By: Roberto J. Rodríguez, Assistant Secretary for the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development
Through the Raise the Bar: Lead the World initiative, the U.S. Department of Education is working in partnership with states and school districts to eliminate educator shortages in our nation’s schools.
Thanks to the leadership of state and local education officials – and fueled by the pandemic relief funds championed by the Biden-Harris Administration and made available by Congress – as of February of this year there were more people working in our public schools than prior to the pandemic. That reflects a dramatic recovery after the loss of 9 percent of all these jobs – an estimated 730,000 – in 2020. That’s great news!
However, our nation still employs fewer teachers in our schools than before the pandemic, and researchers and school leaders report more teachers with emergency certifications and teaching out of their certification area, as well as smaller applicant pools from which to hire talent. Educator shortages, while exacerbated by the pandemic, are not new. Addressing these persistent shortages requires addressing fundamental challenges to the teaching profession today, including:
- inadequate compensation and poor working conditions;
- barriers to entering the profession through high-quality and affordable pathways; and
- lack of educator diversity.
The Biden-Harris Administration has been laser-focused on using every tool available to raise the bar in education and elevate the teaching profession. To address these challenges, state action is critical. That’s why, in May and June, the U.S. Department of Education hosted three Regional Convenings to Support State Action to Advance the Education Professions.
In partnership with The Hunt Institute and TEACH.org, these Regional Convenings – hosted in Albuquerque, NM; Chicago, IL; and Jackson, MS – brought together key leaders from across 25 states and territories, plus the District of Columbia, to galvanize and share the bold efforts and leadership underway across states to increase educator compensation, expand access to high-quality and affordable pathways into the profession, and increase educator diversity. Cross-sector state teams – including Elected State Officials, State Commissioners and Superintendents, local K-12 and Higher Education Leaders, education and labor leaders, and others – came together to develop plans for further action to elevate and support the teaching profession.
LEARNING FROM EACH OTHER
At Regional Convenings, national experts, state officials, and other leaders shared strategies for addressing these three key issues, including goals and objectives behind their efforts, work with key partners to advance their plans, and lessons learned along the way.
Increasing Compensation
Teachers earn 26 percent less than their college educated peers. Increasing teacher compensation so that teachers are paid competitively is critical to addressing teacher shortages now and in the long-term. Lack of adequate planning time and opportunities to collaborate with peers, insufficient staffing levels that increase responsibilities for teachers and other staff, and a lack of agency and challenging political climate all contribute to increased teacher stress. While every state is different, there are multiple paths states can and should pursue to address these fundamental challenges and diverse state leaders and Legislators are showing that bold action is possible.
Mississippi, New Mexico, Nevada, and Maryland – which represent a diverse set of state contexts – all shared their strategies for working within their specific legal, political, and collective bargaining contexts to significantly increase educator compensation.
Maryland
Through the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, Maryland is pursuing comprehensive efforts to elevate the teaching profession, including by increasing compensation so that teacher pay is comparable to other professions with similar education requirements, establishing career ladders for teachers that provides opportunities to become teacher leaders and school administrators, and giving classroom teachers time for professional development and collaboration during the school day.
Mississippi
Mississippi Interim State Superintendent Dr. Raymond Morgigno provided welcoming remarks as leaders gathered in Jackson, MS, sharing their efforts to increase teacher compensation. In Mississippi, where minimum compensation is set at the state level, the state took bold action to increase teacher compensation by 11.4% from 2021-2022 to 2022-2023, the second largest year over year increase in the nation. These changes resulted in Mississippi’s ranking for average teacher starting pay going from 45th to 30th in the nation.
New Mexico
New Mexico Lieutenant Governor, Howie Morales, and State Secretary of Education, Dr. Arsenio Romero, welcomed participants to Albuquerque, where Dr. Romero presented on how the state increased minimum teacher salaries. Under the leadership of Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, New Mexico, which also has authority to set minimum compensation levels at the state level, took important steps to both increase pay and reduce the cost of benefits for educators. The state has increased minimum salaries at each of its three tiers of compensation (provisional, professional, and master teacher), which resulted in average teacher salaries in the state increasing by 17.2% from 2021-2022 to 2022-2023, the largest year-over-year increase in the nation.
Nevada
Under the leadership of Gov. Joe Lombardo, Nevada – where compensation is set at the district level – used a historic increase in per-pupil funding and a matching fund to support districts in collectively bargaining pay increases with their local unions. During the 2023 state legislative session, Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro was instrumental in spearheading Senate Bill 231, which provided funding for school district employee pay raises. Nevada Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jhone Ebert, and leaders from the Clark County Education Association and Nevada State Education Association presented on Nevada’s teacher pay efforts. More than half of Nevada’s counties negotiated a pay raise of at least 20%, according to the Nevada State Education Association.
