Solving the teacher shortage will take a new pipeline

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Guest Column by Hans Andrews and Greg Rockhold

September 30, 2024

“Empowering community colleges to train future educators is not just a win for education but a giant leap towards diversity and representation in our classrooms.”

— Tom Dreyer, CIPD award-winning program director, executive coach and author

In news reports throughout the United States and in many other countries, the crisis of teacher shortages has been highlighted. This crisis has now reached a shortage of over 55,000 qualified teachers. An additional number of teaching positions have been filled by unqualified teachers.

With the previous pipeline of university and four-year public and private colleges down some 50 percent from a decade ago, it is now time to consider a new pipeline.

The current U.S. teacher shortage is placed at 55,000 vacant positions and an additional 270,000 teaching posts currently filled by under-qualified teachers. The teaching work force at this time does not reflect enough teachers of color. Numerous studies have pointed to the increased success students of color have when they have teachers of their own race/ethnicity.

Unfortunately, while more than 50 percent of public school students are students of color, only roughly 20 percent of teachers are teachers of color, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Recently, a major focus has been on rural and urban schools having the most difficulty in finding teachers to fill their K-12 school needs.

Necessary strategies to overcome teacher shortages Concerned individuals throughout the country are waking up to the well-being needs of our nation’s children. Pushing for comprehensive strategies for addressing these severe teacher shortages must include the following:

Incentivize individuals to pursue careers in education.
Provide competitive salaries for both beginning and experienced teachers.
Improve working conditions with both administrative and parent support.
Avoid the overloading of teaching schedules.
Move away from having to hire “unqualified” persons.

Reports on the unqualified teachers being hired in higher numbers than ever before now show that students with these teachers are overall scoring lower in reading and math.

Equipping teachers to navigate diverse learning environments It is also a growing concern that both new and existing experienced teachers need to see training programs that help equip them with the skills to navigate diverse learning environments. Dreyer’s comment at the top of this article highlights how he sees community colleges as a logical new pipeline in training new teachers.

Advantages of community/tech colleges preparing teachers The following are areas of high importance to draw in new and often neglected potential teachers:

Lower costs: California documented the student costs for four years of community college baccalaureate preparation to be at a total of $10,500-$12,000.

Enrollees: Adults beyond the age of traditional college students already enroll in their local community and technical colleges.

Family and work situations: Many adults work and/or have families.

It is now apparent that the universities and four-year colleges can no longer draw in enough students to fill the teacher shortage gap that is now nearly a decade-old crisis.

The need to draw in the community colleges It is now apparent that the universities and four-year colleges can no longer draw in enough students to fill the teacher shortage gap that is now nearly a decade-old crisis. Secondly, they have not been able to get enough diverse students to become teachers.

Community colleges already have a strong diverse student body and are helping fill the diversity gap in many other career and vocational fields. Statistics on diversity at community colleges includes:

These colleges enrolled 57 percent of all Native American students and 52 percent of all Hispanic students.
Black student percentage of community college students was 12 percent and Hispanic student enrollments were 27 percent.

Conclusion and looking forward We have been facing a critical challenge in our nation this past decade with the near-crisis situation of teacher shortages.

There is a promising solution as we have outlined above. If the leadership of administrators and their board members at both the K-12 and community-technical college levels decide to work together as a joint force, the crisis can be fairly quickly reduced and eventually overcome.

Greg Rockhold has served on the National Association of Secondary School Principals board, as the president of the New Mexico Coalition of School Administrators, and as the executive director of the New Mexico Association of Secondary School Principals. Hans Andrews is a Distinguished Fellow in Community College Leadership through Olney Central College (Illinois). He is a former president of the college. He started the first dual-credit program in the country between community colleges and secondary schools.