"The impending teacher shortage is the most critical education issue we will face in the next decade"
- David Price
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According to a recent study conducted by the National Education Association of approximately 3,000,000 educators, 55% of educators are ready to leave the teaching profession they love earlier than planned (Jotkoff, 2022). The teacher shortage is a problem that affects so many different people, including current teachers, students, administrators, and parents. The same study states that we currently have 567,000 fewer educators in America's public schools than we had before the Covid Pandemic (Jotkoff, 2022). The pandemic has left teachers feeling overwhelmed, under-appreciated, and ready to leave the teaching profession, a profession driven by passion and love.
There are various reasons why teachers are leaving the profession sooner than they originally planned. The number one largest reason, according to the National Education Association survey, is "increased accountability based on high stakes testing, test prep, and standards" (Tye & O'Brien, 2022). As a teacher, we all know how negative standardized testing can be for all those involved, including increased anxiety due to the fact that most standardized tests are taken into account for teacher evaluations, but also anxiety for our students who are having to take frequent and multiple standardized tests to show their learning throughout the school year. The other reasons teachers are leaving include negativity and pressure from caregivers, and an increase of negative behaviors and attitudes in and outside of the classroom (Tye & O'Brien, 2022). The way we respect teachers now is different than ever before. For some, teachers are looked at as simply babysitters, spending 7 hours with children. For others, teachers are looked at as a profession that receives three months off of the school year each year, an easy and undereducated job. Teachers also are leaving due to lack of support and increased tension between teachers and administrators (Tye & O'Brien, 2022). Class sizes are constantly climbing to uneasy sizes and teachers are left struggling to keep up. Paperwork piles up, behaviors are challenging, teachers are often not supported by administrators, and the demand for more is consistently rising.
I have talked about how this wicked problem affects teachers, but what about our students? Does this have any affect on them at all? The answer is yes. "Emotional exhaustion and cynicism will lead to less involvement and effort in lesson planning, [...] less favorable social behavior toward students [and] result in teachers being more critical and providing lower level of encouragement in response to student success" (Madigan & Kim, 2021). This means that as teachers are becoming more and more burnt out, students are being affected by these changes in various ways. Some of these ways include lack of student motivation, disruptive behavior, low sense of belonging, weak belief in abilities to succeed, and, in turn, lower grades in the classroom (Laurie & Larson, 2020). In a study conducted by Madigan and Kim in 2020, they found that teacher burnout is significantly correlated with poorer educational success and less motivation in students (Wang, 2022). As teacher attitudes are shifting from feelings of confidence to overwhelm and burn out, our students educational success is shifting from high motivation for learning to a much lower motivation for learning.
So, what can we do about this wicked problem? In the study conducted by the National Education Association, they polled those 3,000,000 teachers and asked the educators what ideas they would support as potential solutions to this problem of teacher retention, burnout, and shortages. The number one largest support system that could be put in place, according to this survey, was raising salary, which was supported by 96% of teachers, and strongly supported by 81% (Jotkoff, 2022). Direct funding to increase teacher salaries, as well as funding fringe benefits could help teachers decide to stay longer in this profession. We could also provide more federal funding to schools by taking money from other programs that may be less important in our current society, and use it to raise teacher salaries, give teachers more classroom funds, and hire additional support staff to support teachers. Next, the study found that providing additional mental health support for students would be a solution that would help teachers stay longer (Jotkoff, 2022). With gun violence and other violence at schools, providing additional funding, again, to support mental health services for students could help to create a safer and calmer environment for everyone involved. Providing consistent and convenient access to low-to-no cost mental health support and services to both students and staff would be beneficial for all. Finally, changing the harmful evaluation process that we currently use to define "highly effective" teachers could help keep teachers in the profession longer. Ending the practice of evaluating teachers based on standardized test scores (a whole other wicked problem), adds unnecessary stress to teachers, especially when we align bad test scores to bad teaching.
Overall, as most wicked problems, this wicked problem is not one that is easily solved by any of the above. Please see our poster below to gather more information on teacher retention, teacher shortages, and teacher burnout. In addition, please feel free to help us to identify more reasons for this wicked problem on our community Jamboard linked on our poster, and to help contemplate the various solutions that we could try to help solve this wicked problem.
View our poster below. To view the second page of the poster, click the link at the bottom, or click here.
See the photo below for a close-up image of possible solutions for this wicked problem.
References
Fahed-Sreih, J. (Ed.). (2020). Career development and job satisfaction. IntechOpen. https://mts.intechopen.com/storage/books/9033/authors_book/authors_book.pdf
Jotkoff, E. (2022). NEA survey: Massive staff shortages in schools leading to educator burnout; alarming number of educators indicating they plan to leave profession | NEA. National Education Association. https://www.nea.org/about-nea/media-center/press-releases/nea-survey-massive-staff-shortages-schools-leading-educator
Laurie, R., & Larson, E. (2020, May 12). How does teacher stress and burnout impact student achievement? EdCan Network. https://www.edcan.ca/articles/teacher-stress-and-student-achievement/
Madigan, D. J., & Kim, L. E. (2021). Does teacher burnout affect students? A systematic review of its association with academic achievement and student-reported outcomes. International Journal of Educational Research, 105, 101714. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2020.101714
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (2016, September 14). Teacher stress and health: Effects on teachers, students, and schools [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90f5eEqrZG8
TEDx [TEDx Talks]. (2019a, January 3). Teacher stress: A crisis ignored | lisa sanetti | TEDxUConn [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBhQy12ANrc
TEDx [TEDx Talks]. (2019b, December 13). How can we support the emotional well-being of teachers? | sydney jensen [Video].
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfCLTQhW9GQ
Tye, B. B., & O’Brien, L. (2002). Why are experienced teachers leaving the profession? Phi Delta Kappan, 84(1), 24–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170208400108
Wang, Z. (2022). The effect of EFL teacher apprehension and teacher burnout on learners’ academic achievement.
Frontiers in Psychology, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.839452
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