Increasing Access to High-Quality and Affordable Educator Preparation
The high cost of pursuing and entering the teaching profession is also a barrier to addressing today’s educator shortage, with disproportionate impacts on individuals of color who graduate from college with more student debt than their college-educated peers. Teacher candidates need greater access to high-quality, affordable educator pathways aligned to evidence-based practices, with robust clinical experience in the classroom before becoming the teacher of record.
Nevada, Delaware, Michigan, New Mexico and the Tennessee Grow Your Own Center shared with other leaders their efforts to reduce the cost of becoming a teacher without lowering the quality of educator preparation, including by providing paid opportunities to pursue teacher certification through residency programs and registered teacher apprenticeship programs that allow candidates to earn-while-they-learn, while being supported by an expert mentor teacher. These efforts are unlocking pathways for a great number of future teachers, including paraprofessionals who bring decades of classroom experience but may face challenges or lack the resources needed to pursue their teacher certification.
Michigan
Michigan shared its investments in comprehensive strategies that address the affordability of educator preparation, both for those just beginning their preparation to become a teacher, and for current teachers with student debt. In Michigan, funding for Grow Your Own programs that maintain current high-quality standards is critical, and as State Superintendent Dr. Michael Rice said, make “clinically-centered preparation the norm, not the exception.”
Tennessee
Tennessee has been a pioneer in its leadership to expand affordable pathways into the teaching profession. The Tennessee Grow Your Own Center shared how it is supporting state leaders to expand registered apprenticeship programs for teachers.
Note: Data as of December 31, 2023
Increasing Educator Diversity
There are so many benefits to promoting a diverse and talented teaching workforce. Today, while over half of public school students are students of color, just 24% of teachers are individuals of color. Increasing educator diversity is critical to eliminating educator shortages; providing every child an outstanding educator requires recruiting and supporting teacher talent from every corner of our communities.
At the Regional Convenings, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Washington shared their work to increase educator diversity, including how these states are working to establish clear and consistent goals for educator recruitment and development, tracking progress; providing financial incentive to future educators and institutions of higher education working to increase educator diversity, including by investing in Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribally-Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs) and Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs); and supporting reforms at the school and educator preparation program level to create working environments that better recruit, support and retain diverse educators.
Illinois
Illinois State Superintendent Tony Sanders welcomed participants to Chicago, where he and his colleagues presented on their efforts to increase educator diversity, including by focusing on increasing retention rates for teachers of color, getting high school students on an early path to becoming a teacher, and increasing recruitment rates and persistence rates for students of color in educator preparation programs.
Colorado
In 2021, Colorado established a working group to develop recommendations for increasing the diversity of the educator workforce. The resulting report guided comprehensive action by the state legislature to increase educator diversity, including investments in loan forgiveness and scholarship assistance, multiple pathways into the profession, and a partnership with TEACH Colorado to cultivate and support diverse applicants in Colorado’s educator preparation programs.
STATES LEADING THE WAY
Recognizing how critical a multi-sector approach is to this work, the U.S. Department of Education structured its Regional Convenings to reflect diverse leaders and stakeholders from across the public education sector, all whom are critical to making progress to address educator shortages and elevate the teaching profession. State teams included state leadership from K-12 and higher education to the Governor’s office, including state legislatures, workforce systems, local and regional superintendents and system leaders, state Boards of Education, unions, and other key partners. During their time together, state teams worked to build their understanding of the root causes of challenges in their state related to educator compensation, high-quality and affordable educator preparation, and educator diversity, as well as identified key strategies that might help overcome these challenges.
State teams also connected with their counterparts from other states to share proven practices and lessons learned, and to collaborate in cross-state groups to learn, share, and swap insights on possible solutions to addressing the teacher shortage.
At the conclusion of each Regional Convening, states shared key strategies and next steps they were interested in pursuing. Ideas were wide ranging, from concepts for new policy and legislation, data collection and goal setting, commissions, initiatives, and tools.
We are grateful to the state and local leaders from across the country who chose to invest their time in these crucial conversations. We look forward to continued State-federal partnership and efforts to come together across diverse states and geographies to address educator shortages and elevate the teaching profession.
A special thanks to those states who shared their work at the Regional Convenings and for allowing excerpts of their presentations to be used in this blog. Thanks, as well, to the Learning Policy Institute, Branch Alliance for Educator Diversity, American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, the National Education Association, and UC Berkeley’s School of Education for sharing their expertise at these convenings. The U.S. Department of Education is especially grateful for the generous support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, who made the Regional Convenings possible.