How to boost Pennsylvania’s teacher pipeline
A decade ago, a teacher’s life centered mostly on preparing lesson plans, assigning homework, grading tests, documenting student progress and preparing students for standardized testing.
Teachers were required to educate every student the same exact way, and they were expected to teach using the same methods as generations of educators before them. For many teachers, this meant standing in front of their classroom delivering the same lessons each and every year.
Fortunately, times have changed, and today’s educators are able to explore new ways to help their students learn and grow emotionally, socially, and intellectually. Teachers are now encouraged to adapt to their students’ unique learning style, background, interests and abilities.
Traditional teaching methods of instructional lectures and memorization are successfully migrating to innovative techniques aimed at inspiring a love for learning.
In the process of reinventing their role as educators, a significant number of teachers opted to retire or leave their profession to pursue other jobs. In addition to this exodus, the Department of Education recorded a 66% drop in newly issued in-state teaching certificates over an 11-year stretch.
While we understand that the impact of COVID-19 has accelerated this decline, it’s clear that the issue plaguing our meager pipeline of educators predates the pandemic.
We now find ourselves in a serious teacher shortage in Pennsylvania, and if we don’t quickly find solutions, this crisis will only worsen when more teachers leave. Educators are doing far more today than what is sustainable long term, without the necessary resources and assistance.
We need to implement an educator accelerator to boost the employment pipeline in our commonwealth. We have the money to do it, now is the time, and we could potentially lower property taxes if we target specific parts of the commonwealth experiencing the greatest strains.
While our educators are among the most qualified and credentialed professionals, they are also the most burdened with loans stemming from higher education. And though Pennsylvania compensates its educators better than many surrounding states and ranks 10th highest in the nation, many of our graduates still move to other states after receiving their degrees.
We need to establish stronger incentives to keep quality teachers in Pennsylvania. Two bills in the House can achieve this goal and together create the educator accelerator that we need.
Part one of this effort is the Retain Our Teachers bill (HB2247), which gives cash to people teaching full or part time in Pennsylvania. Educators who qualify would receive up to 25% of their loan, up to a maximum of $10,000 per year, for up to four years of their repayment schedule.
Part two is the PA Teach Scholarship Program (HB2389). It would provide scholarships up to $8,000 per year (for a maximum of $32,000 over four years) to eligible students graduating from the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. These graduates must work within the commonwealth for a period of one year for each academic year that the eligible student received a scholarship grant.
This financial assistance to our future teachers will help us to rebuild the educator pipeline. We can do this all without increasing the burden on Pennsylvania taxpayers by using the currently available federal CARES Act dollars. These funds are sitting in a “rainy day” fund. Well, for our teachers, it’s pouring, and our educators are drowning. They need our continued support to grow and truly transform the learning landscape.
The rest of us — politicians, parents, employers — must be willing to rethink our roles in supporting educators to do the essential job of educating our children. Their future depends on it.