Again, a teacher shortage

Thursday, May 25, 2006 | 7:15 a.m.

Teacher shortages have long plagued the Clark County School District, but they seem to be hitting earlier every year. Already, district officials are looking ahead to the fall semester and sensing a shortage so severe that emergency plans are being discussed.

George Ann Rice, the district's assistant superintendent for human resources, appealed last week to school principals, asking them to forward to her office any new ideas they might have for recruiting teachers.

She is not alone in seeking creative ways to lure teachers. Districts all over the country face the same challenge. A Florida school district recently asked area clergy to urge people in their congregations to enter teaching careers.

In her memo to the principals, Rice said, "We believe that we may begin the year with over 1,000 vacancies. This is not acceptable."

She is right. That many vacancies will lead to larger class sizes, require the district to hire many long-term substitute teachers, possibly force the reassignment of hundreds of needed trainers to general classrooms and result in many teachers leading classes for which they have had little time to prepare.

The projected shortage is not the result of recruiting cutbacks. Rice, in her memo, says the district actually doubled the amount of recruiting trips this year and that it also doubled the number of people assigned to processing the applications.

And yet the district received 839 fewer applications than last year, and is projecting a shortage that exceeds last year's by more than 700. What is at work here?

We believe the problem to be largely rooted in national and local policies. At the national level, educational mandates take much of the joy out of teaching. Teachers must follow guidelines that leave little room for individual creativity. If students don't achieve at preset levels, no matter their circumstances, the teacher is held responsible.

Federal policy holds that teachers, not parents, not social environments, not underfunded schools, are responsible if children do not meet academic expectations.

On the local level, and not just in Nevada, schoolteachers are seen not as the protectors and providers of our future, but as government employees who should be paid as little as the market will bear. As a consequence, the market is shrinking.

Students are not going into teaching in the numbers they used to, and many teachers are retiring early or leaving the profession after two or three years.

For more students to enter teaching, the federal and state governments have to begin not only improving the teaching environment but also the rewards that accompany this vital field.