New report offers extensive remedies for Pennsylvania’s teacher shortage

A new report on Pennsylvania’s teacher shortage recommends sweeping changes, affecting how teachers are prepared, paid and retained, and advocates solutions that address not only the problem but also its root causes across the system.

Student teachers should get paid, and Pennsylvania should explore models that would make it free for college students to become teachers. There should be closer partnerships between school districts and colleges, a better assessment of teacher preparation programs, and higher pay for teachers who serve as mentors.

These were among the remedies resulting from a teacher shortage summit in Harrisburg last September that drew 150 educators, policymakers and government leaders, including then-Acting Secretary of Education Eric Hagarty.

» READ MORE: Teachers Wanted: The declining pipeline of educators-to-be has experts worried the teacher shortage will only get worse.

The summit and subsequent 36-page report, titled #PANeedsTeachers: Addressing Pennsylvania’s Teacher Shortage Crisis Through Systemic Solutions, were led and prepared by Teach Plus and the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), two national non-profits.

The move comes as fewer young people are seeking careers in teaching and as vacancies mount, particularly in special education, English language instruction, and science, technology, engineering, and math. Nationally, the number of people completing teacher education programs from 2011-12 to 2019-20 fell 25%, according to federal data, with steeper drops in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

» READ MORE: Pa. waived the basic skills requirement for educators. Will it work to attract more teachers?

The report’s authors have already begun circulating it among legislative leaders and cabinet members in new Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration. State Sen. David Argall, the Republican who is majority chair of the education committee, has scheduled a Feb. 28 hearing on the teacher shortage where the report will be discussed, its authors said.

“We’re hoping that this can be, in a particularly polarized environment right now, something that Democrats and Republicans can agree on and come together on,” said Laura Boyce, executive director of Teach Plus PA and a former Philadelphia teacher and Camden principal.

» READ MORE: Pa. waived the basic skills requirement for educators. Will it work to attract more teachers?

The report highlighted four root causes of the teacher shortage: Low pay coupled with increasing costs to attend college; waning interest in the profession and its declining status; inconsistent preparation and induction of new teachers; and “stressful and isolating” work conditions without opportunity for input or ability to advance.

It also called out the problem of too few teachers of color.

“Pennsylvania has a particularly acute shortage of educators of color, with only 6% of the educator workforce identifying as persons of color, compared to 37% of the student population,” the report said.

Boyce’s co-author, Amy Morton, system design specialist at NCEE, said the report is aimed at boosting the number of people who go into teaching and also improving working conditions “so that we’re not just solving one half of the problem and still wondering why it’s not sustainable.”

Solutions, Boyce and Morton said, should be encouraged through incentives rather than mandated. Some recommendations, such as paying teachers according to advancing skills, may require changes in collective bargaining agreements, the report noted.

They do not advocate lowering the bar for becoming a teacher, though they support removing unnecessary barriers that don’t measure quality. Pennsylvania last year waived its basic skills tests in reading, math, and writing that teachers had to pass — or meet the requirement through an alternative — to enroll in teacher preparation programs. The three-year waiver will allow for study to show whether the test improved the quality of teaching candidates or deterred students from pursuing the profession.

“I’m not crazy about anything that reduces the expectations that teacher candidates should be able to perform at a particular level,” said Morton, who started as a high school social studies teacher and has held leadership positions in Pennsylvania’s education department under three governors. “On the other hand, I’m not convinced that the basic skills test is the tool to determine that.”

Teacher pay has been a deterrent, the report said.

“Inflation-adjusted average weekly wages of teachers have been relatively flat since 1996, while weekly wages of other college graduates rose 28% over the same period,” the report said. “This leads to a so-called ‘wage penalty’ of 15.2% for Pennsylvania teachers; in other words, college graduates who pursue teaching as a career earn, on average, 15.2% less than their classmates who are employed in other fields.”

Pennsylvania is worse off in that area than New Jersey, New York, and Delaware, the report said.

» READ MORE: ‘Grow your own’ programs train high schoolers to become teachers. West Chester is joining the movement to combat the teacher shortage.

School districts should create career ladders, identifying mentor teachers who can advance on the pay scale commensurate with their skills and remain in the classroom, the report recommended.

Low pay makes the profession less desirable to prospective teachers, especially to students from low-income backgrounds who already struggle to pay for college. Pennsylvania should explore funding apprenticeship programs in which students work in school districts and get paid, while having the cost of their teacher preparation covered.

The state also should look at defraying other costs for candidates, such as paying for certification exams, the report said.

And colleges and school districts must partner to create more paths into teaching, such as a program started by the Philadelphia School District to help paraprofessionals become teachers at no cost.

In other countries, teacher preparation programs are confined to top colleges, making it easier to ensure high quality across the board. Finland, which has a population of 5.5 million, less than half that of Pennsylvania, has eight accredited programs, while Pennsylvania has 126.

“You have a much different approach to who gets into those teacher preparation programs,” Morton said. “They are usually coming from at the very best top 50 percent of high school graduates. And you have people who have been successful in K-12 classrooms teaching those teachers how to become successful teachers. That’s not necessarily always the case in this country or in this Commonwealth.”

Teacher preparation programs differ in student graduation rates and in the percentage who pass certification exams, giving a glimpse into what seems like inconsistent quality, the report said.

The state needs to collect more data to measure the success of teacher preparation programs, the report said, noting that the state education department isn’t conducting on-site visits, instead relying on programs to self report.

Boyce said legislation passed last year requires some new data gathering, but more is needed. The report advocates tracking teacher vacancies and how well teacher candidates transition from college into the workplace. Pennsylvania should survey teachers on working conditions and query those who leave their jobs, as well as create a public dashboard with information on teacher supply, retention and satisfaction, the report said.

“Unfortunately, in Pennsylvania, preparation and induction experiences can be of varying quality and consistency ...,” the report said. ‘There is sometimes a disconnect between the content teacher candidates learn in their preparation programs and the content they are expected to teach once hired by districts.”

New funds should be aimed at encouraging closer cooperation between teacher preparation programs and school districts so educators are prepared to meet staffing needs and standards, the report said. West Chester’s recently launched PRIZE program aims to help school districts “grow their own” teachers. Kennett Consolidated School District in Chester County is among its partners.