12. The Man Who Studied The Size of the Mess: An Interview with Dr. Paul Bruno

In this podcast episode, Trina introduces an episode recorded with Amanda and Dr. Paul Bruno, co-author of a critical article on the teacher shortage crisis. She discusses the major findings of Dr. Bruno's article, emphasizing the chaos in data reporting and the challenges it brings to understanding the true scope of the teacher shortage. 

Dr. Paul Bruno provides nuanced insights into how teacher vacancies and lack of veteran teachers particularly impact student learning. The podcast delves into the methodology Dr. Bruno used in his research, challenges in collecting reliable data, and how local control in the education system complicates efforts to quantify and solve the shortage problem. Dr. Bruno suggests targeted solutions and improved data collection to address the issues effectively.

In the interview, Trina and Dr. Bruno exchange thoughts on the necessity and efficacy of teacher preparation programs, the impact of local control on K-12 educational governance, and potential solutions like differential pay for hard-to-staff positions and promoting teacher leadership. They conclude with a call to recognize and address the highly localized nature of teacher shortages and their profound impact on disadvantaged students.

00:00 Introduction and Episode Context

00:29 Teacher Shortage Crisis Overview

01:33 Challenges in Data and Accountability

02:23 Debating the Terms: Shortage vs. Crisis

05:06 Impact of Teacher Shortages on Students

07:50 Special Education and Teacher Ratios

09:33 Veteran Teachers and Retention Issues

13:18 Introducing Dr. Paul Bruno

14:11 Dr. Bruno's Background and Research

16:52 Understanding the Teacher Shortage

32:01 Methodology and Data Collection

45:08 Teacher Turnover and Certification Concerns

46:06 Impact of Overseas Hiring on Teacher Numbers

47:13 Teacher Roles and Class Sizes

48:55 Veteran Teacher Retention Issues

50:25 Challenges in Teacher Credentialing

59:49 Data Availability on Teacher Shortages

01:05:59 Local Control and Its Impact on Data

01:08:20 Proposed Solutions for Teacher Shortages

01:23:23 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

Visit teachershortagecrisis.com to join the movement of teachers speaking up about the mess in K-12 Education in the United States. 

www.teachershortagecrisis.com
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Transcript

  Hello, everyone. It's Trina. I'm here today introducing an episode that I recorded about a week ago with Amanda and Dr. Paul Bruno, one of the co authors of the article that I talk about that attempts to quantify the sheer numbers of the teacher shortage crisis. And if you haven't listened to that episode, you should listen to that one first, because this episode is a follow up continuation and reaction episode to that one.

But the major findings of Dr. Paul Bruno's article was that, yeah, we do have a teacher shortage problem, but the bigger takeaway is that the data is a mess here, and that just intersects perfectly and beautifully with all of the problems that we discuss in All the thematic themes in our teacher shortage crisis podcast because of local control and what we mean by local control is micro local control each district operates as its own little kingdom and island and really only beholden to school board members and school boards are  kind of cloaked.

I mean, people barely even know who their school board members are, and they are not experts in our field, and they don't have our degrees and nor our expertise, and so they're certainly not presently teaching.  Um, and that's, that's the problem. And so since nobody's accountable To reporting some of this stuff,  uh, coherently and consistently.

We just don't know the extent of the problem. But, in this episode, Paul and I both challenge each other a little bit. And we have a firm, uh, mutual respect for each other. But we've both come at this problem from different perspectives. And I'm really excited to Play this episode for you because there's a robust and nuanced conversation about the shortage crisis And he has agreed to come on and speak about more topics right now he's really interested in how teacher pay might be intersecting with this issue and He's been asked repeatedly, you know, what are the impacts of the shortage on teachers?

Student learning and these are both topics that we've explored extensively in the in the podcast But it's not the same as a scholarly article, you know  Challenging in this episode you're about to hear is really about a couple of things. So Paul takes issue Ironically enough with the terms shortage and crisis And he has his good reasons for that.

Shortage is problematic, and a bit it's about semantics, because each district sort of thinks about what is a shortage in a different way. Is it a vacancy that's not filled? Is it an underqualified teacher that's being hired to fill a vacancy? And what do we mean by underqualified? Because Paul and I both agree that the standards that we place upon a lot of the states To hire a quote unquote qualified teacher a lot of it's hoop jumping and it's not good predictors of future teacher efficacy.

So shortage is problematic. But crisis, I disagree with him on this. It is a crisis. And he sort of pushes back on that word because  he's had this experience that honestly I have too, with the press misrepresenting what is going on with the problem to the public. So they show up the press. The beginning of each school year, you know, open up a can of worms, light fire on it and, and say the U.

S. schools are a disaster and the teacher shortage crisis is, you know, an epidemic and then walk away from it and then, you know, refrain from fully peeling back the layers of that onion and really seeing what's really going on here. And Paul's  position here is that he is concerned about. A very concerted effort in the political world of the United States that would be very happy to take that crisis word run with it and use it as an excuse to dismantle education, K 12 education in the public sector.

You know, forever,  like completely dismantle the US Department of Education, and there's already talk about that now,  so he is very cautious about us adding fuel to a fire that could lead to the dismantling of public education altogether, which that's not what I want. You know, it's as critical as I am of Horace Mann who set this thing up in the 1830s.

I respect that guy. He wanted free, secular, public education for all of America's youth because we are a democracy and we've got to be literate and we've got to be educated so that we're not duped and we can vote in our own best interests.  So I understand all of that of what Paul is saying, but you know, he's no longer in the classroom.

And so he's not able to see the impact the way that Jess, Amanda, and I, and all of the teachers out there are seeing it. And one of the things he, he admittedly has, doesn't have the knowledge right now on the impact of teacher shortages on kids. And that is something that we talk about a lot in this series.

In particular, we talk about the impact on reading opportunity gaps. In U. S. education and just how it's impacted are already really pronounced a literacy problem in the United States, but he says that he makes the statement. Okay. And so I researched his comments before I recorded this intro. He said that in the United States today we have the lowest student to teacher ratio that we've ever had.

And we have the most teachers we've ever had. So he says that at the same time as he acknowledges there are not enough teachers.  to fill the positions we have open. And he did mention that he thinks this high number student to teacher ratio may have something to do with the fact that we've hired a lot of teachers who don't have traditional classroom cohorts of kids.

So they're working with very small populations of students or none at all because they're mentors or coaches. And I did some thinking and I did some reflecting and I did some reading and he's absolutely right about that. And he is the one. who, in his paper, argued for a nuanced perspective of the data.

And he argued for the application of a ratio in understanding the real impact of the vacancies on the ground floor for the kids. So in his article, he's saying, like, look, if you just look at the raw numbers of vacancies in a district, to the extent that you're able to see that number because it's so hidden in a lot of places, but if you just look at that and you don't appreciate the overall population of that neighborhood, The overall number of students in that district, you might get a very incorrect idea about which districts and states or municipalities are most impacted by shortages.

And he's right. So in that instance, you absolutely need to look at a ratio, right? But when you are looking at the student to teacher ratios, that's where you need to Take the ratio out of the equation, because if we want to look at how many teachers there are per students in a regular general education classroom, it's almost impossible to do that.

Because if you ask teachers today, they're going to say, uh, you know, I have friends who have been teaching for decades in the profession, that they had far smaller classes decades ago.  Right, but what Paul's saying is that there are more teachers today, and lower student to teacher ratio, so how can that be?

Well, it's pretty simple. And I learned about this researching the special education episode you're going to hear later down the line. Special education in the United States is very new. Relatively new. It only really began in earnest in the 80s, so if you like do research on student to teacher ratios in the 50s when they were at their highest, something like 26 students to every one teacher, and you look at them now at their lowest, something like 15 and a half students per teacher.

What's changed in those  years is the installation of special education. Those, uh, the laws that rest upon special education passed in the 70s. And it took a number of years for us to create the systems, and I argue that they are oppressive systems, and oppressive for kids, oppressive for special education teachers, oppressive for general education teachers.

Has it done more harm than good? No. I think in general, special education has helped more than it's hurt. But special education teachers have much. Smaller caseloads. Sometimes only four or five students. Sometimes even less than that. Amanda has an ELD class right now, and that's English Language Development of only two kids.

