This feeling of frustration is one that leaders at New York’s know well. Situated between Rochester and Syracuse, this rural district of 750 students is often seen as a stepping stone by educators. Many new teachers get a few years under their belt, then take off for higher-paying suburban schools. 

Even before the pandemic hit, Clyde-Savannah experienced a districtwide employee turnover rate of 25%. This churn, particularly among teachers and support staff, disrupted the continuity and quality of students’ learning. At the elementary level alone, six to seven teachers out of 21 would leave in any given year.

Experienced educators carry institutional knowledge about curriculum implementation, assessment practices, and effective strategies for meeting student needs. When a large portion of staff leaves each year, districts must repeatedly rebuild this expertise. While new teachers often bring enthusiasm and fresh ideas, their learning curve can affect the consistency of instruction and student outcomes, at least temporarily.

As superintendent for Clyde-Savannah, I knew the district could not compete on salary. Instead, school leaders and board members focused on what we were able to control: the district culture. Could we build a better workplace, where people felt genuinely supported? Could we reduce teachers’ stress, both inside and outside the classroom? Most importantly, could we create an environment where educators were excited to come to school each day?

By reimagining its approach to recruitment, the district increased its overall employee retention rate to 98% from 2023 to 2025 and made Clyde-Savannah a top choice for prospective teachers. Finalists who were speaking with neighboring districts or had received offers told our interviewers they had withdrawn those applications in order to accept positions at Clyde-Savannah. In addition, I have seen first-year teachers choose to relocate to the Clyde-Savannah community, which is key, as early-career educators typically move only when they view a district as a place to build both a career and a lasting home.

The district’s approach to changing its culture took several forms. First, through conversations with staff and teachers, district leaders discovered that a lack of accessible and affordable child care was often the biggest deterrent to employment. Many talented educators were leaving the classroom because the high cost of child care made working full time financially impractical.

To ease the burden on working families, the district opened a for all employees in 2023. Rather than contract services to outside caregivers, Clyde-Savannah became the first school system approved by the New York Office of Family and Child Services to operate a district-run child care center. Today, 18 children between the ages of 6 weeks and 4 years attend the program each day, providing families with much-needed support while ensuring their little ones will be ready for kindergarten.

For many employees, but especially support staff and teacher’s aides earning minimum wage, the program has been life-changing. For one, being relieved of the cost of child care means she was able to purchase a car for her family. Another teacher chose Clyde-Savannah because the availability of care made it possible for him and his wife to both pursue the careers they wanted.

For Clyde-Savannah teachers and staff, the cost savings and peace of mind of knowing their children are well cared for outweigh the lure of a modest salary bump a district away.

The second initiative involved filling a longstanding gap in what had been a coffee shop desert. As a small town, Clyde lacked a spot for teachers, staff and students to grab their daily caffeine fix. So the district turned a high school classroom into a café that rivals popular coffee chains. 

The coffee shop is staffed by trained student volunteers who earn community service hours toward graduation. In the process, these young baristas gain hands-on experience in food preparation, customer service and promotion, equipping them with marketable skills.

Students prepare drinks using standard coffee shop equipment, such as brewers, syrups and espresso-style machines. The cafe serves walk-in customers, makes deliveries to all district buildings during designated times of the day and stays open after school hours to accommodate staff, visitors, teachers and community members attending meetings or activities after 3 p.m.

Because many school bus drivers are on the road during the shop’s regular hours, the district created a drive-through option just for them. Drivers can pull up their bus outside the school doors, and students will bring out their coffee order — a small but meaningful way to include transportation staff.

When the café first launched, the district lacked the budget for paid staff. So, I stepped in as store manager, working at 6 in the morning to help get everything prepped for the day ahead. Eventually, because of the café’s popularity, it earned enough money to pay for a full-time manager to run the shop. 

By creatively addressing a community need, Clyde-Savannah demonstrated that the district is actively listening and responding to its staff. Teachers value having a place in which to connect, collaborate and recharge. At the same time, prospective hires see this investment in staff well-being as an advantage when comparing offers from other districts. As competition intensifies for a shrinking applicant pool of qualified teachers, small districts must think creatively to set themselves apart. Higher salaries are important, but compensation does not always guarantee fulfillment. For many educators, job satisfaction comes from feeling happy, supported and genuinely appreciated — benefits that cannot be measured in dollars alone.

Gen Z educators, born between the late 1990s and early 2010s, are entering classrooms with fresh energy and an innovative approach. They are digital natives and are eager to leverage technology thoughtfully. They bring a keen understanding of student needs because they were students themselves recently. They are naturally inclined to collaborate, provide more choice and individualized learning in their classrooms, and work alongside students and families with more frequent communication and care.

That combination makes Gen Z teachers the type of talent that education needs right now. It also means that schools must adapt if they hope to keep them.

For 35 years, has welcomed thousands of new educators into classrooms. Gen Z stands out. They aren’t looking for a job — they’re seeking a mission. Gen Z deeply values equity and social change in a career. When they decide to pursue teaching as a career, they are intentionally choosing service. But that sense of purpose won’t sustain them if the policies and practices in their schools and districts don’t match their values and needs. If schools want to attract and retain Gen Z teachers, they must create conditions that align with their values: connection, community, mentorship, growth, flexibility and well-being.

Gen Z values belonging. Many entered the workforce after years of isolation during the pandemic, and they crave relationships with colleagues and leaders who see and support them. Schools should pair every new teacher with an experienced mentor, create ample opportunities for learning and collaboration with colleagues, and build school cultures that encourage open dialogue about challenges and wins. Community isn’t a bonus — it’s what keeps young teachers from feeling alone and leaving the profession.

This generation also expects to grow in their careers. They want to know how they can expand their impact beyond their first classroom — whether by becoming instructional coaches, policy advocates or school leaders. Districts should create transparent development tracks, fund leadership fellowships and make ongoing training accessible and relevant. When teachers can see a future for themselves in education, they stay longer and grow into leaders who have a greater impact on student learning.

Gen Z teachers are creators. They use technology intuitively and want to leverage it to help students thrive. Schools should invite them to pilot new tools, design lessons that use artificial intelligence responsibly and help shape digital learning policies. Flexibility in scheduling, hybrid professional development and collaborative planning time also shows trust in teachers’ professionalism and creativity.

Having spent my career coaching first-time teachers, I’ve seen how powerful it is when principals, instructional coaches, mentors and even district staff listen to their ideas. During the pandemic, the youngest educators became the experts in virtual learning. Today, many of those same teachers are leading conversations about AI in the classroom and shaping the future of instruction.

For example, through TFA’s , teachers and staff come together to explore how innovation and technology can close opportunity gaps. Gen Z educators are leading the way in exploring how to use AI and digital tools to make learning more engaging. This collaboration not only builds confidence for Gen Z teachers; it equips veteran educators with new tools to reinvigorate their teaching in an AI-driven future.

Lastly, Gen Z has been refreshingly vocal about one thing older generations often downplayed: mental health. They want to serve students well without sacrificing themselves in the process. This isn’t a sign of weakness — it’s wisdom. Teaching has always been demanding, but today’s educators face , citing issues like and as key factors causing burnout.  

Schools and districts can respond not only by addressing the root causes behind burnout, but by implementing new wellness-focused policies. They can offer access to free or low-cost therapy and counseling, either directly or through expanded benefits, and build wellness days into the academic calendar that are genuinely restorative — not just “catch-up” time. They can provide time for teachers to meet in small groups, where they build relationships, discuss shared experiences and challenges, and brainstorm solutions. Forward-thinking districts are even piloting mental-health stipends that teachers can use for gym memberships, mindfulness apps or co-pays for counseling. These ideas may seem small, but collectively they signal that teachers’ well-being matters as much as student achievement — and that sustainability is part of professionalism.

Schools and districts that ignore this moment risk losing an entire generation of talent. Culture-building, mentorship and leadership development may once have been considered extras, but today they are essentials. Retaining passionate educators requires redesigning the experience of teaching itself, making those in profession feel more connected to fellow educators and supported by schools.

Investing in recruiting and retaining Gen Z teachers is investing in the next generation of educational leaders. These teachers will drive innovation, strengthen student outcomes and help communities imagine what’s possible. They’re showing up ready to serve. It is now up to education leaders at every level — in schools, district offices and state departments of education — to embrace and empower Gen Z educators in the classroom. Doing so will not only help address the teaching shortage, it will drive changes in teaching and learning that help schools better prepare students for their futures. 

These are among key findings of a new into ways to address the continuing turnover and shortage of special education and ESL teachers that has existed for more than three decades. 

The analysis showed that mentorship, teacher and principal preparation standards, tests of reading instruction knowledge, pay and professional development are key to retaining and recruiting these educators.

Students with disabilities and English learners face some of the most persistent academic challenges, partly because of a lack of access to high-quality teachers, said NCTQ President Heather Peske.

“Despite their potential, many of these students are not meeting even really basic thresholds in reading and math, and this is not for any fault of the students themselves,” she said. “It’s really because they don’t have access to the kinds of qualified and effective teachers that they need.”

The report recommends improved state policies to address attrition in these areas:

Teacher mentorship

The analysis found that half of states don’t require prospective educators to complete their student teaching under the supervision of an educator who is certified in the same subject area they are training to work in. Most are in the western United States, including states like Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Idaho and Nevada. 

Having a mentor certified in the same field allows the college students to see what teaching special ed will actually be like and increases their chances of staying in the subject area once they finish their degree, according to the report. The analysis highlighted a study of more than 250 people who completed special education teacher preparation in Massachusetts, which found that those with a supervisor licensed in special education were 12% less likely to leave the workforce.

Teacher preparation standards

Clear state standards for teacher preparation programs ensure that aspiring educators get the skills needed to serve students with disabilities, the report said. Ten states don’t have explicit special education standards for teacher colleges, while 16 lack defined English learner standards.

The analysis highlights Texas, which created for ESL and bilingual education in 2019. These include understanding the foundations of language acquisition and adapting instruction to meet student needs.

Principal preparation standards

Less than half of states require principal preparation programs to address special education in coursework, while only 13 do the same for English learners. Without an understanding of effective ways to serve students with disabilities or English learners, principals are less prepared to improve outcomes for them and retain the teachers who serve them, the report said. 

Research has that principals are a key factor in creating an inclusive environment for special education students. One said that many new school administrators “find themselves suddenly thrust into situations in which they must be the final arbiter on matters related to strange-sounding issues such as IEPs [individual education programs], 504 [disability discrimination] decisions, due-process hearings and IDEA [Individuals with Disabilities Education Act] compliance.”

In Iowa, teacher colleges are to provide evidence that candidates are equipped to address the needs of English learners or students with disabilities, the report said. 

Reading instruction

The analysis found that 17 states require special education teacher candidates to demonstrate their knowledge of literacy instruction using a test the NCTQ deems effective. In 2023, the nonprofit reported that 29 states and the District of Columbia use weak reading instruction tests that aspiring elementary educators must pass to obtain a license. NCTQ studied 25 tests that states use and identified 15 as weak — with only four considered acceptable and six considered strong.

Just five states — California, Idaho, New Mexico, Louisiana and Maryland — require English learner teacher candidates to pass acceptable tests, the report said.

“Wisconsin, for example, uses a strong or acceptable reading licensure test, but they don’t presently require special education teachers to take that test and pass it,” Peske said. “We would say that this is an example of low-hanging fruit when it comes to policymaking.”

The NCTQ reported that 70% of fourth graders with disabilities and 67% who are English learners scored below the basic level in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

English learners are also at an increased risk of being identified for special education because of literacy-related struggles, the report said.

“With so many states right now focused on reading and implementing relatively new reading laws, it was surprising to us to find that states are also not requiring their teachers, especially of students with disabilities, and their English learner teachers to take and pass an acceptable reading licensure test,” Peske said.

Teacher pay

The report said that paying teachers in critical shortage areas more than those in general education can improve retention and recruitment in hard-to-staff areas. But has found that the additional compensation must be at least 7.5% of a teacher’s base salary — about $5,000 — to make a difference.

Only 18 states offer higher salaries or bonuses for special education educators, while eight states do so for English learner teachers.

An annual state-funded $10,000 incentive in Hawaii improved special education teacher shortages. The bonuses, which , reduced by 35% the number of teaching positions that were vacant or filled by an unlicensed teacher.

“Interestingly, it did little to improve retention among current special educators,” the report said. “Instead, the reduction in vacancies was driven almost entirely by general-education teachers — who were presumably dual-certified — transitioning into special education roles.”

The nonprofit said the policy was also successful because of its simplicity. All Hawaii special education teachers were automatically eligible, and there was no application process. 

Professional development

High-quality professional learning can improve retention for special education and English learner teachers, the report said. Currently, 40 states provide professional development for both fields. Oregon, Hawaii, Iowa, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia are the only states that don’t offer professional learning for either position.

The report highlights Rhode Island, which recently adopted guidelines that require professional learning specifically for teachers of multilingual learners.

Peske said each of the above policy areas is equally important for lawmakers to consider. “If a state really wants to build a strong teacher workforce for students with disabilities and English learners, we would advise them to use these fixed [policy] levers together,” she said.

Advocates are hopeful that change is coming: This June, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law , a historic $8.5 billion piece of legislation devoted to increasing education funding across the state, with a particular focus on teacher training and retention. It includes almost $190 million specifically devoted to teacher preparation and certification programs, as well as $4 billion for teacher and staff pay raises to keep high-quality teachers in the classroom. 

“I don’t think about this being your kind of traditional state policy, which tends to do a lot of patchwork reforms,” said Jacob Kirksey, associate professor at the College of Education at Texas Tech University. “This really tackled the teacher pipeline from its inception.”

The teacher pipeline issue “was a Texas-sized problem,” he added, “and this [bill] is a Texas-sized solution.”

Before this legislative session, Texas lawmakers hadn’t raised schools’ base funding or passed a comprehensive education finance package , leading to what some called a dire situation. Last year, the K-12 school system was ranked overall and 44th for reading scores.

The certification crisis became a major focus of the bill once lawmakers “started to recognize that the [resulting] learning loss was a statistic that you couldn’t turn away from,” Kirksey said.

In response, House Bill 2 will also limit some components of a which allowed the vast majority of Texas districts to hire fully uncertified teachers, experts told ����Ӱ��. Initially designed with a goal of opening educator pathways for industry folks to teach career and technical education courses, consequences of the bill really exploded post-pandemic, when schools were struggling to hire teachers, according to Kirksey.

Ultimately, over schools statewide applied for and received Districts of Innovation designation, allowing scores of them to hire uncertified teachers. By the , the share of all new public school teachers in Texas who are uncertified reached 56%. That share has increased significantly over the last decade, worrying advocates, experts and district leaders across the state. The previous year, when just under half of new teachers were uncertified, almost had no prior experience working in Texas public schools. 

