Sorry it has taken so long to post part two of my response to cynical media denials of the "teacher shortage." Life intervenes, as they say.
Anyway, although the actual articles critiqued here might now seem outdated and irrelevant (I hope that's true), the bad reporting that birthed them is certain to resurface, and so this post.
Update: It's already happened. See this from the AP today. Similar to what I detailed in my last post, again we hear that the problem is only in "certain subjects, certain places, certain kinds of schools." Again we hear that "it's always been hard, and then the pandemic." And again we hear that "it's not a quitting problem" without hearing about the collapse in numbers of new teachers. And AGAIN we hear from the RAND Corporation.
We do get story after story of schools scrambling for staff, but this time we're also treated to a little "bright spot" at the feel-good ending where, in spite of the challenges, a student teacher, newly hired using "federal relief money," is "confident she is meant to be a teacher." I know the feeling, and I hope it's as true for her as it was for me.
There is no mention of the changes her school district intends to make in order to keep her, however. And that brings me to this: I've tried to figure out why all the deniers are so committed to this "no shortage" narrative. I even made a big long list, but maybe it's much simpler than that. Now I'm thinking that the objective is to pretend there's no problem until it's too late to fix it. (h/t Peter Greene here)
Now the post.
Yes, Virginia, there is a teacher shortage.
The discussion around the shortage is lively among the researchers and writers who cover this beat, and of course among the students and teachers and other educators who are looking around and wondering, "Where'd everybody go?" and trying to survive and thrive in this macerated world.
Lots of this talk and work and even more talk is honest and dedicated to figuring out what's really going on, why it's going on, and what to do about it.
However, there is another side of the shortage "debate" that is definitely not honest, not well-supported by what little data is available, and often relies on the wishful thinking and pre-set agendas of academics and the ideologues who cite them. At best, these are savvy contrarians looking for attention. At worst, they are the enemies of public education working toward its destruction. These are the shortage deniers.
A prime example of shortage denial is this piece from Jill Barshay and the Hechinger Report. Titled "PROOF POINTS: Researchers say cries of teacher shortages are overblown," it is a medley of selective quotation, deflection, and hyperbole. And I'm saving the subtitle for the punchline.
Start with the title and the "overblown" "cries" of teacher shortages. That is not neutral language and neither is this article. From there Barshay acknowledges that "the stories are scary" but asserts that "education researchers who study the teaching profession say the threat is exaggerated."
Do they, though? Everyone acknowledges that the data are incomplete and inconclusive. That doesn't prevent some people from cobbling together selected quotes and favored statistics to draw definitive conclusions.
In what will become a recurring theme of hearing from the same Big Brains over and over, we again hear from economist Dan Goldhaber, who observes that “Attrition is definitely up, but it’s not a mass exodus of teachers," a quote Barshay uses to support her "overblown" claim.
However, Barshay's next two paragraphs are apparently built on this paper, from a study that examined only one out of fifty states: Washington. And in that paper, Goldhaber described the situation in slightly less confident terms: "In sum, our opinion is that many of the recent media stories about rising teacher attrition rates are accurate in direction but, arguably, not in magnitude." I guess arguable doesn't tell the right story.
We also once again hear from Heather Schwartz, RAND Corporation researcher, who offers no evidence but says, “Among researchers, I think we’ve reached a consensus that there hasn’t been an exodus of teachers during the pandemic.” That's what she thinks anyway, as she speaks for all researchers.
We talked last time about the redefiners who dismiss the shortage as impacting only certain subject areas for certain kids in certain states. Now cue the pivot to the story Barshay's article is dying to tell: The real problem with the shortage--such as it is--is all that pandemic money rolling in. I kid you not. They want to argue that there's a "hiring spree" that only makes it look like there's a shortage.
Barshay describes it this way:
Imagine that Google decided to expand its ranks of computer programmers. It might be hard to find so many software engineers and it would feel like a shortage to IT hiring managers everywhere. That’s what’s happening at schools.
All this certainty--based on a feeling. Barshay reports that "Schwartz doesn’t yet have data on the exact number of new hires, but she is confident that schools have increased head counts." Is that Schwartz's confidence? Or Barshay's?
Anyway, the problem isn't too few teachers; it's too many.
So we end up where we were headed all along--The punchline.
Here's the subtitle of the article:
Schools are going on pandemic hiring sprees and overstaffing may be the new problem
All that free money juicing up the schools, see? All these "educators" rolling in dough and hiring all these teachers willy-nilly.
I guess we're supposed to disregard the fact that (apparently based on the RAND study, though Barshay doesn't specify) "[t]he biggest areas of staff expansion were among substitute teachers, paraprofessionals or teachers’ aides, and tutors" which schools "lured" by increasing daily pay from "$115 a day to $122 a day." That's about 15-20 bucks an hour.
I'm thinking this is not a solution to the teacher crunch.
Barshay gets to the point:
Schwartz says her biggest worry isn’t current teacher shortages, but teacher surpluses when pandemic funds run out after 2024. School budgets will be further squeezed from falling U.S. birth rates because funding is tied to student enrollment. Schools are likely to lay off many educators in the years ahead. “It’s not easy for schools to shed staff and maintain quality of instruction for students,” said Schwartz.
Barshay finishes with: "That won’t be good for students."
