RALEIGH – North Carolina policymakers and educators are debating ways to combat what they call a teacher-shortage “crisis” in the state, but a new report from the John Locke Foundation questions the extent and source of the problem.
Dr. Karen Palasek, a policy analyst at the Raleigh-based think tank, compared recent projections of school-enrollment trends produced by state and federal officials and found some surprising and dramatic differences. In her new Spotlight briefing paper, entitled “Truth on Teacher Shortage,” she wrote that Gov. Mike Easley’s prediction of “exponential growth” in public-school enrollment – offered as a justification for new teacher-recruitment incentives and initiatives – was “so far unsupported by the official national data.”
According to projections from the National Center for Education Statistics, enrollment in North Carolina public schools will begin to decline after 2007 and reach 1,304,000 by 2013, a net decline of about 21,000 students. Demographic changes appear to be the most important factor explaining the trend, Palasek wrote. Teacher-turnover rates have also declined in recent years, and do not appear to be substantially different from rates of job change in other, comparable professions.
Previous John Locke Foundation research has shown that North Carolina’s public-school teachers already earn substantially more than the national average, when properly measured or compared with other industries and professions.
“Clamor about an emergency situation regarding schools and teaching staff in North Carolina makes good media and political fodder, not necessarily a good guide to policy,” Palasek wrote.
She did note that many school systems were finding it difficult to fill particular teaching slots, especially for subjects such as math and science, and that policies such as the governor’s class-size reductions and President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act had increased the need to recruit teachers.
Furthermore, the problem of attracting teachers to particular schools, grades, or subject areas is largely a consequence of rigid pay scales that do not allow compensation to differ substantially based on school needs or the performance of individual teachers, Palasek wrote, arguing for a more market-based approach that would allow districts and school principals to differentiate pay to address their specific needs.
“Clearly teacher recruitment and retention is a challenge that will always have to be met,” Palasek wrote, but “the data do not suggest that there is a teacher crisis in North Carolina.”
The Spotlight paper is available on the John Locke Foundation’s website.