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Teacher Shortage Hitting Illinois School Districts Hard

Jason Nevel
Originally posted by The State Journal-Register (Springfield, Illinois), November 12, 2017

A “perfect storm” of factors—including tough licensing requirements, fears about state funding, low starting salaries, and negative perception of education—has affected the amount of vacancies in Illinois public schools. There are currently 2,013 unfilled positions in the state, including teachers, administrative staff, and school support staff, according to the Illinois State Board of Education.

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Districts Tap Paraprofessionals to Meet Demand for Special Ed Teachers

Linda Jacobson
Originally posted by EducationDIVE, October 19, 2017

“In the first year of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s STEP UP and Teach program, 150 paraprofessionals enrolled in the program, which provides up to $4,800 in tuition reimbursement, professional development and guidance from a mentor as the candidates take on more teaching responsibilities in classrooms and work toward their degree. … Many [of the] paraprofessionals come from the communities where they work, which in diverse school districts can help to increase the numbers of educators who share the same race, ethnicity and home language as the students they serve.”

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The Special Education Teacher Crisis: Who’s Teaching Our Most Vulnerable Students?

Desiree Carver-Thomas
Originally posted by the Learning Policy Institute, May 16, 2017

Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia experienced shortages of special education teachers in the 2016–17 school year. As a result, school districts have filled those vacancies with underprepared teachers. Strategic investments in evidence-based programs can alleviate this perennial shortage.

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NCES Report on Certification Status and Experience of US Public School Teachers

This report [PDF] provides a snapshot of the extent to which U.S. public school students are taught by certified and experienced teachers, including data for the subgroups of students with disabilities and English language learners. The report uses two datasets available to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES): the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

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A Coming Crisis in Teaching? Teacher Supply, Demand, and Shortages in the U.S.

Leib Sutcher, Linda Darling-Hammond, Desiree Carver-Thomas
Originally posted by the Learning Policy Institute, September 15, 2016

“Widespread media reports of local teacher shortages have become a hot topic in education since the summer of 2015. After years of teacher layoffs, districts began hiring again as the economy recovered from the Great Recession. Many were surprised to find they had serious difficulty finding qualified teachers for their positions, especially in fields like mathematics, science, special education, and bilingual education/English language development. A number of states greatly expanded emergency permits to allow hiring of untrained teachers to meet these demands—which is the classic definition of shortage. To date, however, there has not yet been a detailed national analysis of the sources and extent of these shortages, and the prognosis for the future.

This report details the outcomes of such a study, which analyzes evidence of teacher shortages, as well as national and regional trends in teacher supply and demand. Using several federal databases, the authors examine the current context and model projections of future trends under several different assumptions about factors influencing supply and demand, including new entrants, re-entrants, projected hires, and attrition rates. They also investigate policy strategies that might mitigate these effects based on research about effective approaches to recruitment and retention.”

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Solving the Teacher Shortage in Special Ed via the Web

Kimberly Beltran
Originally posted by Cabinet Report, April 18, 2016

“It is virtually possible, believes a small Austin firm, to put a highly-qualified educator in front of every student who currently doesn’t have one, including those in special education – a population that could be in the hundreds of thousands nationwide.

Virtually, because a fully-licensed and certificated teacher of record can lead, via web-conferencing, a regularly-scheduled class of students through a core subject lesson using curriculum from the pupil’s home school district.“

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Critical Shortages in Special Education Teachers. Sound Familiar?

Lynn Holdheide, and Jenny DeMonte
Originally posted by American Institutes for Research, February 17, 2016

“Teacher shortages may be the most acute problem in special education. For years, states and districts have struggled to find qualified people to teach students with disabilities… Though not a new challenge, its impact has intensified as the number of students receiving special education services has increased over the past two decades.

Part of the problem may be the recent decline in enrollment in all teacher preparation programs. And retaining special education teachers is especially challenging. Often, school administrators say, it’s difficult to keep new special education teachers for more than a few years.

What drives them out? And how can we keep them?”

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Dallas ISD and UT Dallas Team up to Tackle Teaching Shortages

Alan Cohen, Dallas Innovates
Originally posted by Dallas Innovates, December 3, 2015

“In an urban school district like Dallas ISD, many factors can result in even our youngest students exhibiting major communication and language disorders such as voice impairments, stuttering, or articulation issues that, untreated, can severely stunt a student’s learning. For decades, it has been recognized that the learning difficulties these students face can often be overcome by utilizing specialized instruction delivered by clinically trained speech language pathologists (SLPs) during the students’ most formative learning years. But over the years, it has become more and more difficult to recruit SLPs to work in urban school districts, creating a major talent shortage, which must be addressed if we want our kids to get the support they need to thrive.”

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