No. No, it would not. You know what else isn't good for students? The chronic underfunding that existed before the pandemic. The constant churn in the schools The Economist called "the usual suspects."
Oh, and if you're waiting for any mention that schools were understaffed before the pandemic, or that the teacher "pipeline" is down to a trickle, don't hold your breath. Doesn't fit the counternarrative.
If the Hechinger article is full of stats and quotes cherry-picked to make the counter-case, Derek Thompson's article in The Atlantic, the one that started me down this road, is mostly just selected "experts" bloviating and Thompson hearing what he wants to hear.
We get the busy Heather Schwartz again, and school choicer Chad Aldeman, who "writes about education finance at Edunomics Lab" and is a critic of teacher pensions as well as an experienced skeptic when it comes to teacher attrition. We also get Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat and previous staff writer for The74.
There is the usual proviso about inadequate data, the real shortage, according to Thompson, as he quotes Brown University associate professor of education Matthew Kraft's acknowledgment that his team couldn't draw conclusions "because of the weakness of the existing data.” However, that doesn't stop Thompson from somehow twisting it into support for Thompson's own claim that the "dreaded teacher shortage that so many educators had warned about" is exaggerated.
Next we get Barnum again and some stats cherry-picked to enhance the picture, and then we hear from Chad Aldeman again, and this time both he and Thompson want us to know that what we're seeing is a drop in enrollment and... wait for it... an increase in hiring. According to Aldeman, who is not sure but "think[s]" this must be true:
“I’m not confident about the education data, but I think we’ll eventually discover that public-school enrollment declined in the 2022–2023 school year even as districts hired more teachers than they had before the pandemic,” Aldeman told me. “If the student ratio goes down, it’ll be very hard to call that situation a ‘teacher shortage.'”
All this is asserted and used by Thompson to bolster his claim, even though Aldeman himself admits he is "not confident" in the data.
There is so much wrong with the article that it's honestly hard to know where to stop. There's some nonsense on teacher mental health and stress and how it's not yet a problem. There's the requisite "not a shortage everywhere" and the obligatory and insidious "teachers just say they're going to quit."
And from the use of "might be" and "I think" to suggest a conclusion for which there isn't sufficient evidence, to the selective omission--again--of the supply side of the teacher equation, it's hard to tell how much of this is dishonest, how much is glib savviness for the next cocktail party, and how much is just laziness.
There are people who will do anything to avoid the obvious: People are not excited to teach anymore.
So don't make yourself crazy (like I did) by reading their crap. Instead, for an honest look at teacher flight--which is real--and the reasons and solutions for it, read things like:
This, from Peter Greene, who spent almost forty years in the classroom and is now a writer for Forbes and his own blog, Curmudication. He starts with the standard "There Is No Teacher Shortage" as a hook, but immediately and thoughtfully cites both the durability of the shortage and the conditions that cause it (including the strained pipeline).
He doesn't redefine the shortage but he does rename it, instead preferring to call it "an exodus, a slow-motion strike." His point is that referring to it as a "shortage" implies that "all of the nuggets have been pulled from the mine," and absolves us of the responsibility to find ways to improve conditions and attract teachers to the profession. Greene also gives his thoughts on why the "shortage" narrative persists and whose interests it serves.
Another writer who you should know and probably do is Anne Lutz Fernandez. I first encountered her work when I was working on a previous post about the shortage, in the form of her tweet in response to this article in the Washington Post:
They are leaving because teaching has been made unattractive and unsustainable. The drain won't stop until compensation, micromanagement & management through fear, de-professionalization, overwork & make-work, politicization of curriculum are addressed.
— Anne Lutz Fernandez (@lutzfernandez) August 4, 2022
Of course we are.
I encourage you to read this piece of hers from the Hechinger Report. It contains an excellent breakdown of the reasons for the present crisis--yes it is--and some solutions that might help. You won't find any gaslighting, no denial or redefinition. Just an honest assessment of where we are and how we might get out of this jam. And she even suggests listening to teachers!
Attrition isn't the only way we lose teachers. We lose people who are trained but no longer want the job. We lose people because they hear and read what it's like and they wouldn't take the job in a million years. And talking to a bunch of Big Brains to "prove" teacher attrition isn't sooooo bad does not mean there's no teacher shortage.
If you really want to know what's going on in schools, go to a few. Talk to people who work there. Most teachers are not shy about telling you what's happening and, as Greene notes, you're likely to hear, “We’ve been trying to tell you the house was on fire for years, and now you’re finally noticing something’s wrong??!!”
We lose teachers--and pre-teachers--for the same reasons Greene and Lutz Fernandez and Waid and thousands of others have been talking about for... a while. The deniers can cherry pick all they want, but it won't fix the problem.
I'm retired. Greene and Lutz Fernandez are out of the classroom, but you don't have to take anyone's word for what's happening. If you want to hear from teachers who are quitting today, just go on YouTube or TikTok and search "teachers quit." You'll find hundreds of videos like this one, or this one, from teachers who have just recently been driven out of the classroom.
And for those of you who say to us that these problems with schools aren't new, and if Waid or Greene or Lutz Fernandez can take it for twenty or thirty years, these other teachers should also be able to do it, just shut up.
The point is they are not taking it. And they shouldn't have to.
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