Tennessee teacher shortage: Analysis gives insight on what's helping, what needs work
Tackling Tennessee's ongoing teacher shortage is the focus of a newly released policy memo from the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, also known as SCORE.
The collaborative was founded in 2009 by former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist as an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan institution focused on education research and advocacy. The analysis, released Monday, included data from a diverse mix of 15 Tennessee school districts, along with insight into what's driving the teacher shortage and what state and local leaders can do to address it.
"With growing concerns about the educator pipeline and its impact on student learning, Tennessee has an urgent need to better understand how the state is attracting, developing, retaining, and maximizing its educator workforce," the report stated.
The analysis shared insight into the state's education labor markets, the impact of teacher salaries and other factors, what's driving teachers to leave the field, diversity disparities between teachers and students and what can be done to address all those things.
Here are four key takeaways from the analysis.
How Tennessee teacher shortages compare to the rest of the nation
Statewide, the analysis estimated there are around 60,000 teachers in the workforce, with more than 1,000 vacancies. That number, based on 2022 data from the Tennessee Department of Education, reflects unfilled teaching positions that led to the lack of course availability.
"Alarmingly, one-third of these vacancies were in the K-5 grade band," the analysis said.
However, not all school districts were struggling with vacancies. Nearly a third of districts reported no vacancies in the 2022-23 school year. Tennessee's vacancies are also not an outlier in the United States, with the state's shortage on par with the average nationwide, according to the analysis.
Insight on teacher turnover and salaries
Teacher turnover rates are most persistent among newer hires, especially those who lacked resources like coaching, mentoring and peer support, the analysis showed. A growing number of teachers are also undecided about their plans to stay in the profession.
State leaders recently set a goal to make the starting teacher salary $50,000 a year by 2026 and invested an additional $1 billion into public education. Still, nine out of the 15 districts included in the analysis had average staff salaries that fell below the family median income in their respective counties. Taking all the districts into account, the average staff salary sat at $2,068 above that median.
Teacher pay has been central in the push to address shortages in Tennessee and nationwide. In fact, salaries increased far more rapidly from 2021-2023 than in the three years prior, the analysis showed.
More: Tennessee names its top performing schools for 2022-23. See if yours made the list
But when it comes to why teachers are leaving the profession, salary actually ranked fifth on the list. Here are the top five reasons teachers said they decided not to teach the following year:
40% said they were leaving on their own for other reasons
37% said they were leaving because of leadership
27% said they were leaving due to the workload
26% said they were leaving due to the culture and climate among teachers and staff
23% said they were leaving due to salary
Stark racial, ethnic disparities among teachers, students
The majority of the educators in the 15 districts studied are white, according to the analysis. While that matches up with Tennessee as a whole, a stark disparity is revealed when it compares to student demographics. Here are some of the demographics and numbers the analysis compared among the districts studied:
73% of educators are white, versus 37% of students
23% of educators are Black, compared to 41% of students
2% of educators are Hispanic, compared to 18% of students
1% of educators are Asian, compared to 3% of students
A push for state, local action
Things like special permits to issue emergency teaching credentials, salary increases and efforts to strengthen training for teaching programs for new and existing educators have helped the shortage, the analysis said. But there's still more work to be done.
"Tennessee has been a pioneer in educator labor market innovation for decades," the analysis read. "With the ongoing and longstanding staffing challenges, it is time for Tennessee leaders to boldly design and implement the holistic staffing solutions that best serve students for years to come."
More: Tennessee lawmakers take on education: Key K-12 bills to watch in 2024
It mapped out key actions that state and local leaders could take to attract new talent, empower and retain current educators and better understand the forces at play in the education industry on a national, state and local level. Those include:
Gathering better data that is highly localized to each district
Focusing on supporting newer teachers
Revisiting policies on compensation and staffing, including differentiated compensation
Looking into staffing structures in Tennessee and across the nation that can inform strategy on how to foster a reliable, effective and diverse education workforce
Read the full report for yourself
The analysis, along with other reports from SCORE, can be found at tnscore.org/resources/strengthening-tennessees-educator-labor-market.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee teacher shortage analysis: What's helping, what needs work
