Apr 25, 2023 2 min read

State legislators conducted a hearing recently on the growing shortage of public school teachers, but failed to address their own policy failures that help to drive it.

The Penn State Center for Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis has found that 4,220 prospective teachers graduated from college after the 2021-2022 school year, one of the lowest numbers on record. There were fewer new graduates than the number of uncertified teachers working that year with emergency permits, 6,336.

Just a decade ago, in 2013, 16,000 new prospective teachers were ready to enter classrooms.

Some legislators and the Shapiro administration have proposed incentives such as student loan forgiveness, raising the minimum beginning salary from the current abysmal $18,500 to $50,000, mentorship and retention programs in districts with high turnover, and more.

During the House Education Committee hearing this week, several lawmakers contended that teaching already is a good job, citing time off and guaranteed pensions, and blamed teachers unions for workplace tension and low morale.

Those unions sometimes are their own worst enemies, but they are not the state policymakers and local districts responsible for school funding and administration.

While lawmakers ponder new policy to mitigate the shortage, they also should ponder how existing policy, for which they are responsible, has contributed to it.

The Commonwealth Court found in January, for example, that the Legislature violates the state constitution by inequitably distributing nearly $8 billion in state funding. Yet lawmakers have not even proposed an equitable plan.

Likewise, legislators have failed to correct a funding policy that provides charter schools with windfalls at the expense of conventional public schools.

Many lawmakers also focus on nonexistent or near-nonexistent “problems” such as “critical race theory,” transgender student accommodations and “dangerous” books, for their own political purposes. Doing so has created hostile atmospheres in many districts that add to existing low teacher morale from working, often, in substandard facilities with limited resources.

It shouldn’t be surprising that some lawmakers’ open warfare on public education has produced collateral damage in teachers’ retirements and resignations.

There is a great deal that lawmakers can do to alleviate the teacher shortage, but it has to begin with their own commitment to the very idea of public education.