And so I want to make that very clear here. Our class sizes are not smaller.  They are not. And if you or anybody you know can get me some scholarly literature on gen ed sizes over, historically over the past few decades, Please show me because simply looking at student to teacher ratios involves adding up the kids at a school, adding up the teachers at a school as a total number, and then doing a division problem.

And that's not the way to look at this problem. It just isn't. The other thing that's missing from this conversation is is a nuanced take on the lack of veteran teachers in a space. Because brand new teachers, and Paul says he's met some that were not done with their credential coursework that he would have been proud to be as good as.

And I certainly have too. I have. But that is anecdotal. And it doesn't get to the heart of the matter of the lack of veteran teachers. In spaces, there are certain spaces where if you are not veteran enough, you are doing harm. And I mentioned this in the meat of the episode when we talk about the reading opportunity gap.

And I think that's something that maybe Paul and I should talk more about because I know he's really motivated to learn more about the impacts of shortages on student learning. Because not only is like if you have no filled position in a first or second grade classroom, then that's bad. But it's also bad if you have somebody who's just starting their credential coursework in a first or second grade classroom.

And it's also bad if they're brand new. And highly qualified, quote unquote highly qualified, because you can only know how to teach reading through experience. And there are a lot of kids who are suffering through year after year and the foundations of reading years with nothing but brand new teachers. 

The nuance about veteran teachers and the absence of veteran teachers in some of these most essential spaces, Like also in special education because it's so much work to do those, do that duty, to do that job that the lack of a veteran teacher in those spaces is harming students too. And so last, I think, in this conversation is  how do we keep the teachers we have,  right?

Because a little bit, We're talking about just getting people in these classrooms to teach and not appreciating that it takes a long time to get good at this job. And we are losing too many teachers because the job is untenable. Like you get really good around year 10, year 11, but we're losing too many teachers around year 5 or 6.

And so the lack of veteran teachers in our profession, the lack of enough of us.  That is not discussed in this episode. And so I think I want to challenge Paul to come back on and talk more about that. Because I would. want to have that conversation with no other person than him. That is how much I respect him.

So I hope you enjoyed this episode. 

Does the future of our nation and the world keep you up at night? Are you worried that today's kids won't be able to lead our nation through the troubles ahead? Well, so are we. We are creating a real discussion of what is actually causing a teacher shortage crisis. Because we know that this crisis Is an existential threat.

So we are forcefully inserting teachers' voices into the conversation to tell you the whole story. Because after years of watching decision makers who aren't even teachers, make all the wrong choices. We have turned into whistleblowers. K 12 education is a mess. So we can either listen to teachers and clean it up or watches our democracy crumbles.

It's the Teacher Shortage Crisis podcast. 

Hello everyone. Trina and I. are so thrilled because today we have Dr. Paul Bruno from the University of Illinois who wrote a very important paper that documents is there a national teacher shortage and How do we find out and where are the numbers? Where's the statistics? And he's done so much research digging into this topic.

And we're just so thrilled to have him here today. And thank you. Thank you, Paul, for being here today with us. And I just want to start us off by asking you about your background as an educator. So yeah, go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself.  Yeah, absolutely. Um, thank you for having me. Um, uh, I think this will be a fun conversation.

Um, so I, uh, I got started in education. I was a middle school, a science teacher, um, in Oakland and then in Los Angeles, California. Um, and The, and that is for, um, five years, um, I think, uh, and, you know, over that time, uh, I started to, I moved around between a couple of schools for my, my family. And, uh, so I was interested in education at the time, but moving between schools, I also started to get more interested in  like education policy and education administration because, um, I was sort of struck, maybe I was naive, but I was sort of struck a little bit between how different, uh, with how different my experiences were as a teacher.

In the different schools that I worked in as I went from one to another, and for example, you know, and there were things that I, you know,  I turned out I felt very strongly about and that were very different across these different schools, and I started to be more and more interested in, like, why the different schools I was in, even though they were all in California, for example,  you know, seem to have very different levels of resources and to be run very different administratively.

And so I became sort of interested in those things.  Um, which eventually led me to, to pursue, um, those kinds of issues in, uh, in my PhD program. So I went back to, to grad school, um, at the University of Southern California and then to study, um, what at the time I think they were calling urban education policy.

Um, but, uh, I got my PhD in that officially. Uh, and, um, Started to study and now study, um, uh, issues of personnel administration. So things like teacher hiring and assignment and compensation and school finance issues. Um, and now, uh, so now, yeah, as you mentioned, I'm at the university of Illinois, um, in Urbana Champaign, um, where I'm an assistant professor of education policy organization and leadership.

And now I still, you know, those are still the things that I study. And also those are the things that I teach. Um, I teach mostly in our administrator endorsement programs where I teach things like school finance.  Thank you for that. Um, I didn't realize that you, the impetus to get you into leadership was noticing how disparate the experiences were from district to district, even within the same state because that was my experience and Amanda's as well.

And even Jess our other co host and I don't think. Moving districts to that extent is, is very common in education because of years of service, it kind of traps you in a place, which is a shame because you do get a really interesting perspective when you see how different things are and the way in which people think about and talk about what's going on and prioritize things is very different from place to place.

So I think that's really cool that you came into this kind of thinking the same way that we did. So my question for you, Paul, is  When and why did you first become interested in the teacher shortage crisis? Because for me, it was me working on these really big foundational problems, and then noticing that It was stemming from a lack of teacher autonomy and the bigger umbrella problem was the teacher shortage issues.

So how did you become involved in it?  Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a little bit of a roundabout road and I think, you know, to a large extent, a lot of my research interests can be summed up as just me being very easy to persuade that something is interesting. And then other people, you know,  there being other people I want to work with and them convincing me that I should pursue things.

So, I mean, I think, you know, probably started a little bit when I was, um, In, uh, graduate school and some of my research with my advisor was with the Los Angeles Unified School District, um, their teacher hiring processes.  Um, and starting to get a sense of sort of how different hiring might look for different kinds of positions, for example, and so particularly in a place as large as Los Angeles, you know, for different school, you know, they've got something like 1000 schools or something. 

Um, and so thinking about how different how to how do you do administer hiring processes in a place where it can be so diverse in terms of what the supply of teachers looks like that might really affect what you do. Um. And, uh, then, um, so I started to get sort of interested in issues of sort of addressing, you know, teacher labor market.

Things generally and thinking about how do schools make sure they have enough people to select from when they're hiring so that they're getting that the candidates that they want.  And so that's where I started to get interested in their issues like compensation and teacher licensure  and things like that.

And then, you know, coming to Illinois, it turned out Illinois had some of the best data publicly available data on school staff vacancies. Um, in the country that I started to sort of look into, um, and then, uh, so I'd started to look at sort of issues of teacher shortages in Illinois, um, and then I'd also made some connections to my co authors on, um, another paper, um, that I think the one you were originally interested in, and that I think you, you covered in a, in a previous episode very, uh, very effectively.

Um, you know, uh, the lead author on that paper, um, is Tuan, a friend of mine now, um, and he and I had become, um, friendly at a conference, and he wanted to work together, and I was excited to work with him, and we had similar interests on teacher shortages, and he was interested in maybe something a little broader than Illinois.

Um, and so, uh, he invited me to collaborate with him on that. And then it turns out it's also, you know,  sometimes things like this tend to spiral. Uh, and so, um, once I had started to dig into the Illinois data and,  you know, working on the national, um, paper, um, then people also wanted to sort of have conversations about it and talk about it.

And that's sort of one thing led to another, and now it's a big chunk of, um, of my time, but that was a long answer. But. Was it an effective answer? Did I answer the question? You did, and I loved it because it reminds me,  maybe a little less, um, formal, but it reminds me a lot of the process by which this podcast got started.

Like, it was informal conversations between Amanda and I, of just, like, connecting dots. You know, and putting together pieces of our experience and pieces of my scholarship when I was getting my admin credential and Masters of Ed leadership and  noticing what was missing and then I think also, we're going to get to this in a bit but like I was frustrated with the way the press was covering the shortage crisis to like I felt like it was super cursory and lacking in nuance and I just kept waiting for the coverage to get better.

