What’s Really Behind Baltimore’s Teacher Shortage?

Parents share tales of the nationwide teacher shortage like veterans swapping war stories: the day their kids spent watching movies in the cafeteria because there weren’t enough teachers to instruct several classrooms. The time they were asked to substitute teach in the absence of qualified professionals. Classrooms that are overcrowded and teachers who are clearly under-supported.

It’s no surprise then that a national study conducted last year found that more than half of parents were concerned that teachers were burned out and 65 percent questioned their school’s ability to have qualified teachers in the classroom.

These fears aren’t unfounded. The Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) spring 2024 report on the state’s teacher workforce says that while the attrition rate has begun to stabilize, it is still high, with 10.7 percent of Maryland teachers not returning to the classroom in the 2023-24 school year.

And even though enrollment in educator preparation programs (EPP) has started to rise, it’s still not enough to meet the need: MSDE notes that there were 2,144 teacher vacancies in the 2022-23 school year, but EPPs only produced 1,914 potential future teachers.

Laurie Mullen is the dean of the College of Education at Towson University. Towson was the state’s original “normal school” (teacher college) and 160 years later, it still generates more educators than any other state institution. Yet Mullen says they’ve seen a drop-off in enrollment at the College of Education since 2017 and their number of “completers,” those who graduate with a teaching certificate, is down 20 percent.

For people looking for an easy answer to the teacher shortage—low pay, poor classroom experiences—Mullen says it’s not that simple.

“If you think about 150 years ago when women went into the workforce, there was teaching and there was nursing,” says Mullen. “Now young women have more options and that’s great. What we haven’t seen on the other side is men coming into teaching.”

When what was then the Maryland State Normal School opened in 1866, it was in response to a shortage of teachers and formally educated educators in the latter half of the last century. Mullen likes to point out that back then, and up until perhaps 50 years ago, the state paid for would-be teachers to attend the Normal School.

But she notes that since the ’70s, teachers have been increasingly blamed and vilified for complex educational issues that have roots far beyond the classroom. Awareness of student special needs has also grown, which, while a positive advance, has put more pressure on classroom teachers. And, of course, pay has not kept pace. All of which makes the profession less appealing.

“Young people have grown up in a society hearing that schools are failing and one reason they’re failing is teachers,” says Mullen. “So we have children with a wider choice of occupations…and then they hear that teachers don’t make any money and aren’t respected.”

She says that while there’s no one answer as to why teaching has become a beleaguered profession, one thing is certain—we ask more of the profession now than ever before and yet give it less respect.

“The expectations that community members, school board members, legislators, and taxpayers have for classroom teachers is tremendous, much more than they can do,” says Mullen.

Maryland is making strides in repairing the pay piece of this equation. In the 2023-24 school year, the salary range for a K-12 Baltimore City teacher with a bachelor’s degree was $58,000-$68,000 and $61,000-$107,000 for those with a master’s. The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 2021, has raised starting pay to $60,000 and offers incentives for national board-certified teachers of up to $17,000. It also puts in place “career ladders” to enable teachers to grow their careers.

So while pay is an issue, it is not the issue. In fact, research by the Learning Policy Institute shows that a school’s climate, culture, and condition—things like the ability to have autonomy in the classroom, access to mentoring, and time for professional development—are what take away from the attractiveness of teaching in Maryland.

Mullen says there is a lot of regulation around the profession and the curriculum, sometimes even dictating what teachers can and cannot say in the classroom. Today’s teachers may need to navigate book bans or issues around the language of trans rights.

“If you take a young, bright, creative person and put them in a place with decreasing autonomy and more scripted environments, then this is no longer an intriguing career,” she explains.

Berol Dewdney knows a bit about what it takes to get and keep teachers. The 2022 Baltimore City Teacher of the Year and 2023 Maryland Teacher of the Year instructs pre-kindergarten at Commodore John Rodgers elementary school in the Butchers Hill area of Baltimore. She’s been teaching for 11 years and while she’s aware of the teaching shortage “writ large,” she’s had the good fortune to be in a school where people love the job and stay.

Yes, pay needs to improve, but, “We have to give the adults in the room what we want them to give the children,” she says. “That can be high quality instructional materials or professional development.”

She adds that a teacher’s well-being and professional growth need to be nurtured, “in the same way that we support our [students’] being well and growing.”

Dewdney currently has 20 students in her class in a school that is more than 50 percent linguistically diverse. She’s working on her Spanish, but her school provides an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teacher for every grade level and an ESOL paraeducator for early-childhood classrooms. There is also a school-family coordinator and programs that provide resources in different languages. Access to resources like these help turn would-be challenges into opportunities.

“I like to think about our work as being like redwood trees that grow so tall because of their connected root systems,” she says. “I am where I am as an educator because of the amazing educators around me and the systems that have connected us. My principal [Marc Martin] does an incredible job of building collaborative systems not just in our school but across our district…And in addition to building those spaces for teachers, he honors the voice and leadership and knowledge of teachers and that has been foundational in developing me as an educator, but also keeping me happy as an educator.”

This sense of support, of agency, and of respect is critical to teacher satisfaction. Studies show that teaching has high rates of satisfaction for those who stay long-term, but young, unsupported teachers are vulnerable to departure. This is something the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future is intended to fix, by making teacher preparation more rigorous and a systemic part of early career instruction.

“WE HAVE TO GIVE THE ADULTS IN THE ROOM WHAT WE WANT THEM TO GIVE THE CHILDREN.”

