that allow schools to utilize education staffing agencies. School staffing agencies provide qualified school staff members that are able to focus on student needs. Utilizing these online resources can save schools valuable resources that would have been spent trying to recruit new staff.
Unfortunately, teacher and school staff shortages seem to only be getting worse. But by utilizing staffing online resources, school districts can help fill empty positions and give their students the high-quality education they deserve.
