Teaching - A Shortage of Teachers?

The Issue

A teacher shortage is looming!

"Across the nation, schools will need two million new teachers over the next decade, thanks to a coming wave of retirements and rising enrollments. Fully two-thirds of today's teaching jobs will turn over." -- Short Fall, Matthew Miller in The New Republic, February 28, 2000.

That was an ominous forecast back in 2000 and in 2004 it is still true. While the predicted shortage will affect mainly poor urban public schools, I wondered whether private schools, which pay less than the public sector, will suffer teacher shortages as well. In my opinion the answer is an unequivocal "No!"

Why? Largely because private schools offer teachers

• high job satisfaction
• high educational standards
• excellent working conditions

High Job Satisfaction

Good teachers want to teach. They don't want to be police or fear for their lives. Private school teachers know that the school's discipline code will be enforced. Classes with low pupil to teacher ratios permit more effective teaching. You can get more accomplished if you have to deal with fewer students. Private school teachers are respected. Teachers crave respect almost as much as they want to be paid a decent salary. So, in teaching, as in many other professions, job satisfaction is an intangible benefit which overrides many other considerations.

"Good teaching matters. Savvy parents have long known this, and research is confirming it. With U.S. schools needing to hire about 2 million teachers in the next decade, the push is on to make sure that the people who take those jobs are qualified to teach to the higher academic standards now expected of students." - Quality Counts 2000

High Educational Standards

Private school teachers generally teach curricula which stress core subjects. They teach these subjects to extremely high standards, the acme being the Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate programs. The result is that students are stretched academically. Expectations are high. Students respond accordingly.
The public sector emphasizes state testing to enforce accountability on the part of teachers. The result is that most teachers teach to the test and are only interested in protecting their jobs by achieving the best possible test results. If you have spent 4-6 years or longer learning your subject, which would you rather do? Teach to a state test or teach your subject?

"An analysis of federal survey data for Quality Counts found that about half the undergraduates who prepare for teaching careers have not entered the K-12 public schools four years later. Of those who begin teaching, about one in five leaves after three years in the classroom. And, the analysis shows, top undergraduates, as measured by their scores on college-entrance tests, are less likely to become public school teachers and more likely to quit, if they do." - Quality Counts 2000

Excellent Working Conditions

The inequity of working conditions in our public schools is a national disgrace. The contrast between the facilities afforded by the rich suburban schools and those used by the inner city schools is stark indeed. Private schools allocate their financial resources to the things which teachers need to get the job done properly: suitable learning spaces and functional equipment in a safe environment. It makes a difference. In the public sector the educational establishment has become bloated and unresponsive. Funds allocated to education tend to be siphoned off for non-instructional purposes.

"Among the gently winding hill streets are freshly painted schools with high test scores and impressive family incomes. On the stark streets of the flatlands, drug dealers hang out near graffiti-marked schools, where as few as 2.5 percent of the students in a given grade read at the national average." - In Jerry We Trust

That's why private schools are able to engage the finest teachers who genuinely love their subject and enjoy teaching it to young people.

Teacher shortage? In truth, the only shortage is a commitment to universally high educational standards and willingness to eliminate educational mediocrity in all its manifestations. That includes regulations designed to keep out qualified people who have not earned an education degree.