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Why the U.S. Teacher Shortage is Such a Big Issue and Needs to be Fixed.

Sydney Littman

Florida State University

ENC 2135: Research, Genre, and Context

Ms. Natalie Patterson

April 24, 2024

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Introduction

Across the United States of America, it is well known that a teacher shortage is

happening. This may be known, but most people today are unaware of how much of an issue this

shortage is. The topic is very relevant today and according to the article, ‘6 Charts That Explain

the Educator Shortage’, it’s been a problem for almost 20 years now (Pelika, 2022). There are a

lot of factors causing teachers to leave their positions. And since there is no desire to teach, no

qualified teachers are filling their spots, causing a shortage. Educators are essential workers and

education is needed in the world. Without teachers we wouldn’t be able to express history and

knowledge correctly, resulting in an unsafe world. To be able to solve this issue, the causes must

be studied. There are three main reasons as to why the teacher shortage is happening. These are

low teacher pay, high expectations, and how over time most teachers are now experiencing

burnout.

Section 1 – Low Pay

When someone thinks about teacher shortages, the first thing one usually thinks about is

the teacher’s pay. According to Talent.com, the average teacher in the United States makes

25,000 dollars to 78,000 dollars a year. This is not enough money to compensate them for this

job. Especially when teachers do so much more work than some other jobs. Just to compare
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salaries, according to Zip Recruiter, Uber drivers make approximately 30,000 dollars to 53,000

dollars a year. All Uber drivers do is drive people around and they have no skills other than

knowing how to drive a car. Teachers must do so much more, and they are the ones that end up

with lower pay.

It would be rational to think that in the growing economy, a teacher’s salary has gone up

to compensate for it, but it went down. According to the Economic Policy Institute it states, “The

average weekly wages of public-school teachers… decreased by $128 from 2021 to 2022, from

$1,477 to $1,329.” (Allegretto, 2023) This information is a complete surprise to most people.

Yes, it is known that a teacher’s salary is low, but no one could have guessed that it has gone

down instead of higher where it should be.

Now, the very low pay teachers receive causes them to either quit their jobs or not go into

the field in the first place, which then causes a shortage of teachers. According to a ‘job openings

versus hires chart’ on nea.org, Since 2015, when the teacher shortage began, there has been a

huge trend of job openings increasing. The number of hires, after the same time, is significantly

lower than the number of openings. Not only is the teacher shortage caused by teachers quitting

but it is mixed with people not wanting to fill in their places and become teachers.

Section 2 – High Expectations

It is not as well-known as low teacher pay, but high expectations of teachers are what also

causes them to leave their positions. Most people who aren’t teachers went to a school with other

students surrounding them or public/private school. So, most people have been around teachers

and see what they do. What most people see though is not even half of what they do. They may
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not have seen what their teachers were doing even while the teacher was right in front of them.

Outside of teaching for seven hours, teachers have so much more work than they are expected to

do. Some expectations include planning lessons that can change at any time, scheduling parent/

teacher conferences, connecting with their students, and making sure their large class/ classes are

always on task. All these reasons and so many more can cause the teacher to not do their job as

well as they could or should be doing it. This then results in showings of poor performance in

students’ grades.

As mentioned earlier, teachers are expected to do everything and on top of that, be

prepared to adapt to anything always changing. For example, this could be the lesson they

planned on teaching one day. Let’s say something external altered how the day goes like a

student making a scene. What would go on next is that the teacher would have to figure out how

to stop this scene, report the scene, figure out what was missed in the lesson because of the

scene, and find room somewhere else to be able to get back to that lesson in the future. For a

teacher having to stay on their toes and think of a quick solution to any situation possible is

going to be very hard on them mentally and physically.

Some work is even expected to be done outside of paying hours. One of the requirements

teachers do in school, they are also doing outside of school. Lesson planning is something that a

teacher never stops doing. According to a thread on fishbowl.com, teachers usually spend a lot of

time after school and on the weekends lesson planning. This thread has answers submitted by

actual teachers. Most of the responses on the thread say they spend about 6 to 18 hours a week

lesson planning, and that’s just on new material. With all those hours combined for lesson

planning, teachers are then expected to attend so many school events. According to ProTeacher,

many teachers had a handful of mandatory events they were required to go to without being paid.
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Other huge expectations that teachers have are not so much expected but required to do

are things like being prepared for school shootings. During school threats like shootings, teachers

are expected to save their students. There is even a law passed in May of 2019 where teachers

can now carry guns. According to the New York Times, “The law, which gives school districts

the option to arm teachers, as well as security guards, was passed in response to the 2018

shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., which left 17 people dead.

Teachers will be allowed to carry guns via the Guardian Program, which was created in the wake

of the shooting.” (Holson, 2019). Teachers should not be expected to handle these kinds of

situations.

An example of a situation discussing this comes from when a first-grade teacher in

Virginia named Abby Zwerner was shot by one of her students in January of 2023. The school

would only give her workers compensation since it happened only inside her job. According to

an article on this subject, “Zwerner’s attorneys countered that workers compensation doesn’t

apply because a first-grade teacher would never anticipate getting shot.” The higher-up people at

the school she taught at truly believed that this kind of thing is something that is part of the job,

but it definitely isn’t. School shootings and teachers being responsible for taking care of students

in that way cannot become normalized. Not only would they have to protect their students, but

also worry about carrying a gun on them. This can take a huge toll on a teacher in such a

physically and mentally exhausting way.

