Solving the teacher shortage: Revisiting the lessons we’ve learned

Over two decades ago, in its landmark report What Matters Most, the National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future issued a clarion call to policymakers to invest in strengthening the teaching profession, both to combat teachers’ high rates of attrition and to build their capacity to help all students meet the higher academic standards needed for the 21st century. Until the states improve teacher preparation and working conditions, argued NCTAF, their public school systems will continue to experience shortages of caring, competent, and qualified teachers (NCTAF, 1996). Nor will states be able to fill the gap by rushing new recruits into the classroom, the report added: In the absence of meaningful training and support, teachers tend to exit the profession as quickly as they enter it, as though coming and going through a “revolving door” (Marinell et al., 2013).

In the wake of the NCTAF report, many states took bold steps to increase both the size and quality of the teaching workforce. Beginning in the late 1990s, policymakers funded a wide variety of efforts to improve teacher recruitment, preservice training, mentoring and induction, and ongoing professional development, including opportunities and incentives for teachers to seek national board certification (Darling-Hammond & Wei, 2009). Within a few years, researchers began to find that these policies were working, helping to strengthen the teacher pipeline and keep teachers in the profession (Guha et al., 2006). And yet, state policymakers gradually withdrew their support for these efforts, allowing them to wither on the vine.

Two decades later, the nation faces many of the same challenges identified in What Matters Most. Current teacher shortages vary somewhat more by region and subject area, but they are just as serious today as in the 1990s. In the 2015-16 school year, for example, 48 states and the District of Columbia reported shortages of teachers in special education, 42 reported shortages of math teachers, 40 reported shortages of science teachers, and 30 reported shortages of bilingual education/ESL teachers (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, 2015).