That lack of preparation has real impact, both for the teachers themselves and the students they serve: 64% of uncertified teachers leave the classroom after just five years — compared to about a third of traditionally certified teachers, according to the  

“It was really creating a revolving door of teachers that sort of became a self-fulfilling prophecy,”  said Ryan Franklin, managing director of policy and advocacy at Philanthropy Advocates and former associate commissioner for educator leadership and quality at the Texas Education Agency.

Students with new, uncertified teachers lose about in reading and three months in math each year, comparable to and compounding the learning loss kids experienced during the pandemic, Kirksey’s research found.

The new legislation gradually mandates that all core subject teachers are fully certified by the 2027-28 school year, with an option for schools to apply for an extension until the 2029-30 school year. It also provides incentives for teachers who are currently in the classroom to seek out certification quickly with a $1,000 bonus.

In addition, the bill looks to promote high-quality training programs since “all preparation is not created equally,” Franklin said. 

A ‘chance at sustainable growth‘

While the scale of House Bill 2 is unprecedented in Texas, the desire to introduce innovative and high-quality pathways to teaching isn’t new.

Clifton Tanabe, the dean of the College of Education at The University of Texas El Paso, has been working on this for quite some time. Six years ago, he introduced a residency program to his university to train teachers differently, so they were not just certified but truly prepared to enter some of the most difficult-to-staff urban and rural classrooms.

Residencies are a year-long, intensive form of training that pairs pre-service educators with a mentor teacher and single school site, allowing them to be fully immersed in a classroom environment and learn through doing. Teaching responsibilities often ramp up for the residents throughout the year, allowing them to “get their hands dirty,” as one researcher put it, with training wheels. 

Although essentially full-time jobs, they are often unpaid and done while the resident is simultaneously attending their own classes and paying tuition, making them historically inaccessible to a predominantly low-income student body like Tanabe’s. So, he started “pounding the pavement, asking for money,” and ultimately, in 2018, was able to launch a pilot program that offered all residents a yearly stipend.

Despite the program’s success, it wasn’t sustainable. Without COVID funding, Tanabe wouldn’t have the necessary money to keep paying residents. Already, this year, he’s had to cut back yearly stipends from $20,000 to around $14,000.

That changed this June with House Bill 2, which Tanabe called “massive” for his program and the students they serve.

“It’s what we think about as our chance at sustainable growth for this model,” he added.

The legislation will use a to get money into schools, ranging from an expansion of the a merit-based pay program, to the creation of a Teacher Retention Allotment, which will provide significant raises to core subject educators who have been in the classroom for more than three years. Teachers in smaller districts will get even bigger bumps. 

In addition, the sweeping bill expands career and technical education, introduces special education reforms and increases funding to charter schools. 

On the preparation side, the state will pay the cost of training teaching candidates, up to 40 in residency programs or 80 traditional student teachers in each district. Districts will receive up to $39,500 a year for each teacher resident and $21,500 for each student teacher. Along with the additional funds comes tightened requirements for program content — including mandatory reading and math academies and a ban on any critical race theory-related curriculum. 

Historically, around 20% of certified Texas teachers were prepared fully online, asynchronously, meaning they accessed the materials on their own schedule and without real-time live instruction, according to Kirksey’s research. Candidates could get a temporary certification in a matter of weeks and immediately enter the classroom. 

“That just shows you the incentive structure that was happening,” Kirksey said. 

“What [the new funding] does is it allows them to choose quality and not have the same kind of economic loss that they would have,” he added.

Wes Corzine, superintendent of Huckabay Independent School District, a small, rural district south of Fort Worth, said because of the bill, he’s able to give raises up to $8,000 a year to his more experienced teachers. While he’s excited about the increase in pay and the funding for his district’s residency program, he did push back on one element of the legislation, noting he wished there was a bit more flexibility in how districts could spend some of the money.

Tricia Cave, a lobbyist at the Association of Texas Professional Educators, also argued that the Teacher Retention Allotment funds only support raises for core content classroom teachers, excluding scores of other school-based staff like librarians, counselors and school nurses. Still, she is optimistic about the changes this bill can bring.

For the residency at El Paso, and others like it, the money can’t come soon enough. This year, Tanabe has 200 residents working in schools across seven urban and rural districts that are particularly challenging to staff. The vast majority of the student teachers receive federal Pell grants, and about a third come from families making less than $20,000 a year. 

“It’s a student population that’s tenacious, looking for opportunities, working hard and if you give them a realistic program, with the kinds of supports that a residency model with a stipend has, we can succeed at a very high level,” he said.

In the first six years of the program, they’ve already seen promising results and a high percentage of residents are ultimately offered full-time teaching roles at their school sites. Last year, leaders in one district that Tanabe’s program partners with told him the residency program had solved their teacher vacancy problem. This is particularly significant in rural districts, where in the uncertified teachers were hired at a rate four times higher than the rest of the state. 

And, because of their intensive training, these teachers “start day-one ready,” and remain in the classroom “because they’re not crying in the parking lot after week one, saying this was the worst decision of their lives. They know how to teach from the get-go,” Tanabe said. 

Corzine echoed this point, noting that whenever his district has an opening, they make an effort to hire a resident, “because you’re really hiring a second-year teacher … It creates this huge talent pipeline. It’s a yearlong job interview.”

Experts across the field are hopeful that these across-the-board investments will ultimately have a substantial positive impact on schools, teachers and their students. 

“I think we know with the teacher education pieces, this is about the long game,” said Franklin, the Philanthropy Advocates managing director, “and this is about long-term, sustainable ways to ensure that our students have the teachers they deserve, and that the teaching profession is an attractive profession to the end.”

As another school year ends, superintendents across the United States are staring down an autumn staffing crisis, with 1 in 8 teaching positions either vacant or filled by an underqualified educator.

States that are struggling with post-pandemic teacher shortages have spent millions to lure replacements and retain veterans with hiring bonuses and bumps in salaries. But hiring gaps remain, so some states also are trying another tactic: changing their standards.

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The changes in teacher training and licensing come amid widespread turmoil in public schools: Tax revenue is being siphoned toward private school vouchers in many states; some classrooms are being scrutinized for banned books, displays or teaching lessons that trip into diversity, equity and inclusion territory; and students who went through pandemic-era shutdowns are struggling both with sitting still and with learning the material.

Some surveys show that fewer than a fifth of teachers are happy in their jobs.

“Teaching is not seen as an attractive profession right now,” said Drew Gitomer, an expert on teaching assessment at Rutgers Graduate School of Education.

“COVID exacerbated things, and teachers are caught in the middle of political battles — over curriculum, book bans, even personal attacks,” he said. “It’s not a healthy work environment, and that drives people away.”

Last year, Illinois allowing teacher candidates to begin student teaching before passing content-area exams. It was an effort to reduce barriers for underrepresented groups, the measure’s sponsor said.

A bill under consideration this year over whether to factor pupils’ test scores into teacher evaluations, a break from a 15-year-old mandate.

In New Jersey, a formally removes the Praxis Core exam — traditionally used as an entry-level screening tool for aspiring teachers — from certification requirements.

And in Nevada — one of the states hit hardest by teacher shortages — a bill would for incoming educators. The bill would allow teachers credentialed in other states to begin working in Nevada classrooms while awaiting formal approval.

It also would remove extra steps for teachers switching grade levels and would waive application fees for recent substitute teachers.

Linda Darling-Hammond, founding president and chief knowledge officer of the Learning Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said teacher shortages hit hardest in schools serving low-income students and students of color, where instability often leads to larger class sizes, canceled courses or a revolving door of substitute teachers.

“When you walk into a school facing shortages, you see instability,” she said. “Students may be taught by people who don’t know what to do, who leave quickly, and who often rely more on discipline than engagement.”

The root cause? Teacher attrition.

“Nine out of 10 vacancies every year are because of attrition — and two-thirds of that is not retirement,” Darling-Hammond said. “Support in the beginning matters. Teachers who come in and get a mentor stay longer. If you’re just thrown in to sink or swim, the odds of leaving are much greater.”

States have long struggled to attract teachers, and credentialing changes aren’t unusual. But some education advocates fear long-term repercussions.

Melissa Tooley, director of K-12 educator quality at the left-leaning think tank New America, said most states now offer alternative and fast-track teacher certification pathways, many of which allow candidates to start teaching with little or no pedagogical training in how to teach.

“We’re churning through people who might have potential, but we’re not setting them up for success,” she said. “A lot of what states are doing is short term. It’s about filling seats, not necessarily building a sustainable or high-quality workforce.”

More than 40 states require aspiring teachers to take the costly Praxis Subject test for the subject they want to teach, which some experts argue excludes strong candidates and duplicates other assessments.

“You were excluding people who might be good teachers but didn’t do well on that specific test,” said Rutgers’ Gitomer, who has researched the test’s effects on recruitment.

However, he added, dropping tests doesn’t necessarily help.

Several states — , , , and — have dropped a licensure requirement known as edTPA since 2022, but there’s little evidence the move has helped ease teacher shortages, Gitomer said. (The acronym stands for Educative Teacher Performance Assessment and involves a portfolio that includes testing and videos of classroom performance.)

“The state eliminated edTPA but didn’t replace it with a specific alternative,” he said.

“Instead, it gave full discretion back to individual institutions to develop or adopt their own performance assessments,” he said. “When we talked to institutions, it became pretty clear they didn’t think removing edTPA would be a major driver in addressing the shortage — and they haven’t seen evidence that it has been.”

How best to credential

Tooley said state credentialing systems must navigate a delicate balance: ensuring there are enough teachers, maintaining instructional quality and increasing workforce diversity.

“There’s this triangle — three pieces that need to be in place — and I think there are real tensions when it comes to how states are designing their certification policies,” she said.

And Gitomer described a fragmented national landscape, where some states are tightening teacher entry standards while others are dramatically loosening them — even allowing non-degreed individuals to teach.

“Some states are trying to raise standards; others are relaxing them to the point where you may not even need a college degree,” he said.

Indiana now all pre-K through grade 6 and special education teachers to complete 80 hours of training on the “science of reading,” a method that includes phonics, and pass an exam by 2027. State Sen. Jean Leising, a Republican, has cutting the requirement in half, calling it “an excessive burden with little actual benefit” in a news release.

In Texas, a bill aims by the 2029-30 school year. The legislation would set a gradual cap on the percentage of uncertified teachers districts can employ in core curriculum classes — starting at 20% in 2026-27 and decreasing to 5% in 2029-30.

According to the Texas Education Agency,lacked a state teaching certificate or permit.

Yet some states stand out for how they’re changing their requirements, Tooley said.

She pointed to Washington, which has designed a encouraging paraprofessionals, often known as teacher’s aides, to become classroom teachers. Also known as paraeducators, they’re a group with classroom experience, community ties and higher retention likelihood.

There, school districts are required to offer foundational training — ranging from 14 to 28 hours — directly to paraeducators.

In West Virginia, a new law now allows districts to count full-time working in one or two classrooms toward meeting the required number of aides or paraprofessionals in K-3 classrooms.

Tooley noted that and are experimenting with “menu-style” licensing flexibility — allowing candidates to demonstrate qualification through various combinations of GPA and test scores, rather than rigid cutoffs.

“These are people already in schools, often from the same cultural or linguistic backgrounds as students,” Tooley said. “They’re more likely to succeed and to stay.”

Low pay

A 2024 by the EdWeek Research Center found that public school teachers are increasingly reporting declines in mental health, job satisfaction and classroom stability. Seventy percent of teachers recommended student mental health interventions, and nearly half said schools lack enough counselors, psychologists and social workers.

As mental well-being has worsened, the share of public school teachers who are very satisfied with their jobs has also declined by 2 percentage points from the previous year, to 18%, according to the , which was conducted by the EdWeek Research Center on behalf of Merrimack College.

While teacher wellness supports remain limited, educators say improvements in pay and student discipline are the most needed changes.

To entice passionate but burned out educators from leaving the workforce, several states have raised minimum teacher pay. Arkansas , and South Carolina this year, giving it a boost to $48,500 next school year. South Dakota enacted a $45,000 minimum with yearly increases, and penalties . Connecticut advanced a bill setting a $63,450 salary floor, while and others are eyeing further increases.

At the federal level, the  seeks to establish a national $60,000 minimum salary for teachers at a qualifying school to boost recruitment and retention across the country. The bill, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, a Florida Democrat, remains in committee.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

Earlier this month, I was flattered to be invited to a at Marquette University Law School, sparked by an article I’d written making the case that education reform has misfired by prioritizing testing, measurement, accountability, and other structural reforms instead of trying to improve classroom practice.

A highlight of the convening was the final panel of the day, featuring four teachers and administrators who acknowledged that many of the challenges I cited—poor preparation, chronic problems with student behavior and classroom management, and the overwhelming demands placed on teachers—were real and concerning. But they pushed back politely on my assertion that we have made teaching “.” I was particularly struck by remarks from Taylor Thompson, an earnest and winningly dedicated first-year fourth-grade teacher from Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

“[Teaching is] not an impossible task. It’s demanding. It’s hard. Each day is not rainbows and singing and dancing,” she said, but it’s not impossible “if you are a collaborative person, work with your peers, and you have a community of coworkers and principals who don’t allow you to silo into your own rooms and do your own thing. It can be a very, very empowering job.”

Thompson brought with her materials from the; having worked on CKLA’s launch during my time at the Core Knowledge Foundation, I was heartened that it contributed to her success. That said, I couldn’t help but wonder if her first-year experience would be different—if she’d even have had the time and energy to come to Marquette at all—had she not been given CKLA but an empty plan book, and expected to spend 10, 20, or more hours a week scouring Google, Share My Lesson, or Teachers Pay Teachers for lesson plans and materials?

When it was my turn to respond, I told the audience that what they’d just heard didn’t contradict my argument; it amplified it. I suggested to my hosts that what we really needed was one more panel: earnest, well-intended people who wanted to teach but grew overwhelmed and walked away from their classrooms. Their absence from the conversation—not a flaw of Marquette’s thoughtful event but a field-wide oversight—limits our ability to address the issues driving nearly half of teachers to quit within five years. Those stories are legion.

After leaving the classroom, I worked briefly at an outfit called Prep for Prep under Ed Boland, who later left the organization to teach in a New York City public high school armed with little more than idealism. His 2016 memoir, The Battle for Room 314, described the relentless student misbehavior, homophobic slurs, and physical fights he endured. He wasn’t a minimally prepared Teach For America corps member or, like me, the product of an “alt cert” teacher prep program. He had two years of graduate school and six months of student teaching that he described as “a mix of folk wisdom, psycho-jargon, wishful thinking, and out-and-out bullshit.” 

After one freakishly difficult year, Boland returned to his old job. “I had taken courses in lesson planning, evaluation, psychology, and research. Next to nothing was said about what a first-year teacher most needs to know: how to control a classroom,” he wrote.

NPR’s All Things Considered not long ago ran a about Liz Stepansky, the daughter of two school teachers who wanted to follow in their footsteps, thinking teaching would be a path to a stable, meaningful life. But when she took a job teaching at a South Carolina middle school, she found that she “had no idea” what she was in for. Her middle school students “dialed 911, threw balloons filled with bleach and ink in hallways and constantly pulled the fire alarm.”