But tackling working conditions is complex, says Afra Hersi, dean of the School of Education at Loyola University Maryland, as it goes beyond just the conditions in the classroom. Dewdney, for example, says one of the biggest barriers teachers face today is an unsustainable workload. And mitigating that goes beyond hiring teachers.

“Schools need nurses. Schools need social workers. Schools need school psychologists. A teacher can’t be all of the things,” she says. “We want to look at what the needs and wants and hopes of our communities are and then work collectively to bring together all the people who serve those needs, wants, and hopes, because it can’t just come on the backs of teachers.”

Hersi explains that fixing classroom conditions begins before a teacher even sets foot in the school. “We have to recognize that teacher preparation needs to be honored as time that’s necessary for success,” says Hersi. “We then won’t have this revolving door of people being thrown into a situation where they aren’t prepared and burning out.

“We also need to recognize the hidden costs of becoming a teacher—the unpaid internships, the testing fees—and minimize those costs,” she continues.

Perhaps more than anything, it is these hidden fees that are keeping people out of the teaching profession, particularly minorities who are underrepresented in classrooms. (Maryland’s teachers are 68 percent white.) Hersi explains that to become a credentialed teacher, you need a bachelor’s degree, and to pass licensure exams that cost hundreds of dollars, not to mention other fees, like paying to be fingerprinted, for transportation, and for classroom supplies.

Hersi points out that medical students require a residency before practicing.  She thinks teachers could benefit from similar earn-while-you-learn programs and teaching residencies so they aren’t shouldering a financial burden on the way to the classroom.

“When we put doctors through their classroom knowledge, they have to go and do that clinical internship with a knowledgeable professional under supervision,” says Hersi. “Often, they are paid. Not teachers. That’s a significant expense for an individual to be responsible for.”

She says one way school districts have gotten around this is to bring young teachers in on conditional licensure. But that just puts unprepared teachers in a place of almost certain failure, she explains: “Would you take someone straight out of medical school with no preparation and just put them right in front of patients?”

More effective, say these experts, are things like “Grow Your Own” programs that identify high-school students interested in teaching and get them in the pipeline toward that career. Mullen points to Towson’s Summer Scholars Institute, which taps high-school students and gives them stipends and scholarships that enable them to spend a week on Towson’s campus to enroll in a class, meet faculty, and get matched up with a student mentor. Towson also has programs to interact with its own students who are undecided on a major, and they’re using social media to communicate with young people.

“There’s no magic bullet—recruitment takes intentionality,” says Mullen.

As for the expense of getting teachers into the classroom, the Maryland Teacher Shortage Reduction Act of 2023 is starting to address this issue with several interventions, including a $20,000 stipend for student teachers enrolled in an EPP who agree to teach for two years in a high-need school.

Once teachers are in place, the career ladders must be there to help them advance their careers, perhaps toward a new credential that will enable them to become a reading specialist or a special education teacher. Or help them into leadership on a track to become a principal.

More than anything, these experts say, the conversation around teaching as a profession needs to change to be more positive. As any parent who “taught” Zoom school in the pandemic knows, teaching is a difficult job, one that deserves far more respect than it’s received in recent decades. Hersi is a parent. She has seen the teacher shortage firsthand and understands parental frustration. But she maintains that the first step is to change the public narrative

“We should all be concerned, not only because our kids aren’t receiving the proper instruction they need; our entire nation is at risk,” she says. “Our whole democracy and our system of public education is built on democracy’s idea of the educated citizen. We have to say our schools are a priority and creating the professionals we need to run our schools is a priority.”

“WE ALSO NEED TO RECOGNIZE THE HIDDEN COSTS OF BECOMING A TEACHER…”

The thing about teaching is once you set aside the negativity, it’s a career that sells itself.

“Teaching is still an occupation where you can change a young person’s trajectory,” says Mullen. “The public school system can change lives.”

That’s what attracted Caroline Kunz, 21, to Loyola’s five-year master’s program in teaching. She still remembers sitting in an English  class as a high-school junior, blown away by the teacher’s passion for the topic.

“I remember reading The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye and never wanting to leave that classroom,” says Kunz. “She inspired me to have a similar impact on students.”

Kunz says she’s heard plenty of naysaying around teaching—young kids struggling with the return to the classroom after the pandemic, for example—and she’s seen some of it as a substitute teacher in her home district, which is in Rochester, New York.

On a flight recently, she mentioned to another passenger that she was going to be a teacher. “Oh good, someone has to do it,” was the response. But Kunz says working with experienced teachers through those challenges has been a great experience and, “If anything, it fuels me more to see what difference I can make…I know how formational teachers were to me and how they helped shape me as a whole person; to do the same would mean so much to me.”

She expects that when she hits hard times in the classroom, having other teachers there to remind her of the “why”—the purpose behind the career—will help her. Dewdney says that’s absolutely been the case in her school.

“When I have been at my lowest, it has always been teachers who have given me what I strive to give my students,” she says. “Our connections root us, sustain us, and inspire growth.”

That purpose has been brought into stark relief since the pandemic. Research shows that a child who lacks a teacher for one year is set back two years academically—maybe more, depending on the school and the student. Which means the race to bring more qualified teachers to the classroom is one we cannot afford to lose.

Hersi says Maryland sits at a critical juncture as the nation grapples with how to make education a priority.

“I don’t like to get political, but the state, the union, and the school systems are aligned,” she says. “And I believe we have the resources.

So the question is how do we employ them to be effective and hold systems accountable?

“I really think it is important for Maryland to be a leader on this issue,” Hersi continues. “We have this unique opportunity to make systemic shifts in this area and have Maryland become a national model.”