ARTICLES
The Teaching Profession in 2021 (in Charts), Madeline Will, Education Week, December 20, 2021.
Teachers contemplating leaving the profession existed pre-pandemic. Need for support is not new.
“Compassion Fatigue is Overwhelming Educators during the Pandemic,” Shayla Ewing , Education Week, June 04, 2021.
Teachers are having difficulty supporting others when they themselves need support.
“As Pandemic Upends Teaching, Fewer Students Want to Pursue It,” Emma Goldberg, The New York Times, March 27, 2021.
“Stress Topped the Reasons Why Public School Teachers Quit, Even Before COVID-19,” Melissa Kay Diliberti, Heather L. Schwartz, David Grant. Rand Corp Report, Education & Labor, 2021.
“Is Teaching Still an Appealing Profession? A Growing Teacher Shortage Worries Experts,” Stephen Noonoo, EdSurge, Mar 4, 2021
“Substitute teacher crisis forces districts to turn to local businesses and recent grads,” Barbara Shelly, The Hechinger Report, Feb 28, 2021
“Pay Hikes for Special Ed, Hawaiian Language, Rural School Teachers Start on Tuesday,” Ashley Mizuo, Hawaiian Public Radio, Jan 6, 2020
Evidence of offering financial incentives to attract teachers to rural areas.
“Enrollment in Teacher-Preparation Programs is Declining Fast. Here’s What the Data Show,” Madeline Will, Education Week, Dec 3, 2019
Decline from 2000-2018 is down by one-third. Leveled off in 2016. Completion rate of education programs is down 28%. Bright spot for bilingual and ELL.
“Quiz Yourself: How much do you know about the teacher shortage?” David Rosenzweig, Education Week, Dec 4, 2019
“Remedying the Teacher Shortage by Diagnosing Why a Shortage Exists,” Debra Meyer, Elmhurst College Blog
This is a response to the Greene article immediately below. It includes a perhaps helpful description of why young people might not currently want to be teachers. The author agrees with Greene that the cranking out of more teachers should not be the goal and that looking at why individuals might pass up teaching will be more helpful. They both maintain that making the qualifications less stringent will not help unless that is why young people are not interested
“We Need to stop talking about the teacher shortage,” Peter Greene, Forbes, November 2019
Explains that this is not a shortage like a shortage of cars or corn or even of educated people, but rather young people are choosing other careers and public officials are offering the wrong solutions in an attempt to “churn out” more teachers, for example the lowering of standards.
Release of the report of the Modern Language Association (MLA) June 2019. See the Final Report.
The news was the 9.2% drop in enrollments at the college level, however this decline was mitigated by the 45.5% of programs that were stable or had a small increase. The number of programs that were lost for French were substantial, but the innovation going on in some programs is promising.
“Education Reform as We Know It is Over. What have we learned?” Van Shoales, Education Week, Apr 25, 2019
Mainly about shortcoming of education reform but contains an admission that teachers have been targeted unfairly with a consequent reduction in morale. This can be seen as a contributor to the decline in interest in education as a career.
“The teacher shortage is real, large and growing, and worse than we thought,” Emma Garcia and Elaine Weiss, The Economic Policy Institute, Mar 26, 2019
“Facing reality: A survey of methods instructors’ perspective on world language teacher development,” Garcia PA, Moser KM, Davos-Wiley P. Foreign Language Annals, 2019; 52: 165-183, Dec 2018
“Enrollment is Down at Teacher Colleges. So They’re Trying to Change,” Madeline Will, Education Week, Aug 9, 2018
Mentions that decline even higher for those studying to be a teacher after getting an undergraduate degree.
“Foreign Language Enrollments Drop Sharply,” Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Education, Mar 7, 2018.
“Teacher Recruitment and Retention: It’s Complicated,” Deborah Viadero, Education Week, Jan 23, 2018
“Foreign-Language Courses Plummet in Oklahoma. what About Other States?” Stephen Sawchuk, Education Week, Jan 4, 2018
Decline in K-12 enrollment in OK.
“Degrees in French, German, Italian, and Spanish language and literature conferred by postsecondary institutions, by level of degree: Selected years, 1949-50 through 2014-2015,” IES NCES National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Jan 2017.
Change in B.A. French degrees from 2004-05 to 2009-2010 = +3.9
Change in B.A. French degrees form 2009-10 to 2014-15 = -23
“Foreign Language ’emergency’ hinders economic and foreign policy, report warns,” Alex Zietlow, Washington Post, Jun 15, 2017
Refers to report of the Academy of Arts and Science which indicates that 44% of states have shortages of WL teachers. Full report
“Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education, Summer 2016- and Fall 2016: Preliminary Report,” Looney, Dennis; Lusin, Natalia, Modern Language Association, Feb 2018
Enrollment drop at college level
“The Future of Work is Uncertain. Schools should Worry Now.” Benjamin Herold, Education Week, Sept 26, 2017
Interesting estimates of what job will be increasing taken over by robots. The chart showing Elementary and Secondary Level Teachers indicated that they would be very unlikely to be replaced by automation.
“The National K-12 Foreign Language Enrollment Survey,” June 2017
This report is sponsored by The Language Flagship at the Defense Language and National Security Education Office (DLNSEO), conducted and published by American Councils for International Education in partnership with the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), and the Modern Language Association (MLA), and in collaboration with the National Council of State Supervisors for Languages (NCSSFL). The Institute of International Education (IIE) administered the DLNSEO grant in cooperation with Bryn Mawr College.