“I’d go home and sometimes I’d spend an hour grading papers. And then I’d go back the next day and do it all over again,” she told NPR. “I remember my paycheck being $800 and something every two weeks.” She transferred to another school, faced similar frustrations and threw in the towel. She’s now a speech pathologist.

It’s not hard to find stories of earnest, well-intended people who want to teach but find the job untenable. But I can’t recall hearing from a single one at any of the education and policy conferences I’ve attended over the last twenty years.

Inattention to abandoned careers and disappointed hopes allow false and misleading narratives to gain traction. Last summer, I was invited to give before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Senator Bernie Sanders was proposing a $60,000 minimum teacher salary to address teacher shortages. “By all means, pay teachers more,” I testified. “But don’t harbor any illusions that doing so will solve the problem.” 

Higher pay doesn’t fix shoddy preparation, unruly classrooms, or the ever-escalating burdens we pile on teachers’ plates as we treat schools as not just academic spaces but something akin to the social service agencies of last resort. “We are asking teachers to do too many things to do any of them well at any salary,” I said.

Teaching’s aspirational nature attracts optimists, but crushing demands betray them. A I cited in my Senate testimony found 99% of elementary teachers create their own materials, stealing time from honing their craft and working more closely with children and their parents. A 2024 showed only 36% of teachers feel adequately resourced; a 2022 revealed nearly half plan to quit due to poor school climate. These are systemic failures, not personal ones.

Teaching is among our most optimistic and aspirational professions, drawing idealists who believe education can transform lives. But celebrating only the successes—teachers who beat the odds, schools that defy demographics—distorts our vision. As I quipped at Marquette, it’s like watching Aaron Judge hit 62 home runs and concluding, “See? It can be done!”

And it can—if you’re Aaron Judge.  

Other fields learn from failure—medicine from misdiagnoses, aviation from crashes. I urged Marquette’s audience to imagine a panel of teachers who quit—not to shame them, but to learn. What broke their optimism? What tools were missing? Thompson’s success shows what’s possible with support. But for every Thompson, countless idealists leave because they were overmatched, felt unprepared or betrayed by poor training or simply couldn’t manage chaos.

A few days later, Alan Borsuk, who organized and moderated the event at Marquette, told me about a conversation he’d had with a school administrator who was in attendance who disagreed with the notion that teachers who leave are failures. “She said one of the best teachers they have whose students have done well for year after year is leaving after this year,” Alan said. That teacher, she insisted, was not a failure.

Exactly! That teacher didn’t fail. We failed that teacher.

Education reform must weigh frustration alongside triumph. We need convenings where former teachers speak without judgment: their failures and frustration studied, not stigmatized.  

There’s no magic wand that will make the job easy or friction-free, but when you connect with students and go home feeling successful, there’s no job that compares to being a classroom teacher. You feel on top of the world. It’s immensely satisfying work.

The question ed reformers and policymakers need to ask now is what can we do to make more teachers feel successful and their jobs more doable.

Morice has been a teacher for over 30 years, 16 of which she has been teaching pre-K; she estimates that she spends around $450 a year of her own money on non-reimbursed supplies like crafts, games, puzzles, books and toys for her classroom. She doesn’t have access to a color printer at school, so she uses one at home to print out pages for her class. 

It’s not uncommon for educators to spend their own money on classroom supplies, which is why the U.S. tax code includes an , allowing teachers in K-12 classrooms to deduct up to $300 a year on expenses that were not reimbursed. But Morice, like so many other early childhood educators, doesn’t qualify to take the deduction. Though she works alongside other teachers in her school, doing virtually identical teaching work, she and other pre-K teachers aren’t able to deduct their expenses. 

Nationwide, early childhood educators earn, on average, less than half what their elementary school counterparts make, with a . Thirteen percent earn below the poverty line, and almost half (43%) rely on public assistance. While policy debates about raising the wages of child care workers often center on bringing in more state or federal assistance, another option exists to shore up the industry using the tax code. 

The education expense deduction is a federal income tax deduction of up to $300 annually for unreimbursed expenses (or $600 if two married educators are filing jointly). The teacher who buys poster board and markers for her classroom, or who enrolls in a continuing education class, can deduct those expenses. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, qualified expenses also included PPE and disinfectant. 

released by the Buffett Early Childhood Institute this month recommends allowing early childhood educators to take the deduction, arguing that the move would help retain workers by “easing a portion of their financial burden” and “demonstrating they are respected for the important work they do.” The brief also points to the problems with the existing recruitment and retention of early childhood educators: Because of the very low pay, there are significant employment challenges for businesses and families, resulting in “billions of dollars of lost economic activity.” Evidence supports this — without access to child care, many people, especially women, cannot work for pay. 

Walter Gilliam, executive director of the Buffett institute and a co-author of the report, believes the discrepancy caused by the tax laws contributes to early educators feeling there isn’t sufficient respect in the field. Gilliam runs an of early educators, and of the 25,000 who responded, he estimated that over 90% would be able to take the tax deduction if it were available to them. 

“They feel neglected, because they often are,” he said of early educators. He pointed to another example during the COVID-19 pandemic, when K-12 teachers were given priority for vaccinations and PPE supplies. Many early educators were skipped entirely, even though, in many cases, they were the ones showing up to work while many K-12 teachers were staying home.

“These kinds of things have huge implications for early childhood educators,” Gilliam said. The brief recommends that Congress extend the federal tax deduction to early educators, and that states consider providing their own tax deduction until a federal version is passed.

But could a $300 tax deduction make a meaningful difference?

Josh McCabe, the director of social policy at the Niskanen Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, doesn’t think so. “I’m relatively confident this deduction wouldn’t make a dent in the problem for a few reasons,” he said. “It’s unclear to me how many ECE workers are 1) spending out of pocket on non reimbursed supplies, 2) are in tax brackets that make a deduction like this more than nominally valuable, and 3) would have their retention decision impacted by this on the margin.” 

And Gary Romano, the chief strategy advisor at Civitas Strategies, LLC, a group that provides tax education and business support, estimates that even with the tax deduction, the maximum amount that early educators would take home is an extra $66 a year. Romano explains that most child care providers max out at the 12% or 22% marginal tax rate, which would be the percentage they’d recoup on the $300 deduction, assuming they spent the maximum amount. He also noted that this is a personal deduction, not a business deduction, and many child care providers who work out of their homes already deduct supplies as a business expense. 

Gilliam acknowledges that even though it’s not a lot of money, showing early educators they are valued may go a long way toward supporting retention efforts. “Do I believe that double digit savings in the pockets of early educators is going to keep them in their seats? Probably not. Do I think showing them a little bit of respect might help? Absolutely.” 

Expanding the deduction would require Congressional approval, it’s not a rule the Internal Revenue Service could expand on its own. Gilliam points to about people who left the early education field. The top reason for leaving was compensation (54%), followed by not enough respect (39%). Other reasons included lack of benefits, lack of support for challenging behaviors, poor working conditions, and the need for more flexibility of hours. 

Morice, the preschool teacher, has even greater confidence: She knows teachers who could take advantage of this deduction, and believes some “need to count every penny.”

And for her, it’s a basic issue of fairness that allows her to do her job well. “I feel truly that if you want the best for these kids and start them out strong and give them a foundation, you have to give them the supplies to do that,” she said. “We can’t do it with one set of blocks all year.”

Texas teachers may be increasingly fed up with their job, but they’re still staying in school.

State data shows Texas public school educators continue to return to the classroom at somewhat similar rates as years past, despite multiple surveys showing the large majority of them have contemplated quitting the profession.

While teacher turnover has slightly increased over the past decade, state data show there hasn’t been a large exodus of experienced teachers. In fact, the average years of experience for Texas public school teachers hasn’t notably changed since 2014-15, nor has the share of first-year teachers hired by districts.

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The numbers run counter to years of warnings that Texas teachers are primed to bolt en masse out of frustration with the job. At the same time, Texas does still face widespread issues with morale, as well as big challenges in finding certified teachers and filling several types of positions, including special education educators and bilingual teachers.

Steady hands in schools

While much has changed in Texas classrooms over the decade, students continue to be educated by mostly veteran teachers. The average tenure for Texas teachers has held steady during that stretch, ranging from 10.9 to 11.2 years of experience.

The state did see a slight dip in the share of first-year teachers — who, on average, have less positive impact on student achievement than other educators — during the late 2010s, then a slight uptick over the past few years. Still, novice teachers account for fewer than 1-in-10 Texas educators.

A small rise in turnover

Teacher turnover, a measure of how many educators don’t return to teach in the same district each year, has ticked higher since the pandemic. While it once hovered near 16 percent, it’s reached roughly 20 percent over the past two years.

Ultimately, a 4 percentage point difference equates to about 15,000 more teachers who aren’t returning to a classroom in their district. However, state data shows teachers of all experience levels are leaving at similar rates.

Still stressed

Teachers might be sticking with their jobs, but that doesn’t mean they’re happy about it.

A 2024 by the Charles Butt Foundation, an Austin-based education advocacy nonprofit, found nearly four-fifths of educators surveyed had seriously considered quitting the profession in the past year. Pay, quality of campus leadership and a sense of feeling valued ranked among the biggest factors in whether teachers had considered quitting.

Separate polls by two of the largest Texas educator unions — the and — also showed about two-thirds of teachers had considered leaving the profession.

Texas education leaders also are worried about the state’s ability to retain teachers and hire tough-to-fill positions. A state panel convened by the Texas Education Agency examined the issues and made numerous recommendations in 2023, though have been put into action.

As teachers leave Texas schools, district leaders are increasingly , who generally leave the profession sooner than certified teachers.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Teachers are the in-school factor in student success, and higher is linked to lower test scores. Given this, districts and schools should do all they can to ensure that their educators feel empowered, supported and fulfilled in their jobs so they can drive the best outcomes for students. 

One of the best ways to make teachers feel more satisfied may be quite simple: Ask them what they think needs to change about their work, and partner with them to implement solutions.

That’s what Teach Indy, a nonprofit seeking to elevate the teaching profession in Indianapolis and beyond, sought to do by its Reimagining the Teacher Role Cohort (RTR Cohort) a year ago. This program brings together educators from across the city to collaborate with school administrators and experts in problem-solving to develop ways to improve the workplace so more educators stay in the classroom. 

The cohort was born of a desire to put teachers in charge of solving the challenge of educator retention. Rather than imposing top-down solutions, the program empowers educators — who best know the highs and lows of the profession — to come up with ideas for change and implement them. 

To start, Teach Indy partnered with an Indianapolis school district to pilot the program, and that district selected four schools to participate. Leaders at those schools were asked to identify classroom teachers who showed a desire to take on additional leadership responsibility. The 14 participating teachers — working together in teams of three or four from each school— met monthly with the outside experts to identify challenges in the teaching profession and brainstorm solutions. At the end of the program, the teachers put their ideas into practice at their schools with support from their administrators. 

One team created a teacher community called the Grow Gang Club that meets monthly to participate in team-building activities, complete professional development and foster personal relationships among educators, with the goal of strengthening their school’s culture of collaboration. The group also encourages shared learning through peer-to-peer mentorship and a podcast discussion group. They will measure success based on teachers’ participation, their satisfaction with professional development and engagement in shared projects. 

Another group aimed to support teacher morale and mental health by offering twice-monthly sessions that incorporate team-building and learning about topics such as student mental health. This group also assigned teachers to work on interdepartmental teams for a semester to encourage more idea-sharing on instructional practices, and it improved communication among teachers by launching a weekly print newsletter. To improve school culture and reinforce connections to students, the group created incentives for teachers to attend extracurricular activities and events. 

Two teams established mechanisms in their schools to help teachers reset and manage emotional stress. They created dedicated spaces that are designed to be relaxing, and if teachers need to visit the rooms to take a mental health break, there is a system to provide classroom coverage. The spaces also offer video recordings of lessons on strategies to cope with stress, with the goal of imparting coping strategies and decreasing use of the rooms over time.

Anecdotal feedback suggests these innovations have made a difference in the schools. But putting these ideas into practice does not seem to be the most powerful part of the experience.

What we learned is that the solutions themselves are not the most powerful aspect of this experience. Rather, what makes the biggest difference is the sheer act of giving teachers the opportunity, freedom and authority to lead outside the classroom. 

When we surveyed participants, 100% of respondents reported that the experience strengthened their professional skills, 86% said they’re more likely to stay in the profession in the near term because of the cohort and 71% said they’re more likely to stay over the long term because of it. 

Why? By collaborating with colleagues, developing new skills and being entrusted with developing ideas, teachers gained confidence.

“I have really appreciated the opportunity to use my ‘teacher brain’ in a different capacity, which has led me to see how I can problem solve in a bigger way,” one participant said in survey feedback. 

“It helped build up my faith in myself and to know that I have the support to do things (beyond the classroom),” another reported.

These insights provide school and district leaders with ways to approach changing school conditions to keep talent in the field. By empowering teachers to be leaders in their schools and beyond, schools help develop their leadership skills and provide them with a sense of purpose in making the profession better. 

Just as important, giving teachers opportunities to work with — and learn from — their peers helps them form a much-needed sense of community. And encouraging teachers to build relationships with fellow teaching professionals makes the field more attractive, because adult relationships are critically important.

Teachers are the engine that drives education forward. A key step to elevating their satisfaction and retention is asking for their input, as well as giving them the opportunity to drive change in their profession. The RTR Cohort offers one model for doing this. Scaling up these kinds of efforts can ensure they feel heard and respected as the community leaders they are.

A bill proposes to reduce the years needed for a lifetime teaching license in North Dakota, but a state licensing board says ongoing education is critical to the career field.

The House Education Committee held a public hearing Tuesday for that would reduce the years needed for teachers to acquire a lifetime license from 30 years to 20 years. The bill would also mandate teachers with lifetime licenses to file a report with the North Dakota Education Standards and Practices Board every five years to self-report any criminal violations, or any other information that could cause the teacher’s license to be revoked or suspended.

Rep. Zac Ista, D-Grand Forks, the bill’s chief sponsor, said a 20-year benchmark for lifetime licensing will reduce out-of-pocket costs for educators and improve workforce retention in education.

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Teachers could save about $1,000 by eliminating two license renewal cycles, he said, and save the time it takes to do college-level continuing education credits.

The North Dakota Education Standards and Practices Board opposes the bill, Executive Director Rebecca Pitkin told lawmakers. She said lowering the requirements for ongoing education does not “promote the profession.”

“Requiring six reeducation college credits in five years should not be a reason to leave the profession,” Pitkin said. She added many of those credits can be obtained at the district level with little to no cost to the educator.

There are about 18,000 licensed teachers in North Dakota with about 10,000 currently employed in the state’s school districts, according to the Department of Public Instruction.

North Dakota United, an educator and public employee union, supports the bill. President Nick Archuleta told lawmakers it could help the state address an .

“While these teachers are qualified and fulfill a need in many communities, we believe that recruiting, retaining and respecting teachers here is the best way to meet our needs for the long term,” Archuleta said.