And it never did.  So that's why we created this and that's why I was so excited to find your paper because it is groundbreaking and I'm just so glad you're here. But before we talk about that, um, I came across some, some phrasing in your writings because I've read some of your other things now, which I had to giggle, Paul, because you referred to K 12 as counterintuitive.

And that is like the scholarly kind version of what I say, which is that it's bizarro.  Can you explain that? Explain what you mean by that. Um, just a little bit.  Yeah, I think there are a couple of at least a couple of things that make, um, a K 12 public education just really hard for people to think about myself included.

Um, one is I think just a sheer size, like I think the size of the, you know, American public education system is so big that I think it's very hard for people to get their heads around and it creates a lot of situations where it's If you ask about anything, the extent to which anything is happening and you just count up the raw number of times that it's happening in American public education, it's always going to be a huge number.

Um, and that like makes it very hard for people to like get their heads around. Like, what are the bigger numbers? What are the, you know, it's just like, there's so much of it. And so many people, um, touch it in various ways, whether they're working in schools or have kids in schools or whatever it is, The scope of it, I think, is beyond what people are used to navigating.

And I think that makes it really hard for people to think about. The other thing I think is very counterintuitive about it is, I think we tend to talk about it, um, as a single entity. There, there is a public education system. And in a sense, that's, in a sense, that's correct. But in another sense, you know, we've got, I don't know what the number is now because it changes, but I want to say something along the lines of 13, 000 local school districts. 

that all have some degree of autonomy. Um, and to the extent that they don't have autonomy, it's often because they're controlled at the state level, not the federal level. Um, and so I think it's, you know, people talk about what is education like or what is happening in education. And I think it's natural to talk about it that way, but in reality, it does, it kind of doesn't make any sense because there's so much diversity.

Um, in terms of, you know, from place to place, uh, about, you know, just what is going on that I think, but that's very hard to have a conversation about that. Um, and so I think that this, the size of it and the diversity of it and the local control of it make it all very hard for people to talk about and to think about.

And I think that shows up in a lot of educational conversations.  Oh, my gosh. I couldn't have said it better myself. That was what we started getting feedback on about just trying to describe teacher pay. For example, it is so different from district to district, state to state that I mean, for example, in the teacher preparation process, Jess was like, I think you're speaking another language.

I don't know these terms and phrases that you're using. And I think people are confused by the fact that there is a US Department of Ed, and there are state departments of Ed. And it seems like maybe they have a lot of power and control over what we do and they Just don't, it's really, I I'm going to say, and you push back and tell me if I'm wrong, that really school boards have the most power over what is going on in a district and that they don't necessarily have any experience teaching.

And I think that's why so much of what is done in K 12 can be counterintuitive, AKA bizarro is because non experts get to lead our profession. And it's so weird. What do you think? Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think there's something to, I think it probably depends exactly what aspects of schooling we're talking about.

I think school boards are definitely, I think, underrated to some extent in terms of how much power they have. And I think that they're not the ones who tend to get attention, right? I think the political attention tends to focus probably disproportionately on the federal government.  We're just playing a relatively small role or like individual teachers, um, you know, and what individual teachers are doing or aren't doing or something like that.

Um, but I think you're right that the school boards especially are making a lot of the decisions and are legally entitled to make a lot of the decisions, um, but are often not the subject of as much attention as. Well, I could talk about the convoluted ways in which K 12 is governed and siloed all day, but we're going to move on.

I want to get to before you start talking about your findings and the limitations of the data, which that latter piece I think is the richer conversation. Um, before we do that, I just kind of want to ask you to unpack.  Your issues with the term shortage and crisis, and I think it's funny and interesting because that's the name of our podcast and you have a very eloquent nuance take on this term shortage  and on crisis.

Can you unpack that a little bit and maybe even talk about your frustration with the way it's been covered in the press. Yeah, um, I think, uh, you know, I'm, you know, in full transparency, I think I'm often, uh, I often give a lot of, uh, like journalists included a hard time about using some of this language.

So I think it is only fair that I be able to explain a little bit about what my concerns are. I think so. I think I have a couple of concerns about different aspects of the language or framing. Um, even though I think there's also a lot there that's worth Paying attention to. I mean, one thing is, I think we talked about teachers,  but in reality, there's actually several different types of teachers that are actually in pretty distinct labor markets.

And by which I mean, they either. Are a lot of teachers are either not willing or not allowed to teach in different places or in different subjects than they are, either because they won't cross state lines or their certification requires them to teach certain things. And so, in reality, we have, you know, there are elementary teachers and there are math teachers and there are social studies teachers and there are special education teachers and there's teachers in California and teachers in Illinois.

And so one thing is, I think, you know, sort of, as I was saying before about how the size and diversity of.  I, I get a little worried when we generalize and lump all of those different things together and call them, well, they're teachers, um, particularly as someone who, like, you know, as a middle school teacher,  I think of my job is almost completely different than the job of an elementary school teacher, which, as far as I'm concerned, I would never be able to do, uh, no matter how much preparation I received, uh, and so I think lumping, I think of You know, the idea of lumping me in with the idea of an elementary school, you know, being a middle school science teacher and an elementary teacher is fundamentally the same kind of job.

I always found sort of a little bit counterintuitive. And I think that matters potentially for what we think we need to do to fix the shortage problems. Um, you know, because I think it helps to have targeted solutions to targeted problems. Um, so I think that's, that's part of it. Um, as sort of lumping all teachers together, another piece, I think.

Is, um,  being a little bit hard to define and clarify what we mean by shortage. Um, I think the word shortage I think is a little bit hard to get our heads around. I think it's absolutely true in some sense that we have a teacher shortage. I think you can absolutely define those terms in such a way that it's 100 percent true that there is a teacher shortage.

I think, um, at the same time, I think the framing around this tends to obscure a lot of important facts about education, like, for example, the fact that right now there are more teachers in, um, per in public schools, uh, than I think at any point in American history and more teachers per student than at any point in history.

And maybe that's a good thing. And maybe we want there to be even more teachers. But I do think that for a lot of listeners and for a lot of policymakers who hear some of that narrative, like in the media, I don't know that they necessarily understand that when people say there's a teacher shortage, that could be happening even as the number of teachers in the schools is going up, um, and the number of students going down, which is the situation schools have been in for the last couple of years, on average. 

Um, and I think, um, again, I think that also has some, I don't just need to be nitpicky about the, um, The rhetoric, I think it potentially matters for what people think the implications are for whether, um, uh, exactly like whether we should be thinking differently about the choices we have, whether about about hiring more teachers versus paying teachers more, for example, I don't know that that's as intuitive.

I think that's an option. We should be considering more. And I don't know that the teacher shortage framing lends itself to that, um, necessarily.  Um, and the and in terms of the crisis language, I think one concern I have a couple of concerns there. One is I think it's a little bit hard and I think something we might return to is I think it's actually a little bit hard to say what the actual  effects on kids are of some of the shortages in part.

That's because there might be more shortages, but also more teachers working in schools. Um, and we don't know what what's exactly what kinds of impacts there are. And I worry about giving people, uh, yeah. A false sense of exactly how terrible it is in public schools right now. And I worry a little bit about both using crisis language in a way that discourages people from becoming teachers because we frame it as such a terrible job, nobody wants to do it.

Um, or we play into narratives about what a terrible place public schools are to send your Children. Um, and I think there are concerted. I would describe them as concerted political efforts in some some circles to undermine confidence in public schools. And I'm not sure that that crisis language isn't playing into their hands to some extent.

Um, so, again, that was a bit of a bit of a long answer, but that's sort of my, my general thoughts about why some of the framing might matter here.  Thank you for that response. I think when I was covering your article, and I just sort of asked AI after I've already read your article, and I sort of juxtaposed AI with what we actually know, um, it makes it seem like AI makes it seem like and these quick Google returns that people get.

Without reading the real data and make it seem like it's easily quantifiable and it mischaracterizes the whole thing completely, but I mean, I think when you say like we have the more teachers now than we've ever had, and then you juxtapose that with the experience of teachers scrambling having to give up their preps because there is not enough subs scrambling to cover teachers vacancies that I mean, that's what we did.

There was vacant. The vacancies were so bad at a school I once taught at that the teachers had to take turns giving up their prep to cover a vacant room with no teacher of record. And then we talk about to be sort of the undervalue of first and second grade teachers and administrators not understanding how esoteric and nuanced reading instruction is and how long it takes to become a quality reading instructor. 

