Education’s endangered list

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 8th of March, 2022.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up: not enough teachers.

Some blame the pandemic, but even as restrictions ease up, the problem of not enough teachers is likely to continue. The situation became so dire in New Mexico that Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham tapped the National Guard to fill in.

REICHARD: Most of the data related to teacher shortages is from public schools. But how are Christian schools faring? WORLD’s Lauren Dunn reports.

LAUREN DUNN, REPORTER: Alan Hodak is the administrator of Fourth Baptist Christian School in Plymouth, Minnesota. It serves about 330 students in K4-12th grade. And its roster is growing.

HODAK: We've seen growth, considerable growth this past year. We added about 85 new students, but we were up in enrollment from last year, probably I'm guessing around 60 students.

While great for the school, Hodak says that growth has created some challenges. He had to turn some families away this year.

HODAK: I have never seen it like this before. I would venture to say that adding 100 students would not surprise me for next school year… The problem with that is I can't add students unless I can find the qualified teachers. So that is really the big issue right now. I think we can continue to grow significantly but I can't make that commitment to people until I can have a contract and know that I have a person to fill the spot.

And many schools say they are facing a similar problem.

Last week, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that 44 percent of public schools had teacher vacancies. And last month, the National Education Association polled its members about their retirement plans. More than half said they planned to quit teaching earlier than previously expected.

But are teachers really in short supply?

Amber Northern is the senior vice president for research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank. She says these survey results don’t match education workforce statistics. At least not yet.

NORTHERN: The latest research that I'm seeing is saying that we actually aren't seeing a shortage per se, at least materialize in the data yet. That the sort of quit rates that we've seen historically are about the same. But what we have seen lately is just a bunch of surveys that say teachers are, you know, burned out, and they're thinking of retiring early or thinking of leaving.

But Northern admits it can take up to three years for the facts on the ground to show up on surveys. And COVID has complicated data collection. But she says other factors may contribute to some schools reporting openings.

NORTHERN: I just want to make it clear that often what we're seeing, and sometimes why we're seeing shortages, is that districts have a lot more money, they're seeing an influx of COVID relief dollars. And so they're advertising for more positions now, because they've got quite a bit of funding. And so sometimes while we're seeing vacancies, it’s because these are new positions being advertised.

But many Christians schools, like Fourth Baptist in Minnesota, have seen more students join their classes in the last two years. Jeff Walton is the executive director of the American Association of Christian Schools. AACS represents about 700 schools across the country.

WALTON: The normal churn in teacher turnover is 7 or 8 percent a year. And what we're seeing right now is an increase in that exacerbated by an increase in teacher need at our schools. Our schools are up at an average of 17 percent this year, so they need more teachers. And then that's coupled with fewer teachers at the other end of the pipeline, and at least a small increase in the number of teachers that are leaving the profession because of COVID-related issues.

Walton says the Christian college administrators he’s talked to tell him fewer students are choosing to become teachers. That’s a trend that predates the pandemic. He thinks some of that drop may be due to concerns over pay as well as increasing behavior problems with students.

WALTON: There are fewer candidates out there looking for positions in Christian education. I talked to a school leader at a Tennessee school a couple of weeks ago, he told me he's not having any trouble hiring for next year, because every week, he gets an application from a teacher in a public school in his area that's leaving public ed and looking for a position in Christian ed. So some of that I think is offsetting a little bit of the problem with the supply drying up and into the pipeline. But overall, I think the picture is still kind of negative that way. There are fewer people looking for careers in Christian education than there were 10 years ago.

Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, hosts a classical school job fair for its students each year. Last year, it limited the fair to 45 prospective employers. This year, it raised the cap to 60. Both years, about 200 schools applied to participate.

Daniel Coupland is the chairman of Hillsdale’s education department. He says he hasn’t noticed a change in the number of students considering education.

COUPLAND: So our enrollment is, you know, kind of fluctuates between 14 and 1600, you know, students, and so again, we have 10 to 15 percent of our students going into teaching in any, any particular year. So, again, it'll be interesting to see what comes of the job fair to see if that number increased. But we're only able to supply so many, you know, teachers.

Back in Minnesota, Alan Hodak says his school can work with AACS to train its own teachers and help them work toward certification. He’s even considered recruiting college students before they graduate and offering to pay some of their tuition.

Hodak says other schools in the area are thinking about similar options.

HODAK: They'll call me and they'll say Well, hey, we need this, we need that. Who do you have? Well, I don't have anybody, because I'm struggling in the same way, you know. But what I tell them is, is there anybody there who is educated, who might be interested within your church congregation or school constituency that might want to teach for you? And if so, why don't you start a dialogue and see how you can come up with creative solutions to put them in, in your school. So there's a lot of things you can do to try to encourage recruiting people. But I'll tell you, we're at a place where we have to become really, really creative in order to make it happen.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lauren Dunn.

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