He also said the state has made accommodations for new teachers, including allowing student teachers to become teachers-of-record through , but have done very little to benefit teachers with decades of experience.

“Please stand up for teachers,” Archuleta said. “Please show them that their dedication to the students of North Dakota is appreciated.”

The committee took no immediate action on the bill. A similar bill proposed in the 2023 session failed in the Senate.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. North Dakota Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Amy Dalrymple for questions: info@northdakotamonitor.com.

The new year brought changes to requirements for New Jersey teachers, including a new law eliminating a basic skills test that lawmakers overwhelmingly advanced in both houses.

Gov. Phil Murphy signed the  eliminating the Praxis basic skills test for people seeking teaching certifications in June, and it went into effect Jan. 1. Lawmakers said the legislation aimed to address a l and remove duplicative, costly tests that create barriers to pursuing a career in education.

At the time, it faced little controversy. Just three Republicans voted against it.

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But recent comments from tech mogul Elon Musk have shined a spotlight on the new law. Musk, who owns social media platform X, this week  of an article about the change and questioned if teachers in New Jersey need to “know how to read.” The post has been viewed nearly 20 million times.

Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia (R-Sussex), who supported the bill, said the change to teacher certification requirements has been taken entirely out of context and does not lower the bar for would-be teachers.

“My largest concern was it was an extra expense for teachers just starting out, and for taking a test, actually, that is much easier than the current tests you already have to take,” said Fantasia, who obtained her teaching certificate in 2008 and now works as an administrator at a charter school.

She explained that for teachers to receive certification in New Jersey, they must first graduate from an accredited teacher preparation program with at least a 3.0 grade point average, complete months of student teaching, and pass several exams, depending on the grade level and subject matter being taught.

Those tests can easily amount to hundreds of dollars, and by the time a potential teacher takes the Praxis exam, they’ve already proved their capabilities, she said.

States across the country have removed similar exams in an effort to ease shortages plaguing schools, according to the . Oklahoma enacted a law in 2022 removing the requirement for a general education exam, and Arizona implemented a law allowing educators to begin teaching before graduating from college.

Fantasia did not fault Musk for his confusion about the law and placed some blame on the media — fringe and mainstream — for irresponsible headlines and missing context. The knee-jerk reaction from the public is to be “completely expected,” she said.

And while she noted she’s the loudest Republican voice supporting the legislation, she slammed Democrats for remaining “radio silent” on a bill they supported. The bill sponsors did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

“The teachers of New Jersey are made to look across this country like the village idiots because the Democrat Party who sponsored this bill and the governor who signed it don’t feel it necessary to defend them when the headlines are extraordinarily misleading,” Fantasia said.

Murphy’s office defended the law in a statement to the New Jersey Monitor.

“The Praxis Core requirement was redundant to New Jersey’s other requirements for teacher certification that remain in place, and its removal was a recommendation of our public school staff shortage task force, a group of experts who know more about New Jersey’s education needs than Elon Musk,” said Natalie Hamilton, a Murphy spokeswoman. “The bipartisan legislation that the Governor signed passed by overwhelming margins and we are disappointed by out-of-state agitators that want more red tape.”

Steven Baker, spokesman for teachers union the New Jersey Education Association, said “right-wing blog sites trying to push this story don’t understand the law and definitely do not understand New Jersey’s very rigorous teacher certification standards.”

He stressed that the additional requirement to pass the Praxis following years of other coursework did nothing to elevate the standards and “amounted to a corporate money grab” from college students.

Sen. Joe Pennacchio (R-Morris), who voted against the bill, said he thinks it has indeed lowered standards.

“I think these are the days of dumbing down, and somebody’s got to put their foot down and say, ‘Absolutely not,’” he said. “We should expect more from these kids, not less, and we certainly should expect no less from the teachers that are teaching them.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence T. McDonald for questions: info@newjerseymonitor.com.

Missouri educators will no longer need a 3.0 grade-point average in their subject area to teach in public schools beginning in July, unanimously voted Tuesday.

The threshold to be qualified to teach in the state is now a 2.5 grade-point average in the teacher’s content area. The only exception will be special-education teachers, who will still be required to meet the 3.0 mark.

Officials with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Educations say the change is intended to increase the number of certificated teachers coming into public schools. Commissioner of Education Karla Eslinger said in a statement that the change would remove “unnecessary barriers to the teaching profession.”

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“There is no evidence tying a particular GPA in the content area to more effective teaching,” Daryl Fridley, the department’s education preparation coordinator, told the board on Tuesday. “Most of the non-teaching professional options in sciences, math and history do not require such a high GPA.”

A 3.0 GPA requirement most impacts teachers in STEM subjects, he said. When the department looked at teacher candidates who met other requirements but didn’t meet the GPA standard, nearly a quarter of those disqualified were in STEM.

Teacher candidates still must pass a performance assessment, with a test of subject knowledge, to be certified. Of those who didn’t meet the GPA requirements, 90% passed the performance assessment, Fridley said.

The department hopes the new requirements will bring more teachers into the profession. Currently, almost 44% of first-year teachers are certified in Missouri. Over a quarter are serving as a substitute teacher, 6% have no certification and the rest have alternative certifications.

“Discussions about this issue often include the question, ‘Isn’t this a case of lowering standards?’” Fridley said. “We maintain that with a third of the state’s first year teachers having no more than a substitute teacher certificate and some with even less, any action that leads to a higher proportion of first-year teachers completing the preparation program is actually a net gain for the overall quality of teachers.”

In the midst of low teacher retention rates and poor recruitment, the change is welcome, the department reiterated.

“Both quantity and quality of teachers are really important to the learning of students,” Paul Katnik, assistant commissioner of educator quality, said during Tuesday’s meeting.

The department reiterated that it doesn’t believe the lower GPA threshold will affect teacher quality.

A showed that there was no improvement in achievement outcomes between a 2.5 GPA and 2.75 GPA requirement. Increasing the threshold to 3.0 excluded 44% of education students and brought a small increase on teachers’ evaluations. The study concludes a “higher GPA criteria would also have minimal impact on the quality of our nation’s teachers.”

Carol Hallquist, vice president of the State Board of Education, said she was initially wary of lowering the GPA standard but is now “totally supportive.”

“When I reached out to principals and people who are in teacher preparation programs, they said there was no correlation and were very supportive,” she said. “They also said that you have to pass licensing tests, and that is really what we want to look at.”

Doug Hayter, executive director of the Missouri Association of School Administrators, told The Independent he has been speaking to the department about the GPA requirements and is optimistic.

“There is a balance where we need to have requirements that mean something, but the research that they have seems to indicate that this change would not have a substantial impact on teacher effectiveness,” he said. “As long as that’s the case, we want to give educators as many options as possible in a world where there’s still a lot of open positions in regard to public education.”

Further helping open doors for new teachers is the reinstatement of a general science certification for high school educators. The department has required science teachers to specialize in an area, like chemistry or biology, but now will bring back a certification for generalists with a broader knowledge base.

“The reinstatement of this general science certificate will create opportunities for more students to choose to be science teachers, not by lowering standards, but instead by creating a path in which the standards are more aligned with the needs of schools,” Fridley said.

Hayter expects the change to impact districts statewide, saying that “every little bit helps” to recruit teachers.

“This is one small part of a bigger picture of making sure that we have very effective educators in our classrooms moving forward,” he said.

The “bigger picture,” Hayter said, includes boosting teacher pay and making schools welcoming for educators.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on and .

A bill requiring public schools to raise teacher pay with no promise of new state funding passed a legislative committee Wednesday in Pierre.

Nobody testified against , but several lobbyists representing the education community called it a work in progress.

“It is not a perfect bill, but a compromise that will hopefully help us attract new teachers and retain the current, experienced teachers, and bring quality education to the students in the state of South Dakota,” said Dianna Miller, a lobbyist for the Large School Group.

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The legislation would set a statewide minimum teacher salary of $45,000, beginning July 1, 2026. That minimum standard would increase each year by a percentage equal to the annual increase in state education funding approved by the Legislature and governor.

The bill would also require schools to raise their average teacher compensation — including pay and benefits — by percentages equal to annual increases in state funding. That requirement would begin with the 2025 fiscal year.

Gov. Kristi Noem, for not matching teacher pay increases with state aid increases, a 4% increase in education funding for the next state budget.

School districts that fail to meet the bill’s requirements could suffer a $500-per-teacher deduction in state education funding. But they could also request a waiver and work with the state School Finance Accountability Board to come into compliance.

Because the bill depends on future legislative decisions to increase state funding, a lobbyist for schools said it will spread the responsibility for teacher salaries beyond local school boards. Schools rely not only on state funding, but also on federal funding and local property tax revenue.

“Let’s make no mistake: This does create some shared responsibility now with the Legislature, because as we move forward, it’s going to be the responsibility of the Legislature to help fund education,” said Mitch Richter, lobbyist for the South Dakota United Schools Association.

Richter said some small, rural schools with stagnant or declining enrollment might be unable to meet the bill’s requirements. State funding for individual schools is tied to enrollment, so schools with declining enrollment may not receive the full benefit of annual increases in state aid. He said some of those rural schools might be forced to consolidate.

“We’ll have to come up with a plan for that, because those districts are going to need some help,” Richter said.

Miller said the bill could also cause difficulties for larger schools with declining enrollment, possibly causing them to use reserve funds to raise teacher pay.

According to the National Education Association, South Dakota ranks (out of 51, due to the inclusion of Washington, D.C.).

That’s despite the passage of a half-percentage-point increase in the state sales tax rate to raise teacher salaries. The legislation sent an infusion of money to schools that pushed South Dakota up a few places in national teacher pay rankings, but the state has slipped in the rankings since then. Last year, legislators and Gov. Noem from 4.5% to 4.2%.

Joe Graves, head of the state Department of Education, said this year’s bill is a continuation of the work that started in 2016. He called the bill a “rock solid step forward in ensuring enhanced compensation for our state’s teachers.”

Graves said the bill includes some provisions to help schools meet the requirements. For example, a provision that was amended into the bill Wednesday would allow school boards to roll some of their excess average compensation forward to future years.

“Districts, in other words, can exceed one year’s increase, in order to have already made progress on future increases,” Graves said.

The House Education Committee voted to send the bill to the House of Representatives. Rep. Phil Jensen, R-Rapid City, and Rep. Stephanie Sauder, R-Bryant, cast the two no votes.

Jensen referenced Rapid City school officials’ inability to win voter approval of bond financing for construction projects, which has made it difficult for the district to maintain its facilities.

“I’m afraid that this would just be disastrous for the Rapid City schools along with all the smaller schools,” Jensen said.

Sauder said the legislation would cause some schools to eliminate teaching positions and combine classrooms.

“It just doesn’t iron out the wrinkles that need to be taken care of before we move forward,” she said.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been altered since its original publication with language to clarify the effect of 2016 legislation on teacher pay.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

Legislation boosting teacher recruitment and retention in Missouri is once again a priority of the Missouri House, with a hearing Wednesday morning on a pair of Republican-backed bills.

Rep. Ed Lewis, a Republican from Moberly, is sponsoring based on the findings of the State Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s blue ribbon commission. It is the third year he has sponsored legislation on teacher recruitment and retention.

“The problem is obvious to all of us at this point,” he told the committee. “We don’t have enough teachers for our public schools and, to some extent, for the private and parochial schools as well.”

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After three years in a Missouri school district, an average 43.3% of teachers leave, .

According to the , a teachers’ union, the state ranks 50th in average starting teacher pay and 47th in average teacher pay.

Lewis’s bill seeks to raise the base teacher pay, allow differentiated salary schedules for hard-to-staff areas and increase scholarships to recruit teachers, among other provisions.

Rep. Ann Kelley, a Republican from Lamar, asked whether support staff could be added to the bill.

“The schools cannot be successful without the support staff, and the salaries of the support staff and retention and retaining those support staff is vital,” Kelley said.

Lewis was hesitant to increase the potential fiscal impact.

“We’re gonna have a hard time getting anything across the finish line on the other side,” he said, referring to the Senate.

Last year, he filed the teacher pay-raise proposals as separate bills before the committee combined them into one bill. The House overwhelmingly on a 145-5 vote, but filibusters in the Senate could be debated in that chamber.

Rep. Willard Haley, a Republican from Eldon, is also to raise teachers’ minimum salary — though his ask is a bit different. He hopes to raise the base to $46,000 by the 2027-28 school year. Fully implemented, the bill is estimated to cost up to $17.5 million.

“I just insist that it’s time that we start paying our teachers what they deserve,” Haley said.

He said teenagers with a high-school diploma can make more working at a local factory than some teachers do.

Currently, state statute allows schools to pay teachers as little as $25,000 or $33,000 for those with a master’s degree and 10 years of experience.

The state has a grant program, which is up for renewal annually, to raise teacher base salaries to $38,000. In the current school year, 310 school districts are using the grant for a total of 4,806 teachers, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education told The Independent.

Gov. Mike Parson has requested an increase to this program to raise the base to $40,000 for the next fiscal year.

Lewis doesn’t like relying on the annual appropriations for teacher salaries. He said he worries, with an upcoming gubernatorial election, the next governor may not fully fund the base-salary grant.

“I don’t think we should legislate through the budget. I think that the policy should go first and the budget should follow,” he told the committee.

Haley’s bill prescribes a fund that would match district’s contributions 70/30 to get salaries to his preferred base.

Rep. Kathy Steinhoff, a Columbia Democrat, said she wanted a “broader” change.

“I look at our large school districts… 52% of our districts will see no impact from state dollars towards teacher salaries,” she said. “I feel pretty confident if we ask those districts ‘Are you having a retention problem?’ They would probably all say yes.”

Rep. Dan Stacy, a Republican from Blue Springs, asked if a base-pay increase could be tied to a decrease to another part of the budget. Haley said his bill is “top priority.”

“This is such a priority item that we must handle this,” he said. “We must fulfill this funding even at a cost to some other things. But education is that important to me.”

No one testified in opposition to the legislation Wednesday.

Perry Gorrell, interim legislative liaison for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said raising the base teacher pay is the Commissioner of Education’s top priority.

“We know that the greatest impact on student achievement is having highly qualified teachers for students. These two bills helped to ensure that,” he said.

Otto Fajen, lobbyist for the Missouri branch of the National Education Association, said the teachers’ union would like lawmakers to consider small schools with under 100 kids when looking at funding.

“While not that many of our members are going to benefit directly from the increase here, it sends a message that the legislature believes that entry pay and, overall, the earnings for teachers should resemble similar professions to make it a more viable choice going forward,” Fajen said.

Steve Carroll, a lobbyist representing the Cooperating School Districts of Greater Kansas City and St. Louis Public Schools, said he woke up at nearly 4 a.m. thinking about these bills.

He felt like his anxiety was pointless because the bills “probably won’t even make it across the finish line because of what’s going on in the Senate.”

But he saw the salary of a baseball player in a news article and marveled at society’s “priorities.” He believes teachers are the ones more deserving of higher pay.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on and .