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Section 3 – Burnout

According to ahrq.gov, “Burnout is a long-term stress reaction marked by emotional

exhaustion, depersonalization, and a lack of sense of personal accomplishment.” This is caused

by the huge workload and expectations teachers get. This, along with all of their hard work not

being compensated by good-earned money can easily make a teacher feel this way. The constant

workload teachers get causes them to become overwhelmed by it all and it makes them believe

that all their hard work isn’t appreciated enough or isn’t worth something. That something would

be the pay or a lack of conceit.

Along with regular teacher burnout, recently in the year of 2020, there has been a

phenomenon called ‘COVID Burnout’. According to the National Library of Medicine, “Teacher

stress is a potential undesirable consequence of the COVID-19 school closures…, emerging from

issues such as uncertainties about the duration of school closures or teachers’ lack of experience

with remote teaching…” (Westphal, 2022). The fear of the unknown seems to be the main cause

of teacher COVID-19 burnout. As a high school student myself during the pandemic, I have seen

quite a handful of my teachers quit or retire early because of the change to remote learning.

Section 4 – Solutions

With all the negativities shown in the sections above, it would be rational to think that

there’s no way of fixing this shortage. However, there are some solutions being worked on at the

moment. The first solution would be to fix the biggest problem, the teacher pay. A study on

teacher raises brought up a good point that, “Increasing teacher pay has the potential to make

teaching more attractive and entice effective, diverse candidates to enter and remain in the
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profession and thereby increase student outcome.” (Brenner, Roth, Johnson, 2018) Increasing

teacher pay will not only have a good effect on teachers now but also bring in new teachers,

solving the shortage.

In the same study, a thoughtful solution was proposed. According to this study, the

solution was for the federal government to, “…use the federal tax code to create a permanent

$10,000 refundable federal Teacher Tax Credit…” (Brenner, Roth, Johnson, 2018) This solution

would give so much more money to these essential workers. This is because, “this would result

in a significant increase in take-home pay—more than $190 per week.” (Brenner, Roth, Johnson,

2018) With these numbers presented along with the teaching job title, more people will want to

become educators. With that as well, fewer educators will leave their positions.

Another big issue causing teachers to quit their jobs was the high expectations put on

them. A quick and simple solution to this is to decrease the workload on teachers. A constant

worry about students is that they won’t succeed if their teachers aren’t always working and

learning. The effort put behind this statement is thoughtful, but the truth is actually the opposite.

According to a study, “At best, students actually improved their performance as they experienced

more specific, immediate feedback; more time learning as opposed to progress monitoring tests;

and less stressed and overworked teachers.” If all teacher's work is reduced, then the teacher will

have more time to work with the students and then those students will end up doing better in the

end. Together, these two solutions will help to stop teachers from burning out.

Conclusion
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Teachers are burnt out because they are expected to do so much without getting paid

enough to compensate for it. This causes many of them to quit their jobs and overall, causes a

teacher shortage. The solutions provided really should be considered in the education system. It

would do the future generations of teachers and students a great deal. This would stop the issue

and help teachers who are struggling or are turning away from the field of teaching because of all

the negative aspects associated with it.

Works Cited

Allegretto, S. (2023, September 29). Teacher pay penalty still looms large: Trends in teacher

wages and compensation through 2022. Economic Policy Institute.

https://www.epi.org/publication/teacher-pay-in-2022/#epi-toc-2

Brenner, M., Roth, E., Johnson, S. (2018, July 13). How to Give Teachers a $10,000 Raise.

American Progress https://www.americanprogress.org/article/give-teachers-10000-raise/

Catandturtle. (2014, December 9). Do you have mandatory after school events? If so, are you

paid? (Online forum post). ProTeacher Community. https://proteacher.net/discussions/threads/do-

you-have-mandatory-after-school-events-if-so-are-you-paid.516846/

Finley, B. (2023, November 7). Judge Rules Workers Comp Doesn’t Apply in Case Involving

Teacher Shot by 6-Year-Old. Carrier Management.

https://www.carriermanagement.com/news/2023/11/07/255304.htm
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Holson, L. M. (2019, October 1). Florida Teachers Can Now Carry Guns at School. The New

York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/us/florida-teachers-guns.html

Krause, C. (2023, June 8). A quick rundown on the national teacher shortage. Abilene Christian

University. https://acu.edu/2023/05/30/a-quick-rundown-on-the-national-teacher-shortage/

#:~:text=The%20teacher%20shortage%20has%20been,potential%20increase%20of%20teacher

%20shortages

Linzer, M. (2017, July). Physician Burnout. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

https://www.ahrq.gov/prevention/clinician/ahrq-works/burnout/index.html#:~:text=Burnout

%20is%20a%20long%2Dterm,of%20sense%20of%20personal%20accomplishment

Mielke, C. (2023, September 1). Reducing Teacher Workloads. ASCD.

https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/reducing-teacher-workloads

Pelika, S. (2022, September 30). 6 Charts That Explain the Educator Shortage. National

Education Association. https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/6-charts-

explain-educator-shortage
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School, C. H. (2020, January 27). New teacher here, how much of your weekend do you spend

lesson planning? Feel like I have to dedicate a whole day to it which doesn't give me much time

to relax and unwind from work. Fishbowl – Your Professional Community.

https://www.fishbowlapp.com/post/new-teacher-here-how-much-of-your-weekend-do-you-

spend-lesson-planning-feel-like-i-have-to-dedicate-a-whole-day-to-it-which?welcome=true

Teacher salary in USA – Average salary. (n.d.). Talent.com https://www.talent.com/salary?

job=teacher

Westphal, A. (2022, September 2). K−12 teachers' stress and burnout during the COVID-19

pandemic: A systematic review. National Library of Medicine.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9479001/#:~:text=COVID

%2D19%20pandemic.-,Teacher%20stress%20and%20burnout,Kim%20and%20Asbury%2C

%202020