Um, and that you can't learn that in a credentialed program. You have to learn that on the job. And so when you put like just a ton of brand new teachers that keep turning over in these high needs districts, what we wind up with is a reading opportunity gap.  So I think, I mean, I know what you're saying is true, but it's so interesting that, uh, what we are experiencing on the ground floor feels like such a panic mode of lack of teachers.

Um, but anyways, thank you for clarifying. And when we talk about your you made some qualitative categories to sort of discern what we mean by shortage, and I think that's where we're going to get into why that term shortage is sort of a misnomer.  Okay, so, have you ever before we talk about your methodology because I'm super fascinated to hear you unpack that it was really cool.

Have you, have you ever done research on how this is done. impacted student learning or on teacher burnout? Is that an area that you've had a chance to look at?  Uh, I personally, um, have not, uh, so, uh, and I think, you know, and actually if I, it turns out that's become a thing where, uh, based on reviewer feedback and a lot of my own papers, I have to come to at the end and say, Oh, you know, for all this discussion about, um, you know, uh, teacher vacancies and teacher shortages. 

It's true. I actually can't point directly to a clear story or clear evidence about exactly what impacts that has on teachers and students over and above the working conditions that might give rise to those shortages in the first place. Yeah, thank you for that. So I think when We look at where the lack of a quality better and teachers are.

It's not where maybe where you think like specifically in the first and second grade classrooms, which again I've never taught in there either.  But okay, so.  Let's get into your methodology. So you started to dig in, you had to ones help. He's a data analyst. Yeah. It was that his role and chatter, both, both my coauthors here.

They, uh, and, and to be clear on the data collection, I want to make it clear that, uh, you know, most of the effort was, was there's a, I, uh, there's a reason I'm out there number three on this paper,  well, you can still tell us about all their good work and sell them on this podcast,  so you guys started to get to work.

I'm so. Interested in hearing about how you began to peel back the layers of this onion and like what that felt like for you  Talk away about that.  Yeah, so, you know, I think You know, for for us, to some extent, I think we, you know, it was, um, there's a broad, it was a broad understanding. I think that these are topics that are of interest to people.

Um, you know, particularly, you know, it's almost every year, uh, you know, late summer, you get a spike in stories about, you know, uh, teacher shortage issues and things. And, um, and, and you see this in education research conferences as well. Um, and I think that also concerned us that there was often people taking some things for granted, I think, about what was going on and not necessarily recognizing that if you actually dig into the data, the evidence about the, the scope of teacher shortages, their actual magnitude, um, was pretty scarce.

Um, and you know, there had been some approaches in the past to sort of understanding these issues that we thought were interesting and had pushed the conversation forward that, but we're also limited in some ways, like people trying to create estimates  of how many teachers would be required. In the future and, um, how many teachers would be produced in the future and trying to estimate sort of overall shortage rates or trying to compare teacher licensure rates to teacher hiring rates to try to get a sense of what the, what shortages there might be, but us really feeling like this is, this is, these are all useful and important things, but we're all trying to deal with the problem that actually, if you just go out into the world and ask how bad are the shortages, there's no actual way to answer that.

question. Um, and so, you know, we, um, I'll say, I'll use we very generously here, but mostly my co authors, um, started to think about, okay, if we wanted to operationalize this, what would that look like? What would operationalizing it look like? And we, we ended up settling, and I think this is what you were referring to as a sort of, maybe it's the qualitative categories here about thinking like, well, is at least a couple of ways to think about it.

One is how many positions are in schools? So, which we mean roughly to be  positions where Uh, administrators are still actively at any given moment, actively trying to fill them still, that there's a, there's a position. And now there's a little fuzziness here because is there someone in that position and temporarily, and you're trying to replace them, is there no one in that position that that's a little, it's still a little bit of fuzziness there, but we thought, okay, vacancies as an actual position you were trying to fill and it is not filled, uh, on a permanent basis as one sort of way of thinking about it.

And then also thinking about, okay, well. Um, what about the rate at which, um, teachers are not fully licensed for the positions that they're teaching, as another sign, and that was something that had been used more commonly in the past as a kind of measure of shortages, is saying, what are, uh, how many teachers do you have, but it looks like they're not fully licensed, and that might be an indication that you were not able to find.

Um, someone who is fully licensed to fill that position, um, and so then trying to figure out, okay, can we actually, are there good counts? Can we find on a state by state basis what the counts here are? Um, and trying to do then system, combine, uh, a variety of sort of systematic search approaches to search news stories, to search public reports by state education agencies, and so on, to try to say, okay, if these are, we'd like these two numbers from every state, how many open positions are there that are still, you know, vacant, How many teachers are not fully licensed for their positions?

Can we go state by state, pull every data source we can think of and, and, and, um, correspond with the state education is about this. Um, can, what can we, what's the best we can get for each state for those, um, for those numbers? Um, and that, that, that essentially describes the project.  Yeah. I mean, one thing that really stuck I'm struck by is, you know, in, in our state of California, um, our governor Gavin Newsom has been like, okay, everybody, what's going on?

Why we have this problem. And so he sort of asked the CTC  to begin to research it. And I say like, don't ask the CTC. They don't know. And they're driving us out of the profession if you ask me, but, um,  I think I don't understand. And it would behoove our leaders to be like, what are the numbers? And then realizing we don't have those numbers and then coming up with a process by which we can be reporting this accurately and come up with a common language.

Um, so did you, were you struck by the fact that it's just not well known? Were you just like overwhelmed? Like, how can this be?  Uh,  I, I, I appreciate that question and maybe I was just already so used to, you know, from a research, from a researcher standpoint, most of my life is being frustrated by how I can't get exactly the data I would like.

So my expectations might have been a little bit lower than your expectations, but I understand why that might be where they were, you know, one thing. Uh, so yes, certainly, and I think this is in a lot of ways from my point of view, one of the main takeaways. Of our paper is just about how limited the data are something I will say in state's defense.

I'm not saying I like the state of affairs, but I think something that I think makes it a little bit more understandable is,  um, states do a lot of data collection work. And most of the things that they are. Interested in that are easiest to collect and that they're accountable for collecting have to do with the people who work in the system. 

And when we talk about shortages, in some sense, we're talking about people who are not in the system. Um, we're asking questions about, um.  Uh, you know, people you have not been able to hire, uh, whereas if, you know, a lot of states, for example, are required, um, or have been required to keep track of who is fully licensed for their position.

Do you have, like, for example, highly qualified teachers is often the language that gets used, and that's, there are sort of regulations that say, we need to document how many of your teachers are, you know, highly qualified for the position they're assigned to teach, are they teaching out of subject area, and so on.

That is. Things states have been required to collect and those are people by definition who are working in the school system. They're public employees if we're talking about open or vacant. And actually, I would say, I think states on the whole have much better data about that question because the data about the licenses the state is issuing and the people who work in the school system and there are rules that say you need to know  about who those people are and what their licenses are on the other hand, if we talk about a vacancy Um, we're talking about people who are not working in the system.

We're talking about places where ideally you'd ultimately like to get somebody. Um, and so I think, you know, if there hasn't, there's no specific people to be keeping track of in that case. And there's no, um, law that says you need to be keeping track of it. Um, and so I think there just hasn't been a lot of impetus for that. 

And again, to be honest, I, and again, I'll put aside my researcher hat here and say, I understand that we already ask schools to collect a lot of data. And that it's very easy for me as a researcher to say, well, how come you're not collecting this data also? Uh, but that's also essentially a request that they do more work.

Um, and I think that work might be worth it, but I, I do understand why it hasn't just sort of, um, spontaneously arisen, um, from the ground up.  I also think that like our leaders, the ones who are being called up account like governors at that level, don't understand what local control means and how it's interfering with  our ability to quantify the data more clearly.

I just think there's a ignorance about K 12 governance. And a lot of things like you say, people suppose and assume that aren't just not the case, right? But I also, I also want to get back to this idea of, um, these qualitative categories, one of which is, I think you described it, correct me if I'm wrong, of hiring somebody who's just beginning their credential pathway,  right?

