The students are seated in the classroom. Textbooks are lined up on the shelves. The chalkboards are clean and blank. Everything is ready for classwork to begin - except for one thing.
There is no teacher.
That extreme scenario looms over California like a bad dream, and there is every reason to expect this nightmare to break into reality. A growing teacher shortage is already a fact, and the way things look right now, it is going to get worse. California had 32,000 emergency credentialed teachers in the 1998-99 school year. By 1999-2000, that number had grown to 40,000. Moreover, of the teachers still working with full credentials, 50 percent are 45 years old or older and 7 percent are over 55; simple math tells us that they will leave soon.
So how about new ones entering the profession? In 1998-99, California issued 17,000 full teaching credentials, but 30 percent of these teachers did not teach a day. In fact, over the last 30 years, 30 percent of all new teachers quit within three years; 50 percent of all new teachers quit within five years. With the attrition from those reaching retirement age and those who choose not to stay in teaching, we can look to a gloomy future. California will need 280,000 new teachers by 2009-10, and chances are slim that we will get them.
We're not talking about a light matter here. Schools require teachers; a growing population of children means more schools and more teachers are needed. No one is suggesting that we can get along without these teachers. Even the enemies of public education, eager for vouchers and other schemes, recognize that the more kids there are, the more teachers we need.
Those who understand education are empathetic. The Public Policy Institute of California reported in 1999 that "teacher experience, certification, and education are significant factors in student achievement." In 2000, they said, "The percentage of teachers without full credentials are variables most strongly related to student achievement. Teachers' levels of education measured by the percentage of teachers with a master's degree or higher in some cases positively and significantly related to test scores." Compare that with the importance of principals. Dr. Kenneth Underwood of the University of Toronto reported in Education Week that "a principal's contribution to student achievement was about 2 percent." Yet amid the growing shortage of credentialed teachers there is no scarcity of administrators. In fact, while California schools are staffed at one teacher for every 24 students, there is one administrator for every 13.1 teachers. (That 1-to-24 ratio does not fool you, of course; the manipulators of personnel and statistics produce results you already know about - academic classes with 35 kids, and gym classes with more than that.)
The statistics tell us there is a teacher shortage, but they don't explain its cause. Why do teachers quit? The reasons for the alarming exodus from our field are no mystery. Start with low salaries, especially as compared with beginner pay in work like computer science and law. Then look at overcrowded classes (California ranks 49th in class size in the United States) often packed with kids who aren't native English speakers or who come from impoverished homes or with special needs that underfunded schools can't provide - you can fill in a dozen other circumstances that make teaching these kids difficult at all times and almost impossible in a crowd. Or consider the paperwork load or the endless, useless meetings; or the scarcity of textbooks (never mind that the ones you do get are out of date and thoroughly mauled) and other supplies. And don't forget the dirty, rundown classrooms, hot in the summer, cold in the winter. Above all, count in the pressures from all directions: a society that has suddenly decided you are the reason for ignorance in the school population, a school board like Livermore or Wiseburn that is more interested in furthering political careers than nurturing kids in the classroom. Look at the way school district budgets are developed - figure out all the other expenses first, and, with what's left over, fund the teachers.
And then there's the whole way teachers are expected to perform, as if they were assembly line workers - told what, when and how to teach, with a poorly designed test at the end to find out whether they stayed in lockstep. (Since folks who crave test results haven't yet grasped the concept that teaching and learning are not an identical function, they pay no attention to whether the kids put out the required effort.) Then add to this horrendous mix the far too great number of administrators who consider themselves bosses instead of facilitators, whose hostilities and caprices can demoralize an entire faculty and slam shut the doors of collegiality.
The wonder is not the attrition rate but the number who stick around, doing their jobs with courage and professionalism in the face of so much discouragement.
If we intend to keep public education going, if we mean to improve schools for all of our kids, obviously we must end the teacher shortage. Equally obviously, to do so we must attack the problems that have created it. That means, first of all, giving top priority to kids and teachers in the classroom. And that means for teachers themselves to have control of curriculum, teaching goals and methods, and discipline policy in every school in California. In addition, every teacher must have time during the work day - not before or after school, not during an extended day or a scheduled break - to meet with other teachers and share ideas and make plans about everything concerned with their work. In short, we need to give teachers professional control of their work, just the way lawyers and doctors have control of the basics of their professions.
An exasperated society has already assigned to us the responsibility for the success or failure of our schools; now it is time that we have the authority as well as the responsibility. Teachers are frustrated by changing expectations and an array of demands that often have little to do with what happens in a classroom; they must have the opportunity to put their hands on the controls and put their intimate knowledge of teaching to work without the interference of extraneous layers of authority.
Until teachers are given the chance to fix the things gone wrong in public education, there will continue to be a serious teacher shortage; and it will grow, along with the justifiable dissatisfaction of the working teachers. Education "reform" will be meaningless until it is in the hands of the only ones who know what to do and how to do it - the teachers.
Make no mistake about it. Until teachers are in charge, reform will continue to be the joke it is - a joke like the STAR 9 test as a fair assessment of student achievement. We must all work together in a determined effort to make teaching a real profession and thus to end the growing teacher shortage.
