In less than a decade, enrollment in primary and secondary education
programs at American colleges and universities has plunged by 42
percent, while those filling the spots are increasingly identified as
bottom-tier graduates. The impact on the future of public education
could be devastating.
There are a lot of reasons which
could help to explain the sudden drop, as well as the flight of upper-echelon students away from the field. Teacher pay has long been
identified as a factor prohibitive to attracting the best talent to the
profession, but despite shrinking state and local budgets having kept
public sector salaries stagnant in the recent past, that argument
probably isn’t as strong as it once was.
In Florida, the median first-year income for any college graduate with a bachelor’s degree is only $26,500. In Manatee County, first year teachers with a bachelor’s
degree start off at around $39,000–and that’s for 10 months, rather than
12–making the profession one of the better paying ones at the onset. In
fact, when annualized, it’s actually slightly better than the average first-year salary of a Florida attorney.
Teacher
pay in Manatee tops out at $65,000 per 10 months, while a 12-month move
to administration can mean significantly more, with high school
principals earning over $110,000 annually, which is considerably higher than the
average compensation for an experienced attorney in Manatee, which is
only around $84,000. That might not put you on the Forbes list, but in a
county where the median household income is under $40k, it’s also
nothing to sneeze at.
Teachers have long argued that additional
responsibilities like grading papers, holding parent conferences and
attending after school events made for much more demand on time than
most jobs, but technology-driven changes along with increased
competition in the modern workplace have left few professions in which
longer hours and outside the workday emails, texts and video
conferencing aren’t equally or more intensive. While the benefits for teachers
have indeed shrunk in recent years, they’ve definitely held up better
than the private sector and things like comparatively-inexpensive health
care, defined-benefit pensions at retirement, along with federal
holidays and summers off should be enough to draw more talented high
school students to the field.
Let me emphasize that my intent is not to
argue that teachers have it easy or are overpaid, but to challenge the
reflexive notion that pay is the primary driver that is suppressing interest. In a
hyper-competitive American workforce ravaged by automation and
outsourcing, I’d argue that the upsides I’ve listed should be
making education a more popular major, not the other way around. So,
what's to blame for the decline? Several factors, most likely.
First,
it bears noting that perhaps the biggest blow to the profession over
the long term has been the ancillary effect of other professions
becoming less male dominated. For a very long time, the most common
field that a female high school valedictorian would enter was teaching.
Gender-based discrimination and the boys clubs that resulted everywhere
from law firms to board rooms to surgical centers and engineering labs
had the effect of creating an intellectually-inflated teaching field
dominated by high-performing female students who chose a career there
largely because of the lack of equal opportunity elsewhere. As the tail
end of teachers who were so directed into the field retired over the
last two decades, it had a noticeable impact.
More recently,
however, the shift toward a stubborn reliance on standardized tests that
are increasingly attached to every performance metric a teacher is
judged by has certainly dampened enthusiasm, while having the additional
negative consequence of dis-incentivizing the best teachers from going
where they are needed most. When everything from keeping your job to
getting a raise or promotion largely hinges on factors you have very
limited influence over (parental involvement, English proficiency, learning disabilities,
poverty, etc.), it can give second thoughts to career decisions while
also tempering the appetite to try to make a difference among challenged
populations in troubled districts.
Pinellas County has had well-documented struggles in attracting and retaining quality teachers and has responded with some of the most generous recruitment packages in the field. It’s an occupation with tremendous
demand both there and in neighboring Hillsborough County, where
compensation and incentives also reflect that dynamic. Yet, the
University of South Florida, a top producer of new teachers in those
counties, has seen enrollment in teaching programs drop by 40 percent
over the past seven years.
Another factor to consider is the
dismal outlook for the teaching profession in the foreseeable future.
With many states, including Florida, making a strong push to shift
public funding toward charters (where pay and benefits are usually less
than public schools), there is little reason for an 18 year-old to see
much changing for the better over the course of their career, should
they choose teaching. There’s also the push for increasing and expanding
the use of vouchers, which creates similar concerns.
As
these dynamics continue to reshape the field, we should expect the top
talent that does enter it to increasingly look toward elite private
academies, well-resourced public schools in the wealthier districts of
progressive states and unique-population charters, while the struggling
public schools try to make due with a shrinking pool of less talented
applicants governing an increasingly challenged population of students.
The long-term consequences would likely be to compound the existing
problem, increase the calls for more of our current solutions (ie.
more vouchers and charters, including the for-profit variety) and see the field
increasingly filled by those with the least attractive prospects. In
other words, the death knell of public education as we know it.
A
high-quality, free public education has long been at the cornerstone of
our society and its economic prowess. This precipitous fall off in
interest to enter the education field should be seen as a troubling sign
and prompt serious debate over how to address what could become a
crippling shortage of quality teachers in the not so distant future.
Dennis
Maley is a featured columnist and editor for The Bradenton Times. His
Sunday opinion column deals with issues of local concern. He is the
author of the novel, A Long Road Home, and the short story collection,
Casting Shadows, which can be ordered in paperback here, or in the Amazon Kindle store here.
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