Teacher shortage leaves many rural and minority students without teachers, as administrators struggle to fill positions

Teacher shortages leave students learning via software or on their
own in Rosedale, Miss. (Photo by Rory Doyle, The Washington Post)

To raise educated citizens, the U.S. needs good teachers, but from state to state, the system is falling short with rural and minority students, and "rural and Southern states face a crisis," reports The Washington Post.

"The nature and the severity of the teacher crisis differ radically from state to state, district to district and even school to school," Moriah Balingit writes. "Some districts have only recently started experiencing teacher shortages, but in many Southern states, the problem has been long-standing and only gotten worse. . . . In rural Mississippi, the geometry teacher is a recording. The chemistry students often teach themselves."

Balingit uses West Bolivar High School in Mississippi as an example: "The school is 98 percent Black, and 100 percent of children qualify for free or reduced-price meals," and keeping the school staffed is a "high-wire balancing act that relies on long-term substitutes, virtual classes and hiring educators to teach subjects they have no training in. Before Supt. Will Smith arrived, the district had hired so many uncertified educators that it risked losing accreditation." Will Smith asked Balingit, “It’s not fair, but what else do we have?”

Balingit writes: "The importance of teachers cannot be underestimated. Research suggests that they matter more to a child’s learning than any other school-based factor, including the condition of the school building or the principal. Teachers not only affect academic achievement, they can also influence the likelihood a child will graduate from high school and how much they’ll learn over the course of their lives, researchers found. For children whose teachers are underqualified, inexperienced or nonexistent, the stakes are high. . . . Researchers have found that schools that serve high percentages of minority students and students in poverty have more difficulty finding and retaining qualified educators than whiter, more affluent schools."

The national teacher shortage began after the "2008 Great Recession, when the nation’s public education system lost more than 120,000 teachers," Belingit reports. "When the economy rebounded and schools started hiring again, they found that many of those who had left were reluctant to return. There have been other factors, too: The number of people entering teacher training programs dropped by about one-third between 2008 and 2019."

Rosedale, Mississippi (Wikipedia map)

A teacher shortage meant states needed to offer greater salaries; however, "Two years ago, Mississippi came in dead last in average teacher pay, according to a National Education Association report, at a little less than $47,000 a year," Balingit reports. And schools like West Bolivar became "like a lot of communities in the region, the county is rich in culture, history and community pride but economically poor, having lost population when manufacturing jobs left and agriculture became more automated. Those who remain send their children to deteriorating schools that their districts struggle to run because of a dwindling tax base and a state legislature reluctant to fund schools at the per-student rate the law is supposed to guarantee."

For school administrators, teacher recruitment and student achievement are ongoing stressors. Smith told Balingit: “When you get that email, you’re jumping. You have to quickly call the candidate and have a talk before they get hired by somebody else. . . . At the end of the day, you’re still expected to produce the results. None of the excuses are going to matter.”