Blog Series: Solving Teacher Shortages

This blog series, Solving Teacher Shortages, highlights innovative and evidence-based initiatives and explores policy options and other approaches to building a strong and stable teacher workforce.

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Blog

Tackling Teacher Shortages: What Can States and Districts Do?

Tara Kini

Jan 11 2022
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The current staffing crisis in public schools is taking center stage in communities throughout the country. Long-standing teacher shortages, combined with COVID-19-related absences, are stretching schools to the breaking point. Policymakers need to act quickly and strategically to address the mounting crisis and build for the long-term. Research provides a clear roadmap to guide their efforts.

Topics Educator Quality, Educator Quality: Recruitment & Retention
Blog

The President’s 2018 Education Budget Proposal Is Déjà Vu All Over Again

Linda Darling-Hammond

Feb 15 2018
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Like the movie “Groundhog Day,” the President’s 2018 education budget proposal feels like déjà vu all over again. Last year, we published a blog post that addressed the President’s proposed cuts to the Every Student Succeeds Act. Fortunately, the Congress that developed the Act and passed it in a strongly bipartisan vote in 2015 protected its key features. This year, in the President’s new budget proposal, however, those cuts are back.

Topics Equitable Resources and Access, Educator Quality
Blog

Effective Professional Development Promotes Powerful Learning

Linda D. Friedrich, Ph.D.

Aug 14 2017
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The National Writing Project’s College, Career, and Community Writers Program demonstrates the power of effective professional development. Through this program, experienced teachers share their knowledge, and the collective program knowledge and resources with new program participants, providing the type of leadership opportunity that research shows can be critical to the growth and satisfaction of veteran educators.

Topics Educator Quality: Professional Learning, Educator Quality, Deeper Learning
Blog

Service Scholarships and Forgivable Loans: Investing in Excellent Teachers for America’s Students

Anne Podolsky

May 31 2017
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Around the country, school districts are struggling to attract and retain high-quality teachers. This blog, the latest in our series on Solving Teacher Shortages, discusses the effectiveness of service scholarships and forgivable loans at recruiting excellent educators. These programs can attract more diverse teacher candidates and—because they tend to recruit a more stable workforce—can reduce recruitment and training costs associated with turnover.

Topics Educator Quality, Equitable Resources and Access
Blog

Perkins Reauthorization: An Opportunity to Address Career and Technical Education Teacher Shortages

Jessica Cardichon

May 23 2017
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CTE helps prepare young people for success in both postsecondary education and a range of high-wage, high-skill careers and is a critical engine for our economy. Right now, however, our nation is facing a serious shortage of CTE teachers that undermines quality and limits course access. This blog details how reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act creates a vehicle to address shortages and strengthen CTE offerings.

Topics Educator Quality, Equitable Resources and Access
Blog

The Special Education Teacher Crisis: Who’s Teaching Our Most Vulnerable Students?

Desiree Carver-Thomas

May 16 2017
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Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia reported having shortages of special education teachers in the 2016–17 school year. As a result, school districts have filled those vacancies with underprepared teachers. Strategic investments in evidence-based programs can alleviate this perennial shortage. This blog highlights programs and state-level strategies to attract, prepare, and retain enough special education teachers to meet school and district needs.

Topics Educator Quality, Equitable Resources and Access
Blog

State Policymakers Respond to Teacher Shortages

Tara Kini

Apr 26 2017
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As school districts around the country struggle to find enough qualified teachers to staff their classrooms, state policymakers are considering a range of budget and policy proposals to address immediate teacher shortages and build a sustainable, high-quality, and more diverse teacher workforce. This blog explores how states are tackling teacher shortages with targeted investments and evidence-based strategies.

Topic Educator Quality
Blog

Understanding Teacher Layoffs During Times of Teacher Shortages

Patrick M. Shields,

Roberta C. Furger

Mar 23 2017
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Amidst news reports of teacher shortages throughout California, a small number of districts issued so-called March 15 notices to teachers, signaling a potential layoff in the next school year. How can we have layoffs in times of shortages? This blog, by LPI Executive Director Patrick Shields and Senior Writer Roberta Furger, puts the layoff news in perspective.

Topic Educator Quality
Blog

Trump’s “Skinny Budget” Would Put Educators’ Learning on a Starvation Diet

Linda Darling-Hammond

Mar 19 2017
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President Trump’s “skinny budget” proposal, calls for wide-ranging cuts in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), including the complete elimination of funding for Title II, Part A, the Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants program. Eliminating this section of the law, which supports educator learning and development, undermines the ability of states and districts to achieve ESSA’s ambitious goals for our schools and students.

Topics Educator Quality, Equitable Resources and Access

Report

Addressing California’s Growing Teacher Shortage: 2017 Update

Feb 08 2017

California’s teacher shortage is worsening as demand continues to outpace the supply of new teachers. The shortage of special education, mathematics, and science teachers is especially severe, prompting an increase in the number of underprepared teachers. Low-income and minority students are disproportionately impacted by shortages, which threaten to undermine academic progress. This report details findings from LPI’s 2017 Update on California’s teacher shortage and offers policy recommendations to address this pressing problem.

Report

Teacher Turnover: Why It Matters and What We Can Do About It

Aug 16 2017

As students return to school this year, many will be in one of the more than 100,000 classrooms across the country staffed by an instructor not fully qualified to teach. This shortage of qualified teachers is almost entirely due to teachers leaving the profession and about 2/3 of teachers who leave do so for reasons other than retirement. This study looks at who is leaving, why, who is impacted, and policy considerations.

Report

Solving the Teacher Shortage: How to Attract and Retain Excellent Educators

Sep 15 2016

High rates of teacher turnover contribute to shortages and undermine academic progress. This report reviews an extensive body of research on teacher recruitment and retention, identifies key factors that influence decisions to enter, stay in, or leave the profession, and offers evidence-based recommendations for local, state, and federal policymakers.

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