How to get more teachers into classrooms
If Arizona wants to move the needle on education, it must solve its teacher shortage.
That means we need to do a better job of retaining teachers.
But we also need to do a better job of recruiting teachers.
Because here’s the problem:
The “pipeline” that once kept schools stocked with new talent has dwindled to a trickle. And teachers who complete this training are burning out way too fast. Nearly half of new teachers in Arizona leave the profession within three years.
Why do so few want to be teachers?
People often blame low pay and impossible workloads for the shift away from a career in education, and that’s true. Few Millennial college graduates want to work in places where they feel isolated, underappreciated or burned out.
As I’ve previously argued, too few schools offer the environment necessary to attract this young, skilled talent.
But that’s not the complete picture. Education degrees have been falling since the 1970s, largely because women are majoring in a lot more things now.
More master’s degrees in education also are conferred nationally than bachelor’s degrees, suggesting more people are choosing education after majoring or working in another field.
We can’t put these trends back in a bottle.
What is Arizona doing about it?
Arizona has made two major moves to get more teachers in classrooms:
It has relaxed licensing requirements. And as a result, half of Arizona classrooms are now filled by those with alternative or emergency certifications that don’t require a traditional education degree.
It also has created the Arizona Teachers Academy, which waives tuition for those who agree to teach in the state’s public schools. The program is expected to triple to more than 600 students by 2020, and the governor is asking for an extra $21 million to expand it.
It’s unclear what kind of impact debt forgiveness will have. The program is still too new to know whether it will produce more graduates or keep teachers in classrooms once their tuition is paid off.
But some have argued that relaxing licensing requirements is a mistake that will allow too many ineffective teachers in classrooms.
Indeed, teachers with no previous training in classroom management or how to teach various concepts have more to learn on the job. And without proper support, that can be a recipe for disaster.
But look at the attrition rates: Large numbers of teachers with education degrees are dropping out, too.
What if we rethought teacher school?
That suggests the old way of preparing teachers — by focusing heavily on theory, then putting them a classroom for the final semester, often to observe or assist but rarely to take the lead on teaching — no longer works.
For better or worse, we put tremendous pressure on teachers to be perfect out of the box. But there is no substitute for time. Research suggests it can take at least three years for teachers to hone their skills and become highly effective in the classroom.
Arizona State University figured this out years ago, and began putting students in classrooms much earlier in their studies, with more responsibility than their predecessors. But now, the teachers college is about to take the traditional model of student teaching — placing one student with one mentor teacher in one classroom — and turn it on its head.
In a pilot this year at Avondale and Pendergast school districts, groups of three senior-level student teachers work with one master teacher. These teams teach two full classrooms (in the third-grade setup I visited, it was about 50 students) with on-site ASU faculty helping to observe and evaluate their work.
Students are the primary educators in one of the classrooms — and, importantly for recruitment, they are getting paid for their work.
ASU was so pleased with the initial results that it is now preparing to expand the program into the rest of its partner districts this fall.
What we know about team teaching (so far)
Will this setup better prepare future teachers? It’s going to take several years of data collection to know for sure. But here’s what ASU has found in the first year:
Team teaching is a tremendous confidence booster. Student teachers have their own classroom to set up and manage. They plan their own lessons and interact directly with parents.
But they’re never alone in that space: Other student teachers are there to work out problems and brainstorm solutions when unexpected problems arise.
They also have the support of a lead teacher and on-site ASU faculty, which means they can observe a lesson as it’s taught and replicate it a few minutes later in their own classroom, with immediate feedback on what went well and what they could improve.
Team teaching has made individualized instruction easier, because having more teachers in a classroom maximizes the time they can spend with each student. During my visit, one student teacher ran through spelling words with a half-dozen students, another completed a reading assignment with a halfdozen more, while the rest of the class quietly completed an online lesson the teachers had written for them.
ASU, which produces more teachers than any other state university, hopes that if its graduates are trained to work in this collaborative environment, they will press for similar setups in other schools.
Not that it will be a silver bullet for teacher recruitment. Ongoing support and adequate pay matter, too. But if team teaching can make the experience more fulfilling for teachers and students, it’s certainly worth the effort.