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The 10th in our 12-ish days of Christmas series, intended to bring gifts to education reformers everywhere!

by Dave Saba

“Your teachers teach!”

What a great statement from Texas Serenity Academy about teachers they received from the Teachers of Tomorrow alternative certification program. There are over 3.5 million teachers in schools today and many are doing an incredible job teaching America’s students. They challenge their students to learn while at the same time meeting the growing bureaucratic needs of an ever-expanding central office.

But PISA scores show that we must do better. We are too good to be 15th in reading, 35th in math and 18th in science.

Teachers have the greatest impact on student learning and yet our teaching pipeline is dry. Over the past 10 years the number of students selecting education as their major has dropped from 9.9 percent to 4.2 percent. Right now there are 116,000 openings in schools and it is only getting worse.

Some argue that there isn’t a teacher shortage and we have produced the right number of teachers. They argue that the problem is that too many are just not teaching, or don’t teach the right subjects or don’t want to teach in the right geography and they would be correct. They say we need to keep more great teachers in the classroom and they are right.  But if you are the HR person tasked with putting the right talent in front of a classroom full of kids, you absolutely know there is a shortage of great people who teach.

There is hope.  By increasing the number of onramps to teaching, we can ensure that HR has the right talent to put in front of those students. With opening up pathways that get the right teachers teaching, we can improve outcomes for all students!

Dave Saba is Chief Development Officer of Teachers of Tomorrow.