Day 9: Quick fix now, but we'll pay later

Today an LA Times article discusses the dropping number of students enrolling in college coursework to become teachers. Can you blame them? In the article titled Today's Teacher Layoffs Threaten Tomorrow's College Classroom, Larry Gordon explores the ever decreasing enrollment in the education departments in the state's universities.  The number of teaching credentials given out in the state has dropped 29% during the last 5 years. In addition to the increasing requirements to become a teacher, (mentioned in yesterday's blog) the continual job uncertainty and perceived stress surrounding teaching is causing people who would otherwise like to join the profession to reconsider.

You may be thinking what's the big deal? If less people become teachers then there won't be layoffs in the future. Problem solved right? Actually, not quite. One problem is that many teachers that are baby boomers are on the brink of retirement. They will soon need replacements. A second problem is that according to a study by the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, a Santa Cruz based nonprofit, the number of elementary students in the state will increase 7% by 2018 and high school enrollment will begin to increase again in 2016. So there will be a need for teachers, but after all the layoffs leading to people leaving the profession and the decrease in enrollment in the education departments at many universities, this need will potentially lead to an era of emergency credentials given to anyone willing to teach who has a college degree. So much for highly trained and prepared teachers we have been demanding for the last decade.

It was twenty years ago when there was the last shortage of teachers just like this in California. Many people were recruited from the private sector and out of state to fill the need.  However, as we continue to demoralize the educators already working within this profession how can we expect other professionals in their right minds to willing choose to enter the fray?  Without them who's going to teach the state's children?

Without trained teachers in classrooms it would not be far fetched to imagine that student performance is likely to further decline. Then, as these students progress through the grades we can count on producing less and less students prepared to move on to a university. So as we create a state with far too few teachers to adequately serve the state's students we are simultaneously disabling the future success of the state's students and therefore the state.  By creating a large class of citizenry without college educations we are continuing the growth of the state's population that is increasingly seen as unemployable. In the April 3 NPR story Measuring Joblessness Through an Educational Lens, Zoe Chance describes an economic recovery in which people with college degrees are beginning to find work, but those without one cannot. College educations are becoming more and more of a necessity for our children's future employment success. Unfortunately, at the same time that a college education is proving increasingly important, money is being cut from these institutions and teacher's are being laid off as a quick budgetary fix with no real concern for the long lasting impact this will have on the state's future workforce or productivity. 

The implications of the current situation are fairly clear. The number of students in this state is increasing. The number of people to teach them is decreasing. People without college educations are having a difficult time getting jobs. What is it about this equation that is difficult for our legislators to understand? How can this state create an effective, productive workforce of people in the future if it cannot see the benefit in investing in the people necessary to teach them now?