And then there was like a qualitative, I think there was a category in which you described hiring someone On an emergency permit who's not even on that pathway yet. And then I just wanted to like share with my personal example, and what I've seen in these highly impacted districts is when teachers are hired, who are just on the beginning of their credential pathway the impact on that is it kind of like ripples in a pond because you don't have time to reflect on your practice, and you're working and going to school at night.

And you're also paying a lot of money for specialized programs that let you do that. Like there's no state schools that let you do that. You have to go to a private school. At least that's been my experience. And you wind up not delivering the best education and nobody's really like standing in those spaces noticing this.

And so year over year, a lot of kids are getting brand new teachers who are not only just brand new, but they're like what I was doing, which is going through all of this arduous coursework and really just constantly reacting and not being able to reflect. But on the other side, I want to honor something that you've mentioned in your writings, that teacher preparation and teacher exams, all of this, that completion of all of this stuff is not a good predictor of efficacy.

And you cited another Paper in your research, and I'm sorry I didn't write that down. So can you comment on those two sides of the continuum of, um, hiring teachers that are not prepared? I think especially like hiring somebody who already has a credential but outside of their field, like I think that is not a shortage issue.

I think those pe I think we need to be more expansive in what a credential allows you to do. But I'll let you comment.  No, I think you laid out the issues there really nicely. And I think that's, um, that, that, that potential tension or that those potential trade offs I think are often a lot of what's missing in a lot of this conversation, I think, I think there are some, I think there are some people for whom a credential and a credential in the specific thing you were licensed to teach.

is a clear and important indicator of whether you should be teaching it. I, as you mentioned, I, I do not think that the evidence supports that. And I would say that my experience does not support that. I think, uh, I wouldn't say that those things don't matter at all, but I would also say that, um, even in my experience, you know, I worked with folks who were not fully certified or who were getting their, like just beginning their credential pathway on some sort of temporary certification. 

And some of them were definitely, definitely, like you said, sort of spread very thin and I think it was clear. On the other hand, I  would have killed to be as good as some of them were at what they were doing. Um, and I get particularly nervous When, um,  people paint with a very broad brush about how good those teachers are, including teachers I knew personally, just because of the documentation that they hold or don't hold.

And I think some of the rhetoric around that has gotten way overblown, gone well out beyond what the evidence suggests. But I certainly would, but I certainly understand at the same time why, one, people would Look at the overall numbers of teachers on emergency permits or some sort of, um, you know, inadequate certification and say, Oh, that on the in the aggregate that looks like there's some problems there and why you might also be worried about, um.

Whether that reflects on average, just somewhat, you know, less effective teacher workforce than you might otherwise have. I will say, in particular, I think something that.  is particularly concerning and where I am more convinced that some of those temporary certifications are a problem is that they tend to be associated with higher turnover, not necessarily less effective teachers in the sense that the students aren't learning as much, but they are more likely to leave in a lot of cases.

I'm not sure that that's always true. And I also, you know, I think in a lot of cases now, a lot of those programs are actually school districts doing really interesting and potentially promising things to like, you know, students. teacher workforce, and in a lot of cases, I think that might look like their teachers are not fully certified and maybe that's concerning.

But on the other hand, they also might be people who are really strong connections to the school and the students in the community. So again, I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but I do think that's the place where I also worry. about some of those certification numbers. But that's a long way of saying that I think fundamentally you're correct, and that it's not entirely obvious what to think when you see that someone is teaching in a position with a certification that is technically, in some sense, not up to the state standards.

So, you said that we have more teachers in America than we ever have in the history of our public education, and I wonder if that might be, uh, impacted by districts hiring teachers in, like, the Philippines, or, like, we, we have colleagues who work in, in, and like Jess was saying, her district hires a lot of teachers in the Philippines, and I don't know if, if any of  If you've run into any information about that and, and like, cause it looks like we have enough teachers because all these teachers are from overseas and yeah,  curious.

Yeah, yeah. So when I am, um, and to be clear, when I say that there are more teachers, I'm including wherever they're coming from. If you just ask, you know, full time equivalent, how many, how many people are in roles classified as teachers in schools, that's as high. or higher than it has ever been in most places.

Uh, I, on the whole, I'm mostly talking about add them all up across the country and, um, what do you get? Um, I, I, you know, as for what's enough, I think that's hard to say. And, you know, I think something that makes this tricky is that, um, a lot of those people are in teaching roles. I think they're, you know, They're less they're often, I think, in roles that don't necessarily,  um, result in the kind of things you might expect.

So, for example, they don't, I don't think class sizes have gone down as much as you would expect from the increased teacher to student ratio, for example, because I think a disproportionate share of that hiring is into either  non classroom instructional roles, sort of like other people who are like teachers on special assignment, for example, I think is the language that gets used a lot.

Yeah. Which technically shows up in the data in most places as a teacher, but they're, it's not like they're running a classroom. They're, uh, uh, or they're in like, special education positions have become, you know, as more and more students are diagnosed with disabilities, then you get more and more, you need more and more teachers in special education roles, and that doesn't necessarily reduce class sizes.

So, uh, so just on the, on the question of like, sort of, is it enough, I think that's, I, I'm not prepared to say here what the, what would be enough? Teachers, um, and what the right number is, but I do think that's something that I think is, I think is partially explains people's surprise about this is they say, look, my experience as a teacher or teachers generally is not that, you know, by, you know, we've, if we double the number of teachers, we have our workloads.

For example, our classes shrink by that, by that much. I think that's in part because  uh, the roles that these teachers are taking on are not necessarily strictly classroom teacher roles. Um,  uh, does that make sense?  Yeah, I guess I'm just wondering if the reason we have so many teachers is because we're hiring them overseas, like they're coming in from other countries because, uh, tenure.

And also I was wondering about like, is there, are there numbers or any research that you've come across of teachers who are veteran teachers who are tenured teachers who are leaving? Because I feel like that's something else that's happening, like a trend that, that I feel like we're seeing. Um, too. So yeah, this is just a very complex topic,  , hence the many, many thematic episodes in our podcast, 

Um, this, when you were talking about, like, I, I, I definitely think Amanda's point is, is, is crucial because of the, when we were talking about.  Warm bodies in a classroom.  Where is the nuance of understanding the loss of a veteran teacher? And like, I, I see that in the high needs districts that are more impacted, they have highly front loaded their salary packages in those first five years of step and column.

And so there's no incentive to stay by like year five or so you have to bolt so that you don't have so many years that they won't take them in a nearby district. And I'm talking about the district that you and I both Taught in, they have a serious problem of a lack of veteran teachers. And so they're constantly trying to mitigate that problem by buying dense, pedagogically dense, canned curriculums.

So it's like, it's a very new, it's a very nuanced problem. I'll let you respond to that. And then I wanna come back to the credential course work issue.  Yeah, I think, um, so, uh, uh, um, a couple of things. So just one, I'd say, I think it's thinking about the, um, hiring teachers.  countries, for example, I think as more broadly, I'd say, I think that's something where we don't have a like super clear, um, data on the magnitude of that.

I do get the sense that it's more common than it used to be. And I, but I think it's a more, I think it's an example of a broader question of, um, you know,  it's related to the question about licensure and credentialing, which is, yes, we're able to hire more people.  Are we increasingly having to get more and more desperate in some sense to fill those roles?

I think that's something that will be interesting to see in the coming years. One thing I think has been particularly relevant in recent years is that schools have been increasing their staffing levels at the same time as the economy has been  And the labor market in general has been very, very tight, by which I mean, unemployment rates have been very, very low, uh, and, um, vacancy rates in all sectors have been pretty high.

And so, for anyone, uh, who has wanted to hire people recently, uh, it's been actually really hard to hire people, uh, which is great for workers, um, but also, I mean, schools are in a position where if they're trying to hire people, they're competing with a lot. It's tough. And so I think there may be, I'd be curious to see what happens in the next few years. 

As the economy cools off a bit, and as schools budgets shrink a bit, as federal pandemic aid dries up a bit, I do wonder what that's going to look like in terms of whether it's hiring, uh, you know, under certified teachers, or whether it's hiring teachers internationally. I'm not entirely sure how that will evolve in the coming years.

And like, also to the low birth rate of my generation, just next to just weren't as many people born. I don't know how old you are, Paul, but I just turned 50 and there was just a low birth rate of people who are entering their prime working years. And then a large birth rate of children that we're having to educate it's just like a supply and demand situation and then juxtapose that with. 

