“A March 2022 survey from the National Education Association (NEA) showed that more than half of teachers (55%) intend to leave the profession earlier than they planned.” Consider the impact this will mean for our students and what can be done about it.
School Safety Concerns Turning Educators Away
According to the study above in Yahoo Finance, “90% of teachers are saying they’re really thinking about what happened in Uvalde and what that means for them,” said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. In a quick summary, what happened in Uvalde was that 19 students and 2 teachers were killed by an 18-year-old on May 24 at an elementary school in Texas.
Regardless of the current legislative debate on gun laws and other precautions, the impact is being seen on educators today. They are fearful they may not be able to protect their own physical safety, much less their students. This, among other factors, is turning away compassionate and qualified teachers from pursuing this profession. A teacher shortage will be on the rise as they pursue safer options like online tutoring or curriculum development. Although no one is saying tutoring will ever be a full replacement for traditional education, implementing quality tutoring partners in school districts can help students who are struggling and eliminate some of the stress on teachers. With a limited number of teachers applying to formal teaching positions, tutoring with an outsourced company could really help out.
Staff Vacancies Limit Student Learning Opportunities
Another factor turning teachers away from continuing to work in US classrooms is the rate of pay for teachers. According to Axios News, the, “wage gap between teachers and the rest of the comparably educated workforce was about 21% in 2018,” compared to 6% in 1996. And it’s only been growing since. Schools are seeing more unfilled positions than ever before, and are recognizing that “any unfilled position has the potential to undermine students’ opportunity to learn.”
Superintendents have even gotten to the point of having to step in helping in classrooms. The shortage due to the wage gap means different things for different districts. For some there is a physical gap in teachers they can hire, for others, administrators are just struggling to find quality candidates to fill necessary roles. Either way, students of affected grades or class subjects are suffering from having inexperienced or unmotivated educators. The only long-term solution, besides better local and national budgeting to pay teachers more as they’ve been asking for years, is to supplement student education. This could look like helping fill the gaps of what education a full staff of quality educators with summer courses or school-year tutoring.
Weaving tutoring options into your district’s curriculum helps address all facets of how teachers are stressed and struggling. From current safety issues to economic recession concerns and burnout from remote adoption, educators are more than excited about quality options that will help give students the same, if not better, quality of education they’ve had in decades past. As years progress, education should too.
Be Better
See how your district can take advantage of creating equity in education with comprehensive data-driven online tutoring at https://intervenek12.com/. Intervene K-12 has tutors available now to tutor students in the classroom supporting teachers in a variety of subject areas.