At the same time, an analysis by ����Ӱ�� of Minnesota’s teacher licensing records found that during the 2022-23 academic year, more than 1,500 licensed special educators — comprising 16% of teachers credentialed to work with students with disabilities — chose to work in regular classrooms. 

And more than a fourth of teachers working with students with disabilities — 27%, or nearly 3,000 — lacked any special education credential. Licensed to teach language arts, social studies, music, health and other general education subjects, in many cases their schools have a state waiver to place them with students with disabilities.

The one-two punch leaves thousands of the state’s most vulnerable children — among those hit hardest by the pandemic losses — without qualified teachers at a crucial juncture. Many received little or none of the specialized instruction they are legally entitled to during COVID’s school disruptions. They have not bounced back to their dismal pre-pandemic achievement rates of at grade level.

“Kids with disabilities are never the top priority,” says Wendy Tucker, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Learner Equity, which researches and promotes quality in special education. “They just keep getting pushed down the list.” 

Even in normal times, federal civil rights laws require school systems to make up services children with disabilities don’t receive for whatever reason. But as is the case in many places, the reality in Minnesota is that districts are closing specialized programs or moving kids into makeshift settings. 

To push districts to prioritize a particularly vulnerable subset of children, U.S. civil rights laws don’t allow school systems to use a shortage of qualified educators to justify denying students with learning differences the services they need to succeed. Disability advocates have long complained that the practice of assigning available but unqualified educators to special education classrooms is illegal because it is a key barrier to students making academic progress. 

It’s easy to understand why administrators are exhausted meeting the bare-bones goal of having students safe and supervised, Tucker acknowledges, but for kids it’s the start of a very slippery slope: “It’s a vicious cycle. Low expectations are met, because the supports weren’t there, because there were low expectations.”

Minnesota licensing officials refused to comment on ����Ӱ��’s findings about the number of special education teachers choosing not to work in the area or the high rate of jobs being filled by educators lacking special education credentials. When asked about the number of special education teachers who leave their jobs for general education classrooms, Yelena Bailey, executive director of the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board, said in an email that the board does not have that information: “We do not have attrition rate data due to limitations of our data system. We hope to hire someone in the coming months who can help put this together manually.”

In a , the board has calculated annual attrition rates for teachers overall since 2017, when a new licensing system went into effect. The data shows that nearly a third of all new teachers hired since then leave within five years — better than the national average — and includes, where known, their reasons for quitting. 

The report does not include information on special educators who leave. Nor does the licensing board tally actual vacancies overall, instead reporting the percentage of districts that say they have hard-to-fill openings by subject area. In lieu of the number of people schools would have to hire to be fully staffed, it uses the number of educators in all fields with waivers to work outside their licensure area and those with entry-level credentials who are working toward permanent licensure as a proxy. 

When broken down by area of expertise, special education of specialties taught by teachers without appropriate, permanent licenses. Last year, there were 2,000. 

A lack of hard numbers outside of the assignment data examined by ����Ӱ�� makes it impossible to know how many of Minnesota’s 153,000 pre-K-12 children receiving special ed services aren’t being taught by a qualified educator. Minnesota education advocates have pressed — unsuccessfully so far — for laws requiring better data collection.

But news stories and anecdotal accounts from family advocates suggest that the number is at crisis levels. At the start of the year, the state’s largest system, the Anoka-Hennepin School District, announced it was at least temporarily closing an entire specialized school for some of its most profoundly disabled students. Last year, it had 53 special educators working in general education classrooms, according to licensing records.

Minneapolis Public Schools last year canceled some in-person instruction, moving many disabled pupils back online for summer services — despite the fact that the extra instruction was needed to make up for ineffective distance learning. Last year, it had 54 teachers licensed to teach in special education that weren’t. The district started this year with disproportionately clustered in its most impoverished schools.

“My phone has been ringing off the hook with parents saying, ‘My kid doesn’t have a teacher, or they have a long-term sub or their school is trying to pull something together using the available people in the building,’ ” says Maren Christenson, executive director of the Multicultural Autism Action Network, a nonprofit serving Somali and Oromo families in Minnesota. 

“We were in a crisis before the pandemic,” she says. “It’s really disingenuous of school districts to say they are taken by surprise. We’ve known this was coming for a long time.”

‘It’s not just a pipeline issue’

Inattention to the high rate at which special education teachers quit for easier teaching jobs, say disability advocates, combined with a stop-gap approach to filling the resulting vacancies, make a reckoning about the quality of special education long overdue. Research shows that given proper instruction, most children with disabilities can achieve at grade level. Yet particularly in the wake of the pandemic’s school closures, when many special ed students were deprived entirely of services, it’s not clear they’ll have the chance.

According to a small but showing what could keep special educators on the job, a handful of key factors propel many into general education. that 20% of new Washington state teachers who earned both a special education and a regular classroom credential chose not to take a job teaching students with disabilities at all. Other research has found that special educators are than other teachers to leave teaching altogether and 72% more likely to leave a job for one in another school.

Whether the departures are from special ed or from teaching altogether, advocacy groups say the turnover perpetuates the problem, as increased shortages translate to higher caseloads for those who remain, in turn making the job less sustainable. With more jobs to fill, administrators also are more likely to tap teachers who are willing to take them but who lack appropriate licenses.

Dan Goldhaber, vice president of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research, has studied the special educator workforce. The high number of special educators working outside the field documented by ����Ӱ��’s analysis echoes his own research, he says. 

“These are not new issues,” says Goldhaber, noting that the ongoing lack of special educators differs from shortfalls in other areas such as science, math, engineering and technology. “In special education, it’s not just a pipeline issue, it’s an attrition issue.”

Minneapolis teacher Tameika Williams made it through one of the pipeline-priming programs officials are counting on to ease the shortage only to find the work impossible, she said. She belongs to the Minnesota chapter of Educators for Excellence, whose leaders have heard enough stories like hers to form a task force on working conditions in special ed. 

A Black woman who grew up without any teachers who looked like her or a sense of belonging in school, Williams said she never envisioned herself as an educator. She was employed by a community organization that supported families when the principal of one of the schools she worked in remarked that Williams had an affinity for connecting with youth with disabilities. A program at a local university would help her get a graduate degree and teaching credential for free. 

As she was earning a master’s, Williams started teaching special ed in Minneapolis Public Schools, working entirely with students of color. She says she logged twice as many hours as she was supposed to. 

After four years, however, Williams was done. When she told her principal she was quitting, he proposed she stay as the teacher in charge of a career-training program that gives students an early jump on becoming educators themselves through early college courses. Her classes now include both students with and without disabilities, but she does not have to deal with the daunting workload she had as a special educator.

The administrator she reported to before she changed jobs, Williams said, had criticized her for insisting on teaching history, saying none of her students were college bound. Williams persisted, though. Understanding the multi-generational impact of inadequate education on students of color and children with disabilities — material she was not exposed to until college — was what, Williams said, finally convinced her to get a teaching credential.  

She still harbors ambivalence about the fact that some of her current students with IEPs are considering becoming special education teachers. On the one hand, more educators living with disabilities themselves would boost children receiving special education, now often not educated to be college- or career-ready. On the other, she’s not confident that they, too, won’t be pressured to dumb down the curriculum.  

“I’m not gonna lie, I have some conflicting values still around encouraging young Black kids to become teachers,” she says. “I have the rooted belief that all kids are capable.”

Stories like Williams’s are common everywhere, say teachers. The Illinois chapter of the educator advocacy organization Teach Plus has collected information from members who say special education requires radical change to be a sustainable job. 

After seven years in a special education classroom in Chicago Public Schools, Bridget Rood said she was of knowing that she wasn’t preparing the students in her program, which existed to help them make the transition to adulthood, well for life after school.  

“I was depressed, I was dysregulated,” she says. “I didn’t feel fulfilled at all. I don’t think I had one student in those seven years who [went on to job training or more education].”

A Teach Plus fellowship gave Rood both a break and, as she a colleagues conducted , a sense of how pervasive feelings like hers were. Sixty-two percent of special educators they surveyed ranked an acceptable workload as the first- or second-most important thing to them. In addition to teaching, the special educators Teach Plus consulted said they strained to find time to do paperwork, talk to families, create behavior intervention plans and their own curriculum on the fly while also managing support staff. 

After her fellowship, Rood went to work for a more affluent district on Chicago’s north side, Niles Township High School District 219. More resources means she does not have to scrounge to find curriculum or other instructional resources. She is still responsible for paperwork, but a departmental secretary takes care of a huge number of repetitive, time-consuming tasks, such as making sure the right people are scheduled to attend the meetings where students’ plans are discussed, completing the boilerplate sections of those plans and collecting data for progress reports.

“It is literal night and day,” she says. “It’s also made me realize — without tooting my own horn — that I am good at what I do and I do make a difference.”

‘This person has a harder job’

Again, this comes as little surprise to national researchers. Because of the paperwork involved in each student’s legally required Individualized Education Program, or IEP, special educators must work more hours than other teachers — almost always for the same pay. Recently, administrators in Hawaii, Detroit and Atlanta have had dramatic success filling vacancies with new hires and licensed special educators already on the payroll but not in classrooms serving disabled kids by offering annual incentives of $10,000, $15,000 and $3,000, respectively.

Only one Minnesota district, St. Paul Public Schools, has tried the approach. Its offer of a $10,000 hiring bonus filled its 70 openings for the 2023-24 school year in a few weeks. 

Historically, school systems are reluctant to consider paying some teachers more than others based on anything but education and experience, says Chad Aldeman, a 74 contributor and researcher who tracks the education labor market. 

“Historically, unions have opposed offering special incentives for teachers who work in shortage areas or hard-to-staff schools,” he says. “We as a country have treated teachers universally and not said, ‘This person has a harder job.’”

Yet while there is evidence that large financial incentives can be an effective way of filling special education vacancies, new on Hawaii’s foray into differentiated pay found that it may not significantly impact their retention.   

Teach Plus’s report also flags teacher training and early career mentorship as factors that educators say would keep them from floundering as they learn the job. Colleges of education vary in how much classroom exposure would-be special education teachers get, with hands-on preparation ranging from a few weeks student teaching under a general education teacher to year-long residencies with a skilled special educator. 

In terms of mentorship, the Illinois survey found that support for some new teachers consisted of brief check-ins — sometimes consisting of phone calls during the evening commute — with veteran colleagues. In Minneapolis, Williams said she spent her first year on a team with no one more experienced than her. 

Many states that have confronted special educator shortages chiefly by trying to increase the supply of new teachers. Minnesota advocates have applauded slowly but steadily growing scholarships for teacher candidates who agree to get their special education certification. But they are critical of how officials have expended their energy, complaining that the needs of kids with disabilities have taken a back seat to politics. 

In 2016, in the wake of a decade of lawsuits, legal reforms, and an audit pronouncing the licensing system irretrievably broken, state lawmakers passed a wholesale overhaul, creating a new agency — the current board — to oversee it. One of its mandates was to make it more straightforward for teachers of color and nontraditional candidates to enter the classroom. To that end, lawmakers created a system where, depending on their education and experience, potential teachers could start work on a temporary credential and go on to earn a permanent one. 

The new system, which went into effect in 2017, was successful, allowing 2,000 special educators to start work. But last year, based on lobbying from the state’s traditional colleges of education and the teachers union that also represents their faculty — who have played a major role on the appointed licensure board — lawmakers agreed to begin reversing the changes. Next year, board leaders say they plan to seek further contractions.

The irony, say advocates, is that the special educator pipeline is narrowing dramatically even as scant attention is being paid to what equips a new special educator to do a very hard job well, and what might keep them in it. 

“What we need to do is really work backward and figure out what creates a high-quality special ed teacher,” says Josh Crosson, executive director of EdAllies, an advocacy group that has been pushing for teacher licensing reforms in Minnesota for more than a decade. “What schools are they [working in]? Are there trends within those schools? What preparation programs are those schools recruiting from? ? Mentorship models? Residency models? 

“We don’t have any of that data. We’re really just guessing.”

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Walton Family Foundation provide financial support to Teach Plus, Educators for Excellence, the Center for Learner Equity and ����Ӱ��. The Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Joyce Foundation and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies provide financial support to Teach Plus, Educators for Excellence and ����Ӱ��. The Mind Trust provides financial support to Teach Plus and ����Ӱ��. The Nellie Mae Education Foundation provides financial support for Educators for Excellence and ����Ӱ��.

Michael Whaland knows New Hampshire’s teacher staffing challenges better than most: He wrote his dissertation about it.

As part of his doctor of education degree at Plymouth State University in 2020, Whaland, a former teacher, spent months studying schools in rural New Hampshire to find out why some schools saw teachers leave and others saw them stay.

“I was noticing early in my career that, hey, a lot of people I started with aren’t here anymore, and (thought) what’s going on?” he said in an interview.

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Now, Whaland is a superintendent of School Administrative Unit 13, covering the towns of Madison, Tamworth, and Freedom. And the staffing headaches are no longer theoretical. While two of his three schools are currently fully staffed, the shortage of paraprofessionals and support staff often requires teachers to take on additional work to bridge the gaps.

“It’s a daily check-in with your principals and just talking with them about how can we make sure that the student is getting what they need?” he said.

The problem has persisted across the state. New Hampshire teachers are increasingly leaving the profession due to increased stress, concerns about school culture, and a desire for more pay, a survey this year has found.

Now, lawmakers are mulling solutions to get more to stay.

, conducted by Reaching Higher New Hampshire, a left-leaning think tank, and Woman Educators Leading Learning, a network of educators, found that teachers believe their profession has been “devalued,” particularly after the tumult of COVID-19 and rising political challenges.

“Their open responses specifically cited the political rhetoric in our state, attacks from top brass leaders, the lack of support that they were feeling in the reality of the classrooms, and (the) divisive concepts (law),” Reaching Higher Executive Director Nicole Heimarck told lawmakers on Monday.

“They specifically said the fear of consequences that they would face as educators as a result of divisive concepts,” she added, referring to a 2021 law that restricts teachers from advocating for certain concepts relating to race and gender.

This month, senators and representatives on the are preparing a report to list the challenges for teachers and make recommendations. The Reaching Higher survey will be a consideration for that report.

Administered in spring 2022, the survey asked 590 elementary, middle, and high school teachers, paraprofessionals, and administrators how they felt about their jobs, and what factors might prompt them to leave. The survey, which was conducted online, was not randomized and not necessarily representative of the state.

Of all the respondents, 39 percent said that the school’s “climate” was a top concern, while 32 percent cited a perceived lack of administrative support and 28 percent pointed to low pay.

Among the teachers who are leaving their jobs, their top concerns differed. Those leaving New Hampshire but staying in teaching were most disturbed by the climate of their school district or local school board. Those leaving the profession entirely cited frustrations with their pay.

“If it’s like this now, I can’t imagine what this profession will look like in 25-30 years when I expect to retire,” one respondent said, according to the report. “I would say entitlement and behavior of families and students is the biggest factor and the reason why many of the teachers I know are very unhappy.”

