Solving Teacher Shortages

March 27, 2025 | State leaders from California, Mississippi, New York, and Texas joined LPI to discuss their states’ approaches to tackling teacher workforce issues. Their experiences may offer lessons for other states seeking to use legislative actions and financial incentives to better prepare and retain educators.

October 8, 2024 | Teacher shortages are widespread, yet layoffs occur annually. This paradox stems from converging factors such as state and local funding decisions, fluctuations in public school enrollment, and the impending expiration of federal ESSER funds.

September 17, 2024 | Each year, approximately one in six public school teachers across the United States leaves their school or leaves the profession altogether, contributing to teacher shortages and costing districts considerable time, energy, and resources to find and train new teachers. The Learning Policy Institute’s updated calculator can help educational leaders to estimate the cost of teacher turnover.

September 4, 2024 | Teacher shortages continue to impact schools and districts in all 50 states and Washington, DC, driven in part by financial barriers that prevent candidates from accessing comprehensive preparation. New AmeriCorps rules will potentially unlock a meaningful source of funding for comprehensive preparation programs and the candidates they prepare.

July 31, 2024 | Teacher shortages continue to be a huge issue in many states. Yet states differ in their education policies and in the ways that teachers are prepared, compensated, and supported. These differences can result in dramatically different levels of student access to a diverse, stable, and well-qualified educator workforce.

June 17, 2024 | Research on emergency hires of teachers during the pandemic highlights challenges in teacher effectiveness and retention. Investing in well-funded, high-retention pathways like teacher residencies can support a diverse, well-prepared teaching force, addressing teacher shortages and improving student outcomes in the long run.

August 29, 2023 | It’s estimated that more than 300,000 teaching positions in the United States were either unfilled or held by people who were not fully qualified but, as pressing as it is to get qualified teachers in classrooms immediately to address shortages, effective policy must also focus on recruiting a well-prepared and diverse pool of candidates, along with retaining effective educators.

January 5, 2023 | As we ring in 2023, educators are leaving the teaching profession in record numbers. Federal policymakers should take action with a focused and purposeful set of policies to strengthen the educator workforce.

April 14, 2022 | Research illustrates the importance of teacher salaries in recruiting and retaining an effective and diverse teaching workforce. As teacher shortages continue to be a challenge for districts around the country, a state-by-state analysis provides policymakers and others with a valuable tool for understanding teacher salaries, including how their state’s compensation metrics compare to those of other states.

February 28, 2022 | One significant contributor to longstanding teacher shortages, made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, has been an underinvestment in the teacher pipeline. Fortunately, federal spending packages currently under consideration contain funding that has the potential to help effectively address the school staffing crisis. Proposed funding would support high-quality and affordable educator preparation, an important tool for improving retention.