Taking action to lure more teachers

Classrooms look nothing like they did in the late 1990s. If the pandemic had struck in 1998, there would not have been an opportunity for virtual learning.

For generations, teachers have had to engage students who are waiting for the school bell to ring with one eye on the Exit signs.

The bigger challenges these days is that too many educators are feeling the pull of the same Exits.

Even more concerning is that it’s getting tougher to attract new people to enter the profession. Teaching during the pandemic should have served as a cautionary reminder to everyone of obstacles teachers face every day, and how they endured through challenges that had not been seen in the United States in a century. Instead, educators are feeling more pressures than ever. The pandemic created ripples of mental health setbacks among students that will be felt for years; burnout diminished troops of teachers, leaving those who remain with even more work; culture wars in America leave teachers to face immediate blowback from parents.

Worst of all is that — remarkably — the pandemic appears to have resulted in diminished respect for the profession when it should have inspired reverence.

Education begins and ends with teachers. Take them away and everything in the future changes.

Lose more good teachers and the wealth and academic breaches in Connecticut will only widen further.

It’s taken too long for lawmakers to recognize the need to change the certification process to lure more people to the profession. It’s an outdated model that hasn’t been upgraded in three decades. Classrooms look nothing like they did in the late 1990s. If the pandemic had struck in 1998, there would not have been an opportunity for virtual learning.

House Bill 5436 is designed to reboot the process. Among other things, it would make the process less burdensome, attracting more diverse applicants to a field that is in dire need of them.

The proposal also would add kindergarten and pre-K to elementary school certification, a step that is overdue. More formally, the bill aims to create a Connecticut Educator Preparation and Certification Board.

Lawmakers asked many of the right questions during an Education Committee hearing, including expressions of the obvious concern that standards for teachers should not be diminished.

State Sen. Doug McCrory, D-Hartford, even acknowledged that “We could have done a lot more about this, but we have sat on our hands and done nothing.”

The committee has until March 25 to decide whether to approve the bill. Connecticut can’t afford to hit the pause button on this issue. Existing teachers, as well as substitutes, are consistently being asked to work even harder. Educators in Stamford, for example, are currently in a showdown with the city’s superintendent, who recently backed off her idea of asking them to add a class to their daily workload.

If work conditions don’t improve, a cycle will perpetuate in which teachers gravitate toward positions in Connecticut communities that have the richest resources. Those gaps will only widen. Lawmakers need to take steps to ensure the Entrance signs are more inviting than the Exits.