The growing income inequality and the increase of essential things like housing, health care, education, making their profession no longer look attractive. Did you hear about the gender gap and gender pay gap growing? They just announced it recently. So the first time in 20 years, the gender pay gap has increased.

Controlling for inflation, male incomes rose 3. 5 percent and females Raised, uh, only 1. 5 percent and they cited two professions as the culprits of stagnating wages, not keeping up with inflation. One was nursing and no, the other one was teaching. I mean, we just can't afford the things the teachers used to be able to pay.

They used to be able to buy a house. They used to put their kids through college. They can't do those things anymore.  Yeah. Um, but when you were talking about the teacher preparation and coursework stuff, I mean, you were saying how it's a poor predictor. I think And you don't have to say this because I know you have higher ups and I don't, I'm a tenured K 12 teacher.

I just don't think that stuff is all that useful. I think it's just onerous and ridiculous. Like I do think we should be asked to do some preparation, but I don't think what we're doing, especially in California. Oh my gosh. It's not helpful. So of course, if you're, and like you were saying way overstating the case of they done all these things, they're highly qualified.

No, no, no, no. It's all superficial and ridiculous, right? Like, how much are you willing to say about that?  I, first, can I ask a follow up on, you mentioned things in California specifically, are there specific requirements of teachers that you feel like are particularly egregious? Yeah, induction. Induction  is a post graduate  Requirement of two additional years that teachers actually in Los Angeles have to pay for in my district.

I didn't have to pay for it. But if I couldn't, there was an option to pay for it. And so if you do pay for it, those units get added to step and column, and I could not have. for them and so they didn't get added to my stuff and columns. You get paid more for having more money and being married to a wealthy spouse or having generational wealth.

Induction is not helpful. The Cal TPAs are not helpful. And now administrators have to do the Cal APAs. Not helpful. And administrator induction not helpful and other states. They don't have to. Do you know what these are, Paul? I'm sorry. I'm using these terms like, you know, but I don't know that, you know, I, I know some of them and for the rest.

I think I can get the gist. Um, so I think, um, I think I'm, I'm with you, uh, in general in terms of, um, what you're talking about. Um, you know, I, um, so I think, uh, I think these are very relevant things to be talking about in a conversation about teacher shortages, just as framing, I think if  for anyone who is concerned.

Okay. for any reason about there being shortages of teachers, or you even mentioned administrators to some extent, um,  I, you absolutely have to at least reflect on the question of how hard do we make it  to even be allowed to do the job. Amen.  And, uh, and I think, so, so I think those are important questions to ask.

And, um, I will say,  I think it is, I think the research on this is relatively clear on most of these things that on average, these things are not making a very big difference.  I have not done a careful cost benefit analysis, but my suspicion is that a lot of these activities, these, um, both, um,  pre service and in service activities.

on average, I would not be surprised at all if they were not passing a cost benefit test. And like we've discussed, they are not a particular, they might in some cases be a little bit predictive, but they're not on the whole, all that useful for identifying who is going to be successful in that. Now, I do want to say, you know, in the defense of some of these things, we talk like induction. 

I would say, if you look at the evidence on the very best induction programs, there's plausible evidence That they are helping teachers, um, modestly, not trivially, not amazingly, but that they are helping with retention and effectiveness. I don't, I, but at the same time, I don't think we should judge these programs based on what the very best programs do, I think, um, at least as a policy person, um, I think we might want to learn from the very best programs, but you don't design policy around the assumption. 

Only the best programs. Are implemented and they're implemented everywhere. Um, and so I think, you know, we need to be thinking a lot more about whether the barriers that we put up for people entering the profession are worth it and whether they are fair to people in the profession. I think I'm also worried about some, I have some concerns about not just the pre service, some of the pre service requirements you mentioned, but also in service, the extent to which we require teachers to accumulate additional education in order to earn higher compensation. 

I understand some of the rationale for that, and I'm not super confident that it's not a reasonable approach in a lot of cases, but I do think it's striking the extent to which, you know, they're,  um, to get a higher salary, you need more education. And it doesn't particularly matter in a lot of cases what you do to get that education.

Um, that suggests to me that we're not necessarily paying enough attention to whether. Those things are really worth it, or whether that we're just making teachers jump through hoops. That's it. Um, to get extra pay. I, I, I think it is not at all obvious, um, that we've struck the right balance there. That's, that's it.

And they're not, the units you can take, don't have to be towards a master's degree that gives you, like self possession and agency to be a leader in the profession. It's just jumping through hoops to grab units and there's no like. Attention to nuance or authenticity of the education and there are people just making money off of teachers because teachers have to pay for those units,  um, which is unusual in a credential.

Well, I shouldn't say it's unusual there are other credential professions where they have to pay for their own certifications but those classes are just not very. helpful a lot of times.  Yeah, and I say this as someone, and to be clear, you know, I'm saying this as someone who teaches in endorsement programs, in my case for administrators, but it's something that I take very seriously, which is that, um,  you know, that my students in a lot of cases have to go through a program like mine.

And I think there's a real onus on me and any instructor in these programs. To make sure that their time is as valuable as possible and that they're learning things as much as possible and that we're not making their lives even harder for no reason. And I, you know, I don't know that as a field, we've done enough to reflect critically on that, but I do think it's something that weighs on me, um, and that we should be thinking more about as a, as a profession.

You're one of the good ones, Paul! Oh, thank you for saying, I will say, I thought my ed leadership program was, was very useful. And I thought there was a lot of good stuff in there. I don't think it was complete and I do have other criticisms, but it was a very different experience than some other professional development, which is not connected to a master's, you know? 

So  let's talk about your findings and in particular, these three categories of levels of data availability. That you had to sort of discern because it was so overwhelming, Paul. Like  I've always said, this is not a political issue. I mean, I guess it is to some extent, but the lack of reporting red, blue and purple States, it was so amazing.

So describe your categories and your findings.  Yeah, so, um, the category is, so we end up, um, breaking states up, uh, into, you know, we try to classify them based on, um, how much data we're able to find, um, about, uh, so remember, we're interested in, um, teacher licensure rates and then teacher vacancy, uh, numbers, um, and so we break, you know, states up into, you know, states where we can.

Find that information in a relatively, you know, recent, plausible, comprehensive way, um, states where it's somewhat less clear. Maybe we can get some information, uh, and states where we would describe the, the information we were looking for is, you know, It's not accessible, um, and we sort of assume if not accessible to us, it's not, we've tried pretty hard.

Uh, and then it would be hard for anyone to get, I forget exactly the language we used around those, but we try to sort of put states into, um, categories or tiers that way.  So, okay. So your first category was states where you had pretty reliable data sources, right?  Yeah, I think we describe it as recent and clear.

You know, this was another challenge for us, right, is what to do in a case where we could find some information, but it came from a report from a few years ago, for example. And that being a case where, you know, it's, it's not obvious how to interpret that information or how quickly it can go out of date, right?

Particularly thinking about doing this, you know, beginning this project relatively early in the pandemic and thinking about how rapidly the world's can change. Uh, you know, how do we handle that, that problem?  And then the middle category,  how would you describe that middle? Because most of the states fell into this middle category.

Is this where you had to use new sources and not?  actual sources, like basically secondhand information. Is that the middle category?  Um, I, I believe there were a few things that could get states into that sort of fuzzy category where we could get some information, but for example, it might not be about the entire state.

So we might not be comfortable, for example, that the entire state was represented or there could be some potentially conflicting information across, uh, sources. So I don't think that was the only reason. Um, uh, They could end up in that sort of indeterminate category.  And then the bottom category, which is the entire West coast. 

States sort of sprinkled all over the place from every political stripe. Those States I want to know, were you surprised that so many States fell into those categories, which specific States fell into those categories?  Yeah, because it's just bizarre. I think it's really weird. The variety of States in that bottom category. 

Um, You know, I don't know what I, you know, it's, it's too hard in retrospect to say, what would I have predicted? I don't know that I had clear expectations. And if I did, I don't know that I would remember them, uh, correctly now in retrospect, um, I do think it's, uh,  certainly interesting to me looking back how little rhyme or reason.