Many teachers – especially those staying in the profession but leaving the state – said they felt a lack of support from their local communities and their school boards. They felt more support from the schools they worked in, the survey revealed.

Among paraeducators, meanwhile, 100 percent said the low salary was a top reason for leaving.

Many teachers surveyed said they were departing. While 34 percent of respondents said they were not leaving their position, 14 percent said they were moving to another school district but staying in New Hampshire; 13 percent were looking to transfer to a different job in education; 12 percent were leaving the profession; 12 percent were changing their roles within their district; 10 percent were retiring; 3 percent were leaving the state; and 1 percent were going to a private school.

The report’s authors recommended that schools work to provide competitive pay, build up mentorship programs to encourage teachers to stay, and pursue more diverse candidates. They also recommended that the state provide financial help to teachers who need it, including scholarships and grants.

In his own research project, Whaland stopped trying to find an answer to why some teachers leave school districts. A more interesting question, he said, is why others choose to stay.

Focusing on rural schools in the Upper Valley, the North Country, and the Lakes Region, Whaland found that teachers are much more likely to stay when they feel supported by both their school and the community – even in jobs that don’t pay well.

That support can manifest in a number of forms, Whaland said, from residents appearing to support their schools and teachers at town meeting, to parents engaging with their parent-teacher organization, to community members holding shared events between the school and the rest of the town.

In one case, a teacher in the Upper Valley told Whaland that they had turned down an opportunity to get a major pay raise because of the positive culture they already experienced.

“They could go next door for about $20,000 more and they chose to stay where they are because they love that school, because they love the people there,” Whaland said.

Members of the study committee are considering a wide swath of concerns around teaching jobs. While the number of teacher credential renewals is relatively high, the number of teachers is not, and teacher preparation programs in the state have produced fewer graduates in recent years, an early draft of the committee’s report states.

The average pay for a first-year teacher in New Hampshire – $43,764 according to Salary.com – is around $20,000 lower than the average salary in the state, the committee said. And due to disparities in school funding, school districts in wealthier towns are able to offer teachers higher salaries, creating a drain for poorer towns.

Meanwhile, the committee plans to explore how the recent politicization of school issues around COVID protocols, LGBTQ rights, diversity efforts, and classroom materials and books has contributed to teachers’ unease.

The study committee has met for several years; it was first chaired by former Sen. Jay Kahn, a Keene Democrat, and is now led by Sen. Ruth Ward, a Stoddard Republican. While the report, due Nov. 1, will lay out some of the causes of the state’s teacher shortage, many say a simple legislative solution may be tougher.

“When I was a high school senior, I took a protractor, put it on the map, and drew a big circle,” said Rep. Oliver Ford, a Chester Republican. “I would not apply to a college inside that circle. I wanted to go away; I wanted to see the world from another perspective from the one I grew up in. But I went back. You go back for something that makes it attractive, something that says, ‘We’re doing good things here, it’s interesting here, there’s a future here.’”

Lawmakers are considering one approach: a teacher loan forgiveness program for New Hampshire residents who are enrolled in teaching programs. would help provide $10,000 to eligible students over two years – provided that they teach for five consecutive years in a school that the state Department of Education has identified as having a critical teacher shortage.

That bill has been retained by the House Education Committee, which will vote on a recommendation later this year.

The Senate is also holding on to a bill from the 2023 session – – which would create a “rural and underserved area educator program” to give loan forgiveness to teachers at schools affected by critical educator shortages. The teachers would need to be working at schools identified by the Department of Education as rural and economically disadvantaged. The bill would put aside $3 million over two years; educators would be entitled to up to $12,000 in reimbursement on their existing loans if they stayed in the district for four years.

“The whole purpose is to try and address this issue of teacher shortage,” said Rep. Rick Ladd, a Haverhill Republican and chairman of the House Education Committee. “The shortage is starting right off – we have over half of (students) going outside the state and not returning.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com. Follow New Hampshire Bulletin on and .

Montana is struggling to keep new teachers in the classroom.

More than half of newly licensed teachers in Montana leave the state or the profession within the first three years on the job and 86% of education graduates decide to leave the state or don’t pursue teaching.

“​​That’s a stunning number,” said Sen. Dan Salomon, R-Ronan, Chairperson of the Education Interim Committee, during the committee’s meeting Tuesday.

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Data on teacher retention in the state was presented to the committee by national nonprofit the and in an update from the .

Montana is looking at more than going into the upcoming school year – a problem stemming in part from financial constraints on teachers, lack of mentorship and less education graduates going into the field. Proposed solutions included more compensation and increased access to teacher education.

In order to fill the gap, the number of Emergency Authorization of Employments rose more than 90% and doubled in two years, according to OPI. Accreditation and Licensure Director of OPI Crystal Andrews said she believed 32 school districts in the state have applied for at least one emergency authorization.

Andrews said qualifications for authorizations can vary, but gave examples of how in practice it can look like paraprofessionals or student teachers getting their own classrooms, or a music teacher from the local church coming to teach in school.

She said the most authorizations have been for elementary school classrooms, math, English, health and physical education teachers, as well as school counselors.

Andrews also discussed the teacher pipeline issue. With 383 education graduates from the Montana University System, there aren’t enough educators to meet the vacancies. And on top of that, a vast majority of them don’t go to work in Montana schools. The Learning Policy Institute said enrollment in education programs in Montana has gone down 45% in the last nine years.

Andrews said she would be interested in working with the universities to get data on where these students go and why they leave.

One reason the Learning Policy Institute cited was financial. Montana is dead last in starting teacher salaries, which average $36,480.

“They talk about and there’s no place to live, and all the things that go with that and you throw in a student loan,” said Salomon. “They can’t afford to be the teacher.”

One quarter of teachers in the state reported having a second job during the school year, according to data from the Learning Policy Institute. An estimated 40% have student loan payments and across the state teachers spend on average $500 of their own money on classroom supplies without reimbursement.

Increased compensation for teachers along with higher quality preparation for the classroom were among recommendations from the institute to increase retention.

Learning Policy Institute Chief of Policy and Program Tara Kini said that research has supported competitive compensation being a big factor in recruitment, and noted that the data from 2021 in the presentation might not reflect progress made since the TEACH Act was implemented, which provided $2.5 million to increase teacher pay.

“It may be worth considering how this program could be expanded to reach even more educators than the 500 early-career teachers that it currently serves,” Kini said.

Gov. Greg Gianforte promoted the TEACH Act at an event at Lockwood High School in Billings, touting a 40% increase in funds to the program in the last legislative session. According to a press release Tuesday, funds from the program helped Lockwood fill their 18 vacancies.

Kini mentioned alternative compensation strategies like providing housing, childcare incentives or student loan forgiveness. She said districts in other states have passed initiatives to build subsidized rental housing for teachers and used federal funds for housing for teachers.

A recent survey of Montana teachers found a school being close to where the teacher lives was the top factor in their decision to accept their current job, senior researcher with the Learning Policy Institute Susan Patrick said during the presentation.

Montana’s Grow Your Own program, designed to prepare high school students for careers in education in their local schools, didn’t receive funding in the last legislative session, Patrick noted. She said states have turned to apprenticeship programs like Grow Your Own to help with the pipeline issues.

Having a supportive administration at a school is another big factor for teacher retention. Patrick said Idaho developed a new principals academy as well as a network for principals for support, especially for schools that were identified as needing improvement in the state.

Rep. Linda Reksten, R-Polson, who formerly served as superintendent in Butte and in Polson, asked if there was training in universities for principals in the state.

“My observation is, unless you have really strong district leadership, it isn’t happening,” she said.

The Legislature’s Office of Research and Policy Analysis outlined a in Montana’s “toolbox” for addressing teacher retention, including a teacher residency program passed last session that uses federal dollars to place students in a year-long, practice-based learning experience, focusing on placements in rural schools.

“As we grow that program, we’ll continue to work and find opportunities for schools to bring Montanans in to teach Montana’s kids – especially in those rural areas where there’s such a critical shortage,” bill sponsor Rep. Brad Barker, R-Red Lodge, said at the event in Billings according to the release.

Another program provides loan assistance for the first three years of a teacher’s career, with payments of $3,000, $4,000, and $5,000. The program helped more than 100 teachers in fiscal year 2023, according to the analysis.

Teachers also have the opportunity to receive stipends for earning a National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification, which can take years to complete, with a payout between $500 and $2,500 depending on the district. There was an $180,000 appropriation for the bill, which has been utilized by about 200 teachers.

“Through collaborative efforts and creative solutions, and a commitment to valuing and supporting our teachers, we can build a brighter future for Montana students and educators alike,” said Andrews. “Let us work together to transform the landscape of education ensuring that our teachers are not only recruited, but also valued and inspired to stay for the benefit of our children.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: info@dailymontanan.com. Follow Daily Montanan on and .

Wisconsin’s teacher turnover rates — which includes the number of teachers moving to different school districts and leaving the state’s public school classrooms altogether — surged in the 2022-23 school year, according to a . The rates of turnover were higher among teachers of color and in school districts serving vulnerable student populations.

The rates have been inching up since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, rising from 10.5% in the 2020-2021 school year to 12.4% in the 2021-22 school year. The teacher turnover rose to 15.8% in the 2022-23 school year. The 2023 rate includes the highest level on record of teachers moving between districts and the second highest number of teachers leaving Wisconsin public schools for another profession.

The report examined data from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction of about 116,000 teachers at roughly 450 school districts and other K-12 entities over a 15-year period. The average turnover rate per year from 2009 to 2023 was 11.5%.

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The report says that while it’s uncertain whether the rate will decrease in future years or continue at the heightened level, the high rate in 2023 raises questions about schools’ ability to help students recover from pandemic learning loss.

“This effect is especially concerning given our findings that turnover is highest in precisely those schools where students face the biggest challenges and might benefit the most from a stable environment in which to learn,” the report states. “As students recover from the worst of pandemic disruption, that stability may be even more important.”

The report cites a number of possible factors leading to increased turnover, including high demand for workers in other occupations caused by low unemployment, relatively high retirement rates, the impacts of high inflation and accumulated stress due to health, political and logistical burdens associated with teaching during the pandemic.

The report found that turnover rates were driven in large part by teachers leaving Wisconsin public schools altogether rather than moving from one district to another. It says possible explanations for that pattern include Baby Boomer retirements and younger generations’ greater tendency to shift jobs.

Teachers of color were the most affected by turnover, according to the report. It says the trend could reflect the fact that teachers of color are concentrated in districts with high turnover rates for teachers of all races.

The turnover rate for white teachers, who make up the majority of the state’s teacher workforce, averaged 11.28% over the 15 years, slightly below the average for all teachers. Black teachers had an average turnover rate of 17.64% over the same period, and their turnover rate in 2023 hit 23.4%.

“No other racial or ethnic group saw such high turnover rates for so many years,” the report states.

Other non-white teachers have also had higher turnover rates than average, according to the report.

From 2009 to 2023, an average of 14.05% American Indian/Alaska Native teachers, 14.24% of Hispanic teachers, 12.66% of Asian teachers, and 12.37% of multiracial teachers left their jobs each year.

“Turnover among teachers of color is of particular concern due to the documented benefits for all students and especially for students of color from the presence of these educators, including gains in academic achievement, more access to challenging coursework, higher student expectations, and favorable assessment of student work,” the report states.

While all Wisconsin school districts experienced at least a 10% average turnover rate during the study time period, according to the report, the report also finds that teachers are more likely to leave  districts with higher shares of students of color and a higher proportion of low-income households.

Between 2009 and 2023, school districts serving a majority of students of color had an average turnover rate of 13.1%, and school districts serving a majority of students from low-income households had an average turnover rate of 13.0%. The two groups of school districts overlap: 17 of Wisconsin’s 19 school districts where students of color are in the majority are also districts with a majority of students are economically disadvantaged.

In comparison, school districts with majority white student populations had an average turnover rate of 11.0%, and those with fewer than 25% students coming from low-income households had an average turnover rate of 10.1% — both rates lower than the state average.

The report also found that the average turnover rate for Milwaukee Public Schools — Wisconsin’s largest school district — was 15.4%, significantly higher than the state average.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

Alaska school districts that are remote and serve mainly students from low-income households need to pay substantially more than they currently do to attract and retain teachers, a study from University of Alaska .

Matthew Berman, a University of Alaska Anchorage economics professor, said that the study shows that compensation does matter when it comes to recruitment and retention — and that some districts can and do pay teachers more to offset other disadvantages like a remote location.

“Relatively advantaged districts are able to fill positions and retain qualified teachers fairly easily without offering high salaries, but then there are relatively disadvantaged communities that have a handicap and they can overcome some of that by compensating teachers more,” he said. “But the handicaps for some communities may be so large, it’s really unrealistic to expect that compensation alone could make up the difference.”

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The study uses data from a contract the university had with the state’s education department during the administration of former Gov. Bill Walker. Berman said the researchers are currently taking a look at more recent data and finding similar, but magnified results after the pandemic.

The results of the study showed that compensation rates were adequate to hire and keep teachers in the state’s urban and suburban school districts. But to have equity in many rural communities, districts would need to pay substantially more.

Berman said he was surprised by the degree to which some schools may have to compensate teachers to make up for other challenges. He said if an average teacher salary is around $55,000-$60,000 a year, it could take a salary of up to $120,000 to recruit and retain teachers in a rural district.

“That’s just beyond the capacity of all rural districts, really, except possibly the North Slope Borough,” he said. He noted that they do pay teachers more there, though not in the $120,000 a year range, as far as he knew.

Study results said that one in five of the state’s schools would need to pay teachers 25%-50% more to hire and keep them, especially in the western and northern parts of the state.

Districts that cannot pay such high salaries need to look at other solutions that the study showed may lead to teacher retention, like improved working conditions.

“Achieving equity of teacher qualifications would likely require that policymakers and district leaders also implement non-compensation strategies for improving working conditions in high-need schools,” the study said.

He said a barrier to increasing teacher wages in rural districts is that basic operating costs can be significantly higher than in other areas. He said the foundation funding formula, the method the state uses to try to equitably fund school districts with different costs and challenges, doesn’t do enough for certain schools.

So even if the state’s school funding formula gives a rural school more money, it may not be enough to cover the higher operations costs and offer salaries that would be competitive for the region.

“Remote, rural districts are not able to pay their teachers enough. And the foundation does not provide enough resources for them to be able to do that,” he said, citing higher costs for fuel, food and maintenance. “They have to be able to use the money to compensate teachers.”

Berman said there are limits to what compensation can accomplish, too. For example, he said a signing bonus can help recruit a teacher, but doesn’t do much to retain them.

The study also showed some outlier schools that Berman said will be the subject of future publications. They are places that show high recruitment and retention of teachers even though they may not offer the highest salaries. He and his colleagues will be looking at what goes into success there in the coming months.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on and .

Teachers don’t get into their profession for money or power, but a little more of both might help keep them at high-poverty schools, where students are more likely to fall behind grade level and less likely to graduate from high school or attend college.

