EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third and final group of stories with the Leaving the Classroom series. The first two groups of stories were published March 2 and Feb. 23 in The Tifton Gazette.

A dramatic decrease in the number of students enrolled in teacher education programs is prompting state education agencies to ease the entry into the teacher pipeline while expanding opportunities for aspiring educators to be paid while they acquire credentials.

The number of people completing teacher education programs across the nation declined by more than 35% over the past decade, according to data gathered by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

The decline in education program enrollment has been fueled by concerns about working conditions as well as perceptions that a teaching career is less financially rewarding than some other occupations requiring similar academic achievement. Meanwhile, many university systems saw a decline in the number of undergraduates seeking education degrees amid the coronavirus pandemic that began in early 2020.

Over the past two months, reporters from CNHI Newsrooms nationwide have sought to examine the growing shortage of teachers in some geographic regions and some subject areas and to identify the issues that may be driving it for this multi-part special report, “Leaving the Classroom.”

The ominous trend of fewer people considering careers as classroom teachers was already underway before the pandemic began. Nearly half of all teachers were leaving their jobs within five years at that point.

The crimp in the teacher pipeline is now an entrenched problem that requires more than Band-Aid solutions, Andy Pallotta, president of NYSUT, the statewide union for public school teachers in New York, told CNHI.

“We have to upgrade the profession and do more to address the fact that some schools have become test prep factories, due to this obsession we have with testing, and allow teachers to bring young minds to a place where they can really enjoy reading and writing in school,” Pallotta said.

Relaxing requirements

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, colleges and universities awarded 85,057 undergraduate degrees in education in 2019-20. The total represented a 19% decline from the 2000-01 academic year, when colleges and universities conferred more than 105,000 bachelor’s degrees in education.

Among oft-cited explanations for the shrinkage in the nation’s pool of teachers is the fact that teaching is a profession long dominated by women. But with more career choices available to women since the 1960s, many are now joining other professions.

In the 1970-71 academic year, 36% of all bachelor’s degrees awarded to women were in education. By 2018-19, only 6% of all bachelor’s degrees received by women were in education, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education noted in a 2022 report.

Across the nation, school districts have had to scramble to fill the gaps, and in some cases they have resorted to relaxing certification rules. In Massachusetts, the state created emergency licenses allowing educators to work without a teacher or administrator license, igniting concerns such moves could diminish the quality of education.

“The teacher turnover crisis is slowly but surely lowering the quality of education as districts loosen the requirements to become a teacher,” said Evan Baker, 25, who teaches Spanish in Southbridge, Massachusetts. “Our district just hired a former corrections officer, who speaks Spanish, but has no other qualifications for teaching.”

Some Massachusetts districts are also offering tuition reimbursement plans and one-time bonuses to those who help recruit new teachers or paraprofessionals to work for their districts.

In New York, school districts are projected to need some 180,000 new teachers over the next decade. State officials moved last year to address immediate shortages by temporarily waiving a $35,000 income limit to allow retired teachers to rejoin the workforce.

The state also began taking steps to reform the teacher certification process, allowing for provisionally approved teachers to work immediately if they met coursework and background check requirements.

But such temporary stopgap measures are unlikely to solve the long-term challenges school systems face when it comes to recruitment and retention of teachers, experts said.

At one vocational school in the public system in New York, Pallotta said, “they had a number of openings for teachers but no one was even applying.”

‘Domino effect’

Experts say teacher vacancies have been particularly acute in low-income urban and rural schools, with the shortages leading some districts to rely on unprepared substitute teachers, a phenomenon that has resulted in a cycle of turnover and underperformance in the classroom.

School districts, meanwhile, often find themselves competing for the same job candidates.

“This has been a domino effect where one opening in another district resulted in one school hiring away from another school and so on and so on,” said Wesley Shipley, superintendent of the Ellwood City Area School District in Pennsylvania. “There has been a shuffling of the candidates, but there is no one available to ultimately fill the gap and stop the movement.”

After Shipley’s district poached a technology education teacher from a nearby district, he said of the neighboring school: “Now they are faced with a nearly impossible hole to fill.”

A February report issued by the National Center on Education & the Economy and Teach Plus Pennsylvania recommended the gaps in the teacher pipeline be addressed with a mix of strategies:

• Incentivize high-quality teacher preparation by supporting coursework and clinical experiences developed in partnership with local education agencies.

• Invest in teacher retention through well-defined career ladders.

• Expand pathways into teaching for youth and paraprofessionals.

• Improve financial compensation for teachers.

Residency pathway

Several states, New York and Pennsylvania among them, have been advancing the teacher residency model.

By “infusing flexibility into the requirements” for becoming a teacher and streamlining the certification process, New York officials are hoping they will soon be cultivating an expanded crop of aspiring teachers, said Jim Baldwin, senior deputy commissioner at the New York Department of Education.

High school students in some districts now have the opportunity to accumulate college education course credits, opening a pathway into the profession, he said.

The residency programs are being aimed, in part, at teaching assistants, he noted.

“Most of them would really be forced to quit their jobs” to enroll in a full-time education program, he said, adding: “We’re working with institutions of higher ed to create some flexibility for those individuals so that they can continue working. They can get credit for the work that they’re doing in schools, and the coursework that is required of them can be done on less than a full-time basis.”

The residency pathway promises to alleviate at least some of the recruitment challenges districts face.

“We’ve got to convert people who aren’t certified but have a four-year degree into the teaching profession,” said veteran educator Mark Laurrie, superintendent of the Niagara Falls (New York) School District. “We do that by working with our state Department of Labor, which will provide us with a stipend which we give to them.”