But it’s the headline and lede from April 7, 2009.
Alarming stories about teacher shortages are nothing new. I’ve written A LOT about them over the years, going back to at least 2000. But such stories predate me, and I was able to find a warning about impending teacher shortages in The Journal of the National Education Association from October 1921.
The current panic is unusual only in its intensity. Dozens of stories about teacher shortages appear every day in local newspapers and websites. And when reports start showing up on the evening TV news and “Good Morning America,” you know it’s a national media storm.
Another unusual aspect this time is the handful of researchers and reporters fighting the wave. Chad Aldeman of the Edunomics Lab, Christine Pitts of the Center on Reinventing Public Education — both writing in The 74 — Jess Gartner of Allovue, Melissa Kay Diliberti and Heather L. Schwartz of The RAND Corp., Jill Barshay of The Hechinger Report and Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat have all questioned the crisis narrative.
Average citizens normally don’t pay too much attention to public education staffing levels. But you don’t need to delve into a lot of numbers to understand what’s happened in the last 20 years.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in fall 2000 there was one teacher for every 16 students. In fall 2019, there was one teacher for every 15.9 students.
Through wars, recessions, changes of political parties in power, changes in enrollment and every other possible variable, America’s schools still managed to provide the same ratio of teachers to students.