There was in terms of, you know, what are those states going to be where we can't find any information about vacancies? I think you're right. I think, you know, it's certainly it's on the one hand. Yes. It's basically the West Coast, uh, you know, California up through, uh, Alaska, I think. Uh, and, uh, but on the other hand, um, you know, we got states in the Midwest.

Uh, we've got red states and blue states. Um, yeah. Yeah. We've got states on the East Coast and, uh, or at least, um, at least in New England. I don't know if they like to be, I don't know how to classify that exactly. Um, but I think, so I think, um, and you know, I think that speaks a little bit to some of the, what can, maybe that speaks a little bit to some, what can sometimes be the sort of, um,  uh, surprising politics of education and the way, you know, I don't know that the, but also I think it's just that.

Again, these are data, vacancy data, are data that in general states are not using, the federal government is generally not requiring be collected. Um, and so I think you end up, uh, with, uh, sometimes a little bit of a, a little bit of randomness around, um, where the, uh, the data are or are not. Collected. Um, so  I don't know.

Yeah, I think it sounds like you were  struck by as we were by how kind of all over the place that they were. I was so struck by it. And I guess. I was more idealistic. I expected my state to be better than that, mainly because of Gavin Newsom's like very public declaration that he cares about the problem.

But then I was like, of course it's this way.  Of course it's this way because of the problem of local control. And when you even try to describe the problems in KHL because it's so esoteric to people, they're like, wait, what? Like,  local control means that School districts have a lot of power over the ways our schools are governed from choosing curriculums to hiring the superintendent.

Like they just have a lot of power. And what I found so striking in, in how you guys chose to write this up was you got to the meat of it. You're like the way they describe a vacancy, the way they report, like, Who they report to, like what they consider as a vacancy, and all of these other issues around.

Sometimes  principals want to hire someone straight out of. you know, barely getting onto the credential pathway because it's cheaper because of step and column, it winds up being a lot cheaper to hire brand new people. So it's just very confusing. And how would you describe if you had to summon up how local control impacts the limitations of your data? 

Um, so I think one of the, I think part of the way you see local control affecting things is We have a lot more complete data around teacher certification and, um, whether they're fully certified. Uh, in fact, I'm not sure about this, but I think maybe it might be every state or almost every state where we were able to get something,  um, about teacher certification.

Um, Rates.  Um, and I think  what I think that reflects in part is that is a place where the local control has been greatly reduced.  Um, that's a place where, you know, states and the federal government in various ways have come in and said, Oh, no, actually, you need to keep track of what licenses are held by people with each assignment and, um, whether those licenses are aligned.

With those assignments. Uh, whereas on the vacancy side of things, um, that's a place where school districts are left to their own devices. Um, they actually probably do have some, most of them are probably are aware of the fact that there are vacancies they need filling, right? They've got job boards, for example, they are actually trying to hire for those positions.

But the way they document it, um, is much more all over the place because of that local control that you said, that there's no one coming in and imposing a definition or imposing a collection requirement. Um, and so in some cases they might be collecting some things, in other cases, um, they're not.  Yeah, I mean the depths of the lack of accountability was something I was primed to see because of me digging into really the cover up I'm calling it a cover up of our national illiteracy problem.

And then also the lack of implementation of title nine and K 12 so like these very foundational things which I thought should be taken care of. Nobody even agreed that we had a problem. We had no common language to describe these problems. So, and I knew that was coming from local control. So local control means that we don't have a common set of vocabulary terms or priorities to get into digging into this problem. 

So, I guess what I where I want to end is I would like for you to talk about what you think needs to happen going forward. Do you agree with us that a national professional association would help sort of standardize the way in which we talk about this and, you know, give us a common language. Do you, what do you think contributes to the shortage even maybe?

And like, who needs to see your data? Cause I don't think people have seen it enough. I think it's get, it gets quoted by other people and taken out of context. And then people think they know what you've said and they don't really know. So I'll let you comment on all that. That's a, you, you've characterized my experiences very well.

Uh, I think, um, this is one of those things where I think, you know, people have narratives, uh, that they. Are already sort of, um, committed to a lot of times and they interpret in good faith. I think they, um, interpret  in a lot of cases, the same information interpreted differently by different people, depending on, um, sort of where they're coming at this from.

Um, so I, I, I'll say a couple of things. I think you had a couple of questions there. I'll start with the sort of, um, what might help address some, um, of shortages. So, you know, from my point of view, I think the variation in shortages.  is at least as big of an issue as the shortages in general.  And what that means is essentially that these problems are localized in various ways.

Um, you know, I have students who can post a open position and get dozens or dozens or even, you know, 100 applications for an open position.  Uh, and I have students who, um, are struggling, will struggle to fill a position at all to get Applicants period. Um, and I think recognizing that variation in their experience is, um, is important for understanding what we would need to do about it.

And I think what we need are targeted solutions for targeted problems. I think that in many cases, maybe it's because I have a bit of a background in economics. I think that has to do with money. Um, and making sure that, um, schools, uh, that are, uh, have a harder time staffing their positions, have more resources.

Yeah. So I think the data is important for policymakers to see. I think some policymakers are in tune with the fact that we don't necessarily have perfect data here and that there is a lot of variation and shortages. And that's part of what we document in the paper. Um, nationwide is differences between states.

Um, that's part of what I documented in Illinois is differences between school districts or even schools within school districts and the understanding that variation I think matters because I think my experience is policymakers think very differently about the problem, depending on whether they think of it as something is affecting everybody the same way. 

Or whether they think about it as affecting specific school districts, specific schools, specific classrooms, specific teaching positions, and the extent to which, uh, because I think, you know, for policymakers, if they think it's affecting everyone equally, they tend to propose solutions that are what I think of as a more of the same.

Um, kind of we need to increase the rate at which people are going into teacher preparation programs, for example, and I'm not sure that that's the best use of our resources because there are some classrooms and some positions and some districts were already very good at getting people into and pumping more people through those pipelines.

I'm not convinced would help, for example, but when I think when they are more aware of the kind of variation or the lack of information that we have about these things, the more they're inclined to say, okay, Okay. Well, let's collect the information and then let's use it to target the solutions where they're needed.

Well, you know, whether that's creating new preparation programs that will serve, um, the position to fill the positions that we're not able to fill or whether that means, um, funding that goes disproportionately to the schools and districts that have the most vacancies. I'll just say, you know, just frankly, that's how, what Illinois has done.

And I think part of the rationale in Illinois, um, for collecting.  More administrative statewide vacancy data is to then be able to use that data to say, okay, well, those are the districts that need help addressing shortages. Those are the positions where we need more teachers. Now, let's take the money and let's take the resources and let's take the energy and put it into filling those positions rather than trying to spread it in some generic way across the state. 

I suppose if, okay, so the idea you and I both have is differential pay, especially for SPED, but I think in BIPOC communities that are highly impacted with the shortage, but if you think about it like this, you have to reframe it. And respect teacher veteran teachers, because we would put it would attract veteran teachers if it had more pay,  and we could move our best talent, which is presumably veteran teachers not always but move them into these other positions so they can be paid more because like right now what teachers are in with their veteran status is the chiller vibe.

Right. I can take all AP classes, I can go to the districts that don't have climate and culture issues and just kind of coast on into retirement, because I'm not leaving anything no one expects me to lead anything so I'm just going to kind of show up and have an easier go of it, because I've done my time in those harder settings to begin with.

But then the other issue is if. To look at why are those places not keeping and attracting talent and to try to fix those problems, which, which is what we do in the podcast, we talk about why our profession is so unattractive at times, and why specific places are in our field are unattractive, which is really a civil rights nightmare because those students that need the best teachers.

because of historically marginalized insults to their learning,  nothing or just the very newest of us. You know what I mean? What do you think about that?  Yeah, I think certainly what you're describing is borne out in the research pretty clearly, which is that if the pay is the same, then the more, the more veteran teachers.

tend to move into the classrooms and the schools and the districts and the positions that they're going to find more attractive. And that often means, you know, they, they want to work with higher achieving kids or there's fewer disciplinary issues and things like that, and they have no incentive. To do anything else.

