Right Wing Prof takes on the Teacher Shortage Crisis in this post, looking at the number of degrees awarded in eduction, both bachelor's and Master's degrees.
One think RWP doesn't mention is that the teacher shortage "crisis" is largely manufactured by teachers' unions and politicians who have made some policy decisions that exacerbate the "problem." The major policy decision is the mandate for smaller class sizes. As I have noted before, smaller class sizes carry two built in problems. The first is that you have to lower the quality of teacher candidate in order to fill all those extra teacher slots. The second is that more teachers means less pay for those teachers, even with school budgets that seem to be expanding without limit.
But there is a third consequence that feeds this hysteria. The two effects noted above also means that it becomes more difficult to find quality teachers because people with quality skills can get paid more doing other things (which is not surprising the people want to do that).
The downward pressure on the teaching profession in terms of quality personnel is now being felt because more teachers are retiring in the next five to ten years than is predicted to be replaced. The top two reasons why teachers are leaving teaching, retirement (30%) and to take another education related, but non-teaching job (29.1%). There is your teaching shortage, right there. One part general demographics (baby boomer retirements) and desire to be involved in education, but play a different role. Maybe if teaching could retain more of that 29.1 % we wouldn't have as big a shortage.
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