Higher pay would solve teacher shortage

The Baltimore Sun bemoans a shortage of teachers (“Severe Maryland teacher shortage highlights difficult working conditions at K-12 schools,”

Aug. 3). There is a very simple solution: Increase their pay commensurate with the increasing requirements of the job.

This shortage is not simply the result of difficult working conditions, it is that Maryland and other states don’t want to pay the K-12 educators a salary that makes it worthwhile to slug it out in the classrooms. We pay enormous salaries to college professors but fail to pay those who prepare the students for these professors. We are stingy and miserly when it comes to the incredibly demanding job of molding and inculcating these students. Then we bemoan the difficulties the graduating classes of the public schools have getting into higher education.

And let’s face it some students come to school with problems, including a lack of parental support and emotional issues. The teachers are asked to turn this around on a dime.

Stop overlooking teachers like their job isn’t essential to the success of our species. There are jobs where the working conditions are much worse and more dangerous than being in a classroom with an overload of rambunctious students. But the vacancies are filled because the pay is good. Make the pay good and you will have teachers regardless of the job conditions.

— Georgia Corso, Baltimore