Across California and the nation, many of these schools struggle , leaving them with fewer experienced educators. Those who stay often battle the : hunger, homelessness and mental health challenges. After only a few years, many end up  in more affluent communities.

California’s elected officials have tried for decades to slow the exodus of veteran teachers from schools with the poorest students. One idea that has been conspicuously absent from the conversation: paying teachers more to work at those schools. The politically powerful California Teachers Association opposes “differentiated pay” policies that would increase salaries for teachers at hard-to-staff schools, rendering that approach a non-starter. 

Now, lawmakers are making  in two ideas that have been around for years. One offers prospective educators a grant if they commit to teaching at a high-poverty school after their training. The other, a model known as community schools, rethinks school governance, giving more power to teachers to shape every aspect of a school.

Since 2019, the state has spent close to $5 billion on these two approaches. Despite the boost in spending, it remains unclear whether the state will see a return. Teacher turnover remains a perennial challenge at schools serving more low-income families. As experienced teachers leave in search of less challenging classrooms, students at high-needs schools are less likely to have educators who can help close achievement gaps — seen in the persistently lower test scores among those students compared to their more affluent peers. The stakes are now higher than ever as educators work to help students recover from the academic losses they suffered during the pandemic and remote learning. 

Staffing is usually overseen by local school districts. But amid the ongoing teacher shortage, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said the California Department of Education has “repurposed” one existing employee to help school districts hire teachers. 

When he first ran for state superintendent in 2018, Thurmond said  for teachers in poorer neighborhoods, disputing evidence that it would help. But in a recent interview with CalMatters, he said he would consider any evidence-based policy, especially since some districts already pay some, such as bilingual teachers, more.

“I support any idea that will support teacher retention,” Thurmond said. “We know the profession is impacted by fatigue.”

A  of teacher experience data from 35 districts — adding up to 1,280 schools — across the state found that the correlation between student poverty and teacher experience is stark, especially in urban regions.

Four years for $20,000

The  gives up to $20,000 in grants to college students earning a teaching credential. In exchange, they work in a high-poverty school for four years within eight years of obtaining their credential. The state committed $500 million over five years to funding the grants, starting in 2021. Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed injecting an additional $6 million into the program this year.

Samantha Fernandez, a 23-year-old single mother from Chula Vista, received $16,000 through the grant program. She said the money covered the entire cost of earning her credential.

“It was a blessing,” she said.

While earning that credential, she worked in two schools in the Cajon Valley Union School District in eastern San Diego County. One had more poorer students while the other was made up predominantly of wealthier ones. The former, Chase Avenue Elementary, serves a large community of immigrants and refugees from Afghanistan, many of whom only spoke Pashto when they arrived. The language barrier was a challenge, but she found the experience to be just as rewarding as working in a more affluent school. 

“I want to help kids achieve their dreams, no matter what struggles they go through,” Fernandez said. “I want to be the person who can be their support outside their home.”

Fernandez never set out to work in a high-poverty school, but she said “everything happens for a reason.” It’s too early to know if she’ll stay beyond her four-year commitment, but she said she’s open to it.

In the fall, she’ll start a master’s program in teaching. She said the grant will allow her to continue her education “with a sense of relief.”

This isn’t the first time that California has tried enticing teachers into working at a high-needs school by subsidizing their education. In 2000, the state launched the Governor’s Teaching Fellowship, which gave prospective teachers up to $20,000 in grants for committing to work in a school where test scores rank in the bottom half of the state’s public schools. 

The program was short-lived. It ran out of money in 2003.  found that about 75% of teachers in the program stayed at high-poverty schools beyond their three-year commitments. 

As a reincarnation, the Golden State Teacher Grant Program is attracting applicants in droves. So far, almost 11,000 prospective teachers have committed to teaching at a high-poverty school. The state handed out more than $132 million in grants in the past two years. 

None of the teachers have yet completed their four-year commitments, but the state plans to track how many stay beyond that time.

Some research suggests the Golden State Teacher Grant Program could lead to less turnover in the long run. The Learning Policy Institute, an education research group, found that reducing the cost of teacher training can . Tara Kini, the chief of policy and program at the Learning Policy Institute, said the program will help relieve a financial burden on teachers amid the academic fallout from the pandemic. 

“The past couple of years have been pretty challenging,” Kini said. “It points to a need for greater incentives for teachers.”

The California Student Aid Commission, the state agency that oversees the Golden State Teacher Grant Program, expects to give out over $157 million by the end of this school year. That puts the state on track to use up the entire $500 million before the 2025 deadline.

Kini said she expects the program to have an added benefit of encouraging more teachers of color — who are already more likely to work in high-poverty schools and carry more student debt — to enter the workforce.

While experience is just one factor, research shows that students do better with teachers who have at least  of experience. This is where a second statewide initiative, community schools, might help get teachers to stay.

Giving teachers power

Community schools partner with local health or social service organizations to become a one-stop shop for students and their families. Schools tailor the partnerships to what their families need. 

The community schools model has been around for decades, but in the past three years, Gov. Newsom and the Legislature poured an unprecedented $4.1 billion into the program.

The state’s investment might not end up in teachers’ pockets, but the money could give teachers at those schools more of a voice at their campuses. Both teachers and experts say that giving educators the power to design lessons and decide how to use a school’s money to help students could be as effective as pay raises  in challenging work environments.

The community schools model requires:

• Shared governance — Teachers, parents, students and administrators all have a say in every aspect of a school’s operation, from curriculum to after-school activities;
• Autonomy — School communities can make decisions on their own without interference from district bureaucracies;
• “Integrated student supports” — Schools can partner with local organizations to provide health or social services based on the unique needs of their students;
• A community school coordinator — One full-time employee handles administration.

For some educators, the model is an obvious solution to teacher turnover at high-poverty schools. 

“A lot of teachers feel disempowered and not part of democratic decision-making,” said David Goldberg, vice president of the California Teachers Association. “They feel like their needs are not being met at schools.”

Giving educators more authority at their workplace makes them feel like respected professionals, said Richard Ingersoll, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied community schools for decades.

“We’re not making automobiles here. You can’t have one-size-fits-all,” he said. “Those closest to the kids need to be given a lot of discretion.”

Kyle Weinberg, president of the teachers union at San Diego Unified, said making sure teachers have a say in how schools serve the most vulnerable students will help keep them on the payroll.

“We know that when we increase educator voices in school decisions, that educators are more committed,” he said. “They’re more committed to working on strengthening what we’re doing as a school, and they’re more likely to stay at that school when they know they have that voice.”

While districts have a lot of autonomy in designing community schools, implementation can be bumpy.

At Sacramento City Unified, the teachers’ union claims that the district has shut them out of the community schools process. According to teachers union President David Fisher, the district applied for the state grant and received some money, but teachers had no say in which schools were selected.

At Twin Rivers Unified, north of Sacramento, teachers union President Rebecca LeDoux said the district is excluding teachers from decision-making, undermining the key tenet of the community schools model. She said the district chose which schools to turn into community schools without any teacher input.

“My problem isn’t with which schools were chosen, my problem is with how it was chosen,” LeDoux said. “It can’t be through the vision of administrators who sit in the ivory tower, farthest from our students.”

Thurmond said he wasn’t aware of these issues at local districts and said his team would investigate further. Steve Zimmer, a deputy superintendent overseeing community schools grants for the department, said the agency would first try to resolve these issues and only resort to taking away money if there’s a clear unwillingness from administrators to get input from teachers.

“I’m not looking to go to this place… but of course we could take adverse action,” Zimmer said. “I feel confident we’re prepared to make course corrections as necessary.”

There are also success stories. At San Diego Unified, the teachers union and district leaders are clearing the same hurdles materializing at other districts. In April, they signed a contract that codifies the principles of community schools into the  at the 15 schools that received state grants. 

At the Anaheim Union High School District in Orange County, the community schools model has been implemented at 13 schools. At one school, Sycamore Junior High, which serves a large immigrant population, the district used community schools funding to connect parents to immigration legal services and created a social science curriculum focused on immigration policy in the United States. The school also uses community schools grants to host a farmers market once a month on campus.

Throughout the year, teachers assigned “soapbox speeches,” asking students to give a presentation on any social issue affecting students at the school. Topics ranged from immigration and mental health to pet adoption and food waste. 

Nicholas Cordova, a seventh grade history teacher at Sycamore and an Anaheim native, said it’s rewarding to see schools tackling the issues facing students. During the last week of school in May, some of his students presented their speeches. Students stood at their desks as Cordova flipped through their slideshows. His students are soft-spoken and clearly not comfortable with public speaking. Awkward silences punctuated their presentations, but for Cordova, they’re opportunities to encourage his students.

“This is as close to home as we can get,” Cordova said as one student started her speech about mental health. 

He said Sycamore has a reputation as an under-performing school, but becoming a community school allows teachers to counter that. 

“That’s something we’re always fighting against,” Cordova said. “If people actually took the time to come and talk to the teachers and students, they would see what we’re doing to make the school a better place.” 

The community schools model also gives students a voice. Yvonne Walker, a Black seventh grade student at Sycamore, asked staff members to convene a restorative justice session with the eighth grade student council to discuss the rampant use of racial slurs on campus. The session was held on the last Monday of the school year in a portable classroom at the edge of campus. 

Restorative justice is an approach to student discipline and campus culture that emphasizes open communication over punishment. A school that embraces restorative justice might have a staff member oversee a discussion with students who just got into a fight instead of suspending or expelling them. A restorative justice approach in Yvonne’s case meant students sat in a circle and shared their experiences with racial slurs.

Yvonne is one of the few Black students at Sycamore, where 93% of students are Latino. As the discussion started, it was clear that some of the eighth-graders were unsympathetic. Several were having hushed side conversations. When Yvonne shared how hurtful it is to hear the n-word around campus, the eighth-graders got defensive. “What do you want us to do?” one quietly mouthed. Others talked about how Latino students use slurs with each other as terms of endearment. 

At the end of the session, Yvonne, who also identifies as Latino because her mother is from El Salvador, said she was “disappointed by her community.” She said she was hoping at least one of the eighth-graders could empathize.

“I was thinking that there’s probably someone out there who has the same feelings as me,” she said. “I didn’t want to be a part of the silence.”

But staff members did hear her. Brenda Chavez, director of restorative justice at Sycamore, also sits on the community schools steering team.

The steering team represents the shared-governance component of the community schools model. It’s made up of teachers, parents, staff members and the principal of Sycamore Junior High. They meet once a month. 

During their final meeting of the school year just hours after the restorative justice session, Chavez mentioned the discussion led by Yvonne. She says that next fall, the steering team will discuss ways to better teach about the history of racism to reduce the use of racial slurs on campus. 

The steering team meeting blends the professionalism and formality of a school board meeting with the warmth of a family gathering. The meeting starts when two student members walk into the room with three boxes of pizza. 

The teachers, students and parents on the team spend most of the meeting analyzing survey results. The survey asked teachers, students and parents about the school’s strengths and challenges. More than 1,000 responded. Teachers called for more staff and smaller class sizes. Parents wanted more security on campus. Students said they just want to be heard.

At the end of the meeting, some parents and teachers suggest that the steering team should meet more often. Most of the other members nod in agreement.

Grant Schuster, the president of Anaheim Union’s teachers union, said this type of outreach will keep teachers in the district. He’s optimistic that the voice teachers have on the steering committee will keep them at high-poverty schools.

“This isn’t just another statewide program,” Schuster said. “It’s a systemic change to how you run a school. I think it’s going to bring results.”

A simpler solution?

As for the idea California won’t consider — paying teachers more to teach in schools in poorer neighborhoods — Wisconsin’s experience is instructive. Under a Republican legislature and governor, that state gave school districts full power to determine teacher pay. That meant collective bargaining was no longer required by state law.

Yale University economist Barbara Biasi, who studied the results, found that districts offering higher salaries got better teachers and saw higher test scores. But high-poverty schools in districts that kept collective bargaining struggled more than ever to recruit quality, experienced teachers.

“I’m not sure why we make salaries so rigid and so low for the profession that has so much impact,” Biasi said. But, she added, you can’t have higher salaries across the board, strict salary schedules and tenure rules.

“You can’t have a job where people cannot get fired and also have everyone paid a lot of money,” she said. “You can’t have everything. It’s not what other professions do.”

Al Muratsuchi, a Democratic state Assembly member from Torrance and the chair of the Assembly’s Education Committee, this session authored ambitious  that would increase teacher salaries by 50%. The bill passed the Assembly floor on June 1 with a 77-0 vote. 

Muratsuchi said he would also consider proposals for higher salaries for teachers working in high-poverty schools. 

“I think it only makes sense that teachers are an important part of any education policy being considered,” Muratsuchi said. “At the same time, we want to make sure that no special interest is obstructing any necessary reforms.”

Currently, the California Department of Education doesn’t have a team focused on statewide teacher staffing. The agency doesn’t track teacher salaries, vacancies or turnover rates, and it’s unlikely to do so anytime soon considering that the state budget isn’t providing the department with additional funding. Thurmond said he’ll commit the few resources he has to “cobbling together” a variety of sources — from teacher pension data to teacher polls — to better understand the staffing needs across the state. 

“We’ll look for ways to gather information to help us define the shortage,” he said. “I just have to be honest, we have to work on it in a modest way.”

Also promising: The retention rate for first-year teachers, who typically leave the profession in high numbers, was up 5 points over the past year, to 83%. The diversity of the state’s teacher workforce also rose 2 points, to 29%.

By no means are the bumps cause to declare Louisiana’s teacher shortage — which long predates COVID-19 — resolved, Brumley told ����Ӱ�� in a follow-up interview. But they suggest that the state’s to keep teachers in classrooms and increase the number of potential educators are beginning to bear fruit.

While some of the initiatives are several years old, others began as recently as last summer, which Brumley says makes him optimistic that growth will continue. 

“We can’t view the teacher workforce in the same way that we viewed it 30 years ago — not even the same way we viewed it five years ago,” he says. “We have to appreciate that this is a much more dynamic environment.

“The notion that teachers are going to go through a college of education, buy a house by the school and teach there for 30 years, that’s unrealistic,” he adds. “That may happen in some instances, and we’re all blessed if it does, but we need to be more creative in meeting the moment and thinking about the workforce in new ways.”

Here are five strategies Brumley is especially excited about. 

Therapy for teachers

During the pandemic, more than a third of educators met the threshold for a diagnosis of depression or anxiety, with 1 in 5 exhibiting significant symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. Not only do unmet mental health needs make it harder for teachers to respond to student stress, but feeling overwhelmed is among the top reasons cited for quitting the classroom.

Louisiana used some of its federal COVID recovery funds to pay one of the state’s largest hospital systems to provide free teletherapy for every faculty and staff member in early childhood education and K-12 schools. Brumley sees the benefit as a long-term retention tool. 