And so that gets shown up in the data. And that means, you know, the lower achieving kids, the kids who are marginalized, the most are also getting the most novice teachers. Now, I, you know, I think I, I do probably tend to focus on compensation issues there. That's where I think the evidence is clearest about sort of what the interventions could be.

But I think you're also right that there is also good evidence that things like working conditions and school leadership, which I sometimes lump in  to the working conditions, um, bucket are really important for teachers. That's a place where you all might have more to say than I do, because I think I would say in terms of the research evidence, that's a place where we have better evidence that those things matter for teachers over and above compensation.

The working conditions they have, the quality of their leaders are really important for things like retention. What we don't have are really reliable ways of, you know, intervening to improve those things. At least what I would that's how I would characterize the research on this. Um, uh, is that we know those things matter.

Uh, but we don't know. For example, as someone who works in administrator preparation, it's very important to me to prepare the kinds of strong leaders that teachers say that they want to work in their schools. But I'm not always sure that I'm able to do that. consistently and reliably. And I would love better evidence on things like, oh, how do you prepare a school leaders to be the kinds of leaders that teachers want?

How do you organize working conditions in ways that will reliably make teachers happier and want to work in the profession generally, and especially in those schools and positions that are hardest to staff? I don't think site based leadership is a humanizing position at all, Paul. I don't think that they have a job that is doable and manageable and humanizing and  there's just too much pressure on them.

I just think site based leadership is just a really, really soul sucking job for a number of reasons that we talk about in the podcast. And that, you know, that is to say that like, I have, I respect them. I didn't want that job. I looked at it and said, you know, no thanks. But, um, I think that the way to fix this, the way to get the solutions into these schools and into these places where the teacher shortage problem is so  pronounced is to elevate teachers.

Leadership, because we have firsthand knowledge of what's going on in these spaces and we have solutions, but nobody asks our opinion. I mean, I'm just going out on a limb, Paul and inserting the central thesis of the podcast into this, into this interview, leadership, visionary, innovation. These things are not curated in the minds of teachers.

They're not, no one asks for their input. And so a lot of what gets done is very cursory and what I say is ticking boxes by people who no longer have their fingers on the pulse of what's going on, you know. So this whole idea of creating a space where if you are a veteran and you want to do it and you've met whatever qualifications we decide you need to meet, you should be released from your teaching for part of your day to be in it.

In leadership, you shouldn't have to I say you shouldn't have to lead. You shouldn't have to leave our profession to lead it. So what are your thoughts about that? I know it's wacky. Like it's so revolutionary. But like, that's what I'm saying. What do you think? Yeah, I wouldn't say it's wacky at all. It's certainly you know, well beyond the scope of my expertise, in terms of, you know, what kinds of benefits that would have or even how you would organize it to To sort of make it effective, but I think that might be certainly an interesting, I'd be curious, you know, are there people you could talk to even for your podcast?

I wonder if there, you know, are there places in your experience that are trying more, uh, I don't know if shared governance is quite the right word, but, um, more of that, um, integrating the teacher, um, workforce and the administrative, uh, team in schools. Is that something you're, uh, you've seen happen, uh, to any degree?

No, I mean, we have TOSAs, but they're not paid more. They just make whatever they have on step and column and they're basically implementers. And so what I have found is that in places where we are doing a real cursory job of delivering quality education to the kids, um, and teachers develop self possession and have an opinion.

They just kind of get shuffled around because their opinion complicates things like with the, you know, the instruction, you know, spat instruction, climate and culture issues. Um, and so the, the, it's a, you know, you're the annoying teacher in the room is like, but. Like we're working on our LCAPs, you know what LCAPs are, they have, okay.

So I was on SSC. We're working on our LCAPs and one of the Trina, before you start saying a bunch of, uh, acronyms, could you just explain what they are? Cause you've just said like five acronyms. And I think a lot of the people that, and whenever I re listen to our episodes, I'm like, Trina, you used another acronym that people aren't really, maybe.

They're all just so weird. And even Jess, who is our teacher, co-host in Nevada, doesn't know what we're talking.  Okay. And sometimes I don't even know what you're talking about. What, what I mean because I mean, go through administrative credential, like fine. What I mean to say is, is that administrators sit down and they come up with this plan to improve your school and, and in few areas like learning based outcomes, uh, climate and culture, and they come up with these metrics to show.

They're how they're collecting their data and and and reflecting on it, and it's all just ticking boxes, like one of the measures that we were supposed to be using to improve our reading levels. We were supposed to be all sitting down and reflecting on star reading data and none of us have been trained to use star reading data.

It was a new test we were using at the secondary level and no one was being guided towards that process like it's all very superficial. And the extent to which that is, like,  the problem here is, I think, probably jaw dropping to people.  Yeah, I think, I don't, you know, I don't know. I think this is something where I'd be curious, actually, what, um,  like, what teachers want, like, what kinds of roles they want in administration.

I think, uh, one question I have is sort of, About even your experience of like is the are the types of roles the leadership roles you're describing are those things that are those interests that teachers share widely like you think they're leaving because their voice isn't heard or I think because I because I think sometimes my instinct is almost like well You know, we're asked teachers to do a lot. 

Uh, you know, are we, is this something that now they feel like there's one more thing they need to do is also be on the leadership team?  No, they don't. They wouldn't have to. Right. And so we would have to sit down and decide, okay, so if you're going to be a teacher evaluator, like if you observe teachers, cause I think only teachers should be evaluating other teachers.

And How many periods of release do you need for that? What qualifications do you need for that? Like in my idea and pie in the sky of having a national professional association, there would be some kind of liaison at the U. S. Department of Ed, and that would need to be one of us, and you would need to be released for two years even. 

The thing is, is you need to stay tethered to the profession. You, every year you're out of the classroom, you become relevant to a lot of these things a little less and less. I'm not saying There aren't administrators. I'm not saying there aren't school boards, but we're that check and balance, Paul, like we're the judiciary, we are lifetime appointment, and we can speak more freely, and we're, we're missing, I guess is what I'm saying, is that, I don't know, when I say these things, I always wonder how much sense am I making, does it sound, I don't know, what do you think?

I, so I certainly, you know, it's, it's not, I think, totally wacky idea by any means, but it certainly is. Different than, um, I think most schools are organized. And, you know, if I were going to be, you know, if I wanted to put the most optimistic framing on local control in education as possible, you know, I can imagine this being a case where this is, um, potential advantage of local control is there might be Places where locally this kind of thing can be implemented in a way that it can't be, um, as easily, you know, a statewide or nationwide or something.

Um, and so, you know, maybe there are pockets of places that could try out something like this, uh, to get, uh, to give us a sense for how, um,  how, uh, how helpful and effective, um, it is. Thank you. I think that wraps up our conversation for today. Would you be willing to come back on in another time to talk about other issues or this one even more?

Uh, what do you want to leave the listeners with? Any final thoughts?  Um, the, I, you know, I think, um, my, I think my, you know, I described, uh, what I think are the key points, I think, just, you know, that I'd reiterate is, I think this is a place where, uh, the available evidence on, if we're talking about teacher shortages, I think, you know, the available evidence is limited in a lot of important ways, and to the extent that we have evidence, and I think this is true about all the evidence we have, whether we're talking about vacancies, Whether we're talking about teacher licensure, whether we're talking about teacher quality in some abstract sense, I think no matter what, how we define teacher shortage, something that is very consistent is that these are, um, highly varied problems that are highly localized.

They disproportionately affect kids who are educationally most disadvantaged already. They affect certain types of positions, certain geographies, and keeping that variation in mind, I think is, um, is really key to. Um, addressing, um, the, the shortages that exist.  Can I ask one more question? Would you say it is a crisis in those, uh, pockets? 

I think there are definitely pockets where it is a crisis. Um, I think that's a perfectly plausible, um, way of describing it, particularly in some of the, the, you know, the most disadvantaged schools, um, which are also the ones where ideally I would like the services to be strongest. Yeah, we agree for sure. 

Thank you, Paul. I so appreciate your time. And, um, thank you for the research that you've done. And would you please pass it on to your colleagues? Your paper is awesome. Be happy to.  That's it for today. Thanks for listening, everyone. Don't forget to go to teachershortagecrisis. com to sign the petition and join the movement to save K 12 schooling and our democracy.

And remember, We may just be teachers, but we're the only ones who can fix this mess.