To stay in their profession, said a union leader, educators need “professional respect” including fair pay and the right “to make teaching and learning decisions for their students.”
JULIA CONLEY August 12, 2022
National Education Association president Becky Pringle on Thursday warned that the U.S. teacher shortage has spiraled into a “five-alarm crisis,” with nearly 300,000 teaching and support positions left unfilled and policymakers taking desperate—and in some cases, questionable—measures to staff classrooms.
Pringle told ABC News that teachers unions have been warning for years that chronic disinvestment in schools has placed untenable pressure on educators as they face low pay and overcrowded classrooms.
“The political situation in the United States, combined with legitimate aftereffects of Covid, has created this shortage.”
“We have a crisis in the number of students who are going into the teaching profession and the number of teachers who are leaving it,” Pringle told the outlet. “But, of course, as with everything else, the pandemic just made it worse.”
As a survey taken by the NEA earlier this year showed, 91% of educators said pandemic-related stress and burnout is a “serious problem” in the profession, and 55% reported they plan to leave their profession earlier than originally planned.
Chronically low pay is a problem in the profession which was well-documented prior to the pandemic, and educators across the country report it is a contributing factor as teachers leave schools. The national average salary for teachers is $64,000, but in states including Mississippi, South Dakota, and Florida, many educators earn far less.
Read the rest of the piece from commondreams.org here.