Mentor pay

Turnover among inexperienced teachers has long run high. , as many as 44% of new educators quit within their first five years — with year one particularly brutal. Brumley attributes the number of brand-new teachers who returned for a second year last fall in part to an initiative that pairs every new educator with an experienced teacher. Starting this year, the mentors receive an annual $2,000 stipend.

A boost in compensation all around doesn’t hurt, either. Last year, lawmakers voted for pay increases of $1,500 for teachers and $750 for support staff throughout the state, effective this year.

New licensure pathways

In most places, the smoothest — if not the only — route to a teaching license has traditionally been to earn a credential from a traditional college of education. This has inhibited career changers, people who want to move to a new state and low-income district staffers, such as classroom aides, from obtaining teaching licenses. It has disproportionately worked against people of color and nontraditional candidates. 

Of the nearly 6,700 teachers hired in Louisiana schools in 2021-22, just 1,300 were recent graduates of teacher preparation or certification programs. Many were transplants or former teachers who were lured back. 

A new law allows anyone with a master’s degree in any field to teach in a classroom so long as they work with a mentor and participate in weekly teacher collaborations in their school. If they receive five years of positive evaluations, these degree holders will automatically receive teaching licenses.

Also new are procedures allowing retirees who held licenses in areas where teachers are in critically short supply to return to work at full pay and without losing their retiree benefits, as well as an easier path to a Louisiana license for a teacher trained or experienced in another state. 

Priming the pipeline

From 2016 to 2021, the number of students enrolling annually in traditional teacher colleges in Louisiana fell from 13,400 to 12,000. Meanwhile, two of the largest districts alone, NOLA Public Schools and the Jefferson Parish district, need an estimated 900 new teachers a year each. Faced with this supply-and-demand conundrum, education officials examined a host of barriers keeping would-be educators from training.

Unique among higher ed programs, Louisiana colleges of education have required applicants to pass an entrance exam that demonstrates teaching knowledge — never mind that they have not yet received the instruction needed to take the test. 

“What we found is that sometimes college students would face the entry-level test to get in, pay the couple hundred dollars fee to take it and maybe not pass,” says Brumley. “And they would say, ‘Well, I’ll just go into a different field, because they’re not asking me to take a test and pass it before I even have an access to learn the field.’ ”

Starting this year, entrance exams have been eliminated. Already, the state’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities are reporting increased student interest. Graduates must still pass exams in order to get their licenses.

Geaux big or geaux home

Some aspiring teachers are getting an early leg up. Students in 60 Louisiana high schools are now able to take entry-level teacher-training classes before they even get their diplomas. Last year, the legislature came up with $5 million for a scholarship, dubbed Geaux Teach. That, plus Louisiana’s other scholarships for residents who attend colleges in the state, comes close to a full ride for students who want to go into the field of education.

Over a quarter of Missouri school districts learn on a four-day schedule. And up until last week, they were small, rural districts – some with as few as 50 students.

That changed when Independence School District voted to implement the schedule for its 14,000 students next fall.

Missouri policymakers are taking notice, with varying ideas to deal with the key factor for many districts’ shift to a four-day week: Teacher recruitment and retainment.

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Four-day school weeks have been growing exponentially across Missouri’s rural school districts since 2009. That year, the state legislature removed a requirement that set a minimum number of days schools must open their doors, leaving a mandate for 1,044 hours of learning.

Roughly 12% of the state’s public school K-8 students now attend class four days per week, according to and data.

Only two of the districts educate over 3,000 students, meaning Independence will be by far the largest in Missouri to make the switch.

“Just the sheer magnitude of the size of the school district makes them a unique case,” said Jon Turner, an associate professor at Missouri State University studying the implementation of the four-day school week.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas voiced concerns on Twitter, calling for salary raises for educators and naming a four-day school week a “gimmick.”

“I am concerned this is more about adults than our kids. I hope I am wrong,” he wrote.

Motive

Dale Herl, superintendent of the Independence School District, starred in a few short videos explaining the four-day school week to families in the run up to the school board’s vote. The first video made it clear what the district’s motivation was for cutting Mondays off the schedule.

“The main thing, looking at this, is we wanted to see if it would help retain and recruit staff,” he said.

State Rep. Doug Richey, R- Excelsior Springs and co-chair of the legislature’s , said an employment perk is what he hears as the key reason for switching to a four-day school week.

Turner has watched rural districts adopt a four-day week in order to have a large enough workforce to operate. Now, he said he wonders if larger districts are having the same problem.

“The dynamic of the four-day week is that many of those districts are smaller, rural school districts, and where they lose their competitive angle is with mid- and late-career teachers,” Turner said.

Department of Elementary and Secondary Education data shows that 40.5% of Missouri teachers are leaving their school districts after three years. In Independence, that rate is slightly higher, with 43.7% choosing to leave their positions.

A four-day work week, which is growing in popularity in the tech industry, is pitched as  an incentive for school staff to stay loyal to their professions and the district.

Teacher pay

Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, D-Independence, doesn’t just represent the state’s newest four-day school district. His children also attend and he expressed frustration with the district’s decision in an interview with The Independent.

Rizzo said he and his wife are considering taking their children out of their current schools.

He wants to see the state increase its investment in public education.

“We’re at the bottom when it comes to teacher pay, and we’re expecting miracles. We shouldn’t educate on miracles,” he said. “We should educate on dollars and cents and in fully funding the schools in our state.”

Missouri ranks 50th in the nation for the average teacher starting salary, paying new educators an average of $33,234, . The state is 47th for overall teacher salary, paying an average of $51,557.

Richey touts local control, wary of raising the state’s minimum wage for educators.

He pointed to Hickman Mills School District, which is also located outside of Kansas City. The district is raising teacher salaries with an operational levy passed by voters in August.

Independence pays teachers an average salary of $53,528, according to DESE data. The Lee’s Summit R-7 School District, located less than 30 minutes away, pays an average of $64,350; less than 30% of its educators leave the district after three years.

“Unless the taxpayers are really ready to kick in with a much higher salary to compensate these people, the only way we can [retain teachers] is by figuring out ways within the schedule, like four days a week, that seem to be attractive to people,” Turner said.

He said he has heard anecdotal evidence that educators are leaving higher-paying jobs to teach at schools that operate four days per week.

Numerous bills filed ahead of the upcoming legislative session address the apparent shortage of teachers. Multiple suggest raising the minimum teacher salary to $38,000.

The current minimum is $25,000, but a one-year grant program allowed participating schools to raise their salary floors to $38,000 with a year of state help.

“I wasn’t entirely excited about that because it’s a one-year grant program. And districts really can’t plan around that,” said Richey, who also serves on the House Budget Committee. “I just thought that was more of a band-aid approach.”

This month, DESE . Sitting atop the list is raising teachers’ minimum wage to at least $38,000, along with urging the legislature to establish a fund to help districts afford the higher salaries.

Research

Turner said he can’t predict whether Independence’s shift will help or hurt student outcomes. Either way, he says the impact will be small.

“I have not seen any data that has said over the long term – and I’m talking about more than five years – that you’re seeing long-term negative or positive impacts of the four-day week,” he said.

He said it could help keep high-quality instructors around students, but the kids could suffer from more memory loss over longer weekends.

The weekday students are home also allows for more professional development than teachers could otherwise get on the calendar, Turner said.

looked at standardized test scores across multiple states over 12 years and tracked academic growth. They found that schools with four-days per week had less academic growth, especially in urban areas.

The effect gets worse the more years a school meets only four days per week, the researchers write.

But they were not able to measure how many hours of instruction students get annually.

, divided their data into three categories: Low, medium and high-time at school.

Only those with a low amount of time in the classroom had negative effects from the four-day schedule, they wrote.

Independence School District will be adding 35 minutes to each day, so students will not lose the equivalent of an entire day of class, the district said .

Fifth day

Independence will provide its after school program, called “Kids Safari,” on the weekday students have off for Kindergarten through eighth grade.

But it would not be free.

Families can utilize childcare on Mondays for elementary and middle-school-aged children for $225 per year per child. Transportation is not provided.

Rizzo described Independence as a “blue-collar, hard-working, middle-class area.” He didn’t know the district’s plan for the fifth day yet, but he said having something would be important to families.

A way he’ll measure the four-day school week’s success is by the district’s enrollment numbers the following year.

Richey said he will be looking at the absenteeism rate and measures of teacher morale. Then, around five years from now, a successful program should have improved test scores, he said.

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A recently announced $100 million donation to Success Academy charter schools by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will allow the network to move ahead with building a massive K-12 school in the South Bronx, but staffing shortages could prove a major hurdle.

The gift, which roughly matches the entire of the Poughkeepsie City School District, will fund a 300,000-square-foot campus, making it the in New York City history. The facility will create an additional 2,400 seats for Success Academy students and will become one of only a few schools to span all grades from kindergarten through high school in the city. The network does not expect the school to begin enrolling until the 2025-26 academic year, said spokesperson Ann Powell, and will only accept K-4 students unless they are transferring from another Success Academy school.

Success Academy already owns the land, previously a warehouse holding storage units, where they plan to build the new facility. The designs are pending approval from the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals before the network can break ground. Success Academy, whose 47 schools educate roughly 20,000 students, already has a charter for the new school so it will not run into an issue with the existing state-mandated cap that limits charter expansion in NYC. 

But finding — and keeping — teachers to staff the new school may be the bigger deterrent.

A current and a former Success Academy teacher in the Bronx both said that staffing shortages and poor retention had reached dire levels.

Shannon Russo said that at his former Bronx school it sometimes took weeks to replace departed teachers, especially in science and math. While positions were empty, students would sometimes have study hall rather than their regularly scheduled lessons, he said.

“The biggest problem is just how unstable it was as a result,” Russo told ����Ӱ��. “Kids couldn’t reliably believe, ‘I’m always gonna go to science class.’”

He himself left in February after being moved from associate teacher into a lead teaching role that he felt unprepared to fill. With the school’s operations staff seemingly moving in and out through a revolving door, he said he felt unsupported in the classroom and in over his head.

His campus has lost 16 of its 58 faculty members since the fall, the network told ����Ӱ��.

Another Bronx teacher, who asked that her name not be used for fear of repercussions at work, said her students regularly come up to her and ask, ‘Are you going to stay with us or are you leaving?’ 

The teacher, who does plan to depart in June along with several colleagues, called the Bloomberg donation “tone deaf,” saying it should be used to help already-struggling Bronx schools, not to build a new one. 

The charter network says the new campus will deliver sorely needed learning opportunities to the borough with the lowest high school graduation rate and highest poverty rate in the city. Success Academy schools in the Bronx receive roughly eight applications for every available seat, according to the network.

“We believe now and have always believed that it was our moral obligation to open more schools given the many children assigned to failing schools in New York City. It might be easier and more convenient for us just to focus on our existing schools, but we don’t believe in that,” Powell wrote in an email to ����Ӱ��. 

The $100 million gift to Success Academy, paired with a donation of the same amount to the Harlem Children’s Zone, represents some of Bloomberg’s first contributions toward a $750 million initiative to grow the charter sector nationwide announced in 2021. In mid-April, the billionaire pledged $50 million to NYC charter schools to create their own summer learning programs, which he said was separate from the $750 million.

“Over the past two years of school closures and remote instruction, the crisis in public education has grown even worse, especially for low-income students who were already falling behind. Expanding access to high-quality charter schools has never been more important,” Bloomberg said in a announcing the gifts to Success Academy and Harlem Children’s Zone.

Bronx families seeking a Success Academy education frequently are forced to enroll their children in schools in other boroughs, spelling long, tiresome commutes. Koomson Kyere, who lives in the Fordham Heights section of the Bronx, said that until his daughter got a seat in a nearby school, his wife used to get on the train with their little girl before 6 a.m. to budget time for the trip to her Manhattan school.

Should the network open a Bronx K-12 campus, its first high school option in the borough, Kyere has no doubts about whether to send his children there, he told ����Ӱ��.

“If I have the chance I will enroll them 100%,” he said, explaining that the family would be grateful to eliminate the otherwise inevitable commute into Manhattan. 

Their experience with the charter network has been “excellent” he said. His younger daughter is a kindergartener and his elder, now in fifth grade, is at the top of her class and has joined the chess club. Citywide, Success Academy scholars their public school peers on state tests.

The father did note, however, that multiple teachers with whom his older daughter started the year have not stuck around, though said the network has been quick to find replacements.

Staffing woes have plagued schools across the country, with some states mobilizing the National Guard to fill gaps. Schools serving high shares of low-income learners, like the Success Academy campuses in the Bronx, have faced disproportionate challenges.

To remedy the situation, other New York City charter networks, such as Achievement First, are offering a retention bonus for educators who continue through the 2022-23 year. Success Academy has no similar incentive in place for its staff. It does, however, compensate employees who refer job candidates who are hired and stay at least 30 days.

The charter network acknowledged the staffing struggles, but said that the Bloomberg donation is slated specifically for the purpose of opening a K-12 Bronx campus.

“It’s not that we don’t care about retention,” said Powell. “But it wasn’t that the gift was for that.”

Andrés Anderson spent his early years in the Bronx and now works as a biology teacher at a Success Academy campus in Harlem. His school has seen several employees leave this year, he said, but resources have not been scarce. His classes recently have been dissecting frogs, and he’s grateful the network allows for the expense. To him, the Bloomberg gift and the new Bronx campus are welcome news.

“These kids need a school,” he said. “Let’s try to at least get one of our nice and shiny and amazing schools into the Bronx.”

Charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently run, for years have been a matter of fierce debate nationwide and in the country’s largest district. Bloomberg oversaw an explosion of charter school enrollment as mayor, and the sector now serves 143,000 youth, compared to 938,000 in NYC district schools. Charter enrollment rose in the 2021-22 academic year while district enrollment fell, and charter schools serve a higher share of Black, Hispanic and low-income students than NYC Department of Education schools.

Proponents cheer the trend as evidence that families long underserved by their traditional public schools are voting with their feet. Opponents fear that pulling enrollment away from district schools, where the majority of students still attend, drains much-needed resources from the system, which funds campuses on a per-pupil basis.

Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center Law Professor David Bloomfield said the former mayor’s tactics are the wrong remedy.

Bloomberg’s gift “privileges” an already prosperous charter school network, he said, while lowering his taxes through donations to a nonprofit organization. “This is the former mayor of the city of New York who seems to have abandoned the public schools.”

Mayor Eric Adams, Bloomfield predicts, will continue to “have it both ways” by keeping support for charters “on a low boil” while also seeking to improve district schools — though “it’s not clear how [long] he can keep that game going.”

To Bronx parent Selena Carrion, there appears to be a concerning pro-charter consensus emerging among the school system’s key power players. A longtime special educator in the borough, she has watched numerous families switch to charter schools, including Success, only to be disappointed, she said, with a lack of services and what they perceived to be a “militaristic” culture of behavior and discipline.

“It worries me that Bloomberg as well as the current mayor and chancellor all seem to be on board with charter school expansion,” Carrion told ����Ӱ��.

Disclosure: Campbell Brown sits on Success Academy’s board of directors. Brown co-founded ����Ӱ�� and sits on its board of directors.