Missouri, along with many other states, is struggling to bounce back to pre-pandemic achievement levels. In Missouri, scores have mostly recovered in math, but our English/language arts (ELA) scores have declined.

Here is a brief overview of the preliminary 2023 MAP results.

Mathematics took a bigger initial dive but has largely bounced back to its pre-pandemic levels. All cohorts of students (3rd grade, 4th grade, 5th grade, etc.,) have gradually recovered in mathematics and had a higher average score in 2023 than they did in 2021. On the other hand, only Missouri 5th graders had a higher average score for ELA in 2023 than they did in 2021. Interestingly, ELA scores are actually decreasing rather than recovering (hopefully the new LETRS program can help).

Particularly concerning are 3rd-grade and middle-school ELA levels, both of which are still much lower than pre-pandemic levels. For 3rd graders, scores slumped in 2021. Even as kids returned to school full time, scores have not increased—but have remained completely stagnant. Missouri’s 6th graders have actually had their scores decrease steadily for four straight years, with scores decreasing even before the pandemic. Compared with other grade cohorts, Missouri 6th graders have the biggest loss between pre- and post-pandemic scores. Additionally, our state’s 7th graders have had their scores drop lower every year since 2021 (8th graders dropped in 2022 and remained steady in 2023). Our middle schoolers are not rebounding from the pandemic, they are actually struggling even more in ELA.

We need drastic actions to address this education emergency. Missouri’s Commissioner of Education claimed that the teacher shortage is impacting student learning as positions are filled with substitutes or left vacant entirely. I agree that there is a teacher shortage in Missouri, but it’s concentrated in specific schools and subject areas. We need major change. Allowing school districts to offer bonuses or higher salaries to recruit and retain high need positions could help fill these roles and make the education system more responsive to the market.

These scores are concerning, but I am hopeful that these “deflating” results might motivate our legislators and districts to bring more freedom and innovation to education in our state.

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The problem is that allowing retired teachers to come back to the classroom does nothing to address the problem. Let me be clear on what I mean by “the problem.” I am not talking about the problem of teacher recruitment and the number of people entering the profession. I’m talking about the teacher pipeline problem caused by the retirement system itself. It is a system that pushes people out. It incentivizes teachers, principals, and superintendents to retire in their mid-50s. This new provision does not address that issue; instead, it makes it worse.

Researchers have long known that defined-benefit pensions, such as those used in the Missouri teaching profession, have two key effects on the labor market. They provide a pull for workers to stay until the peak benefit period, then they push workers out. If a teacher begins working in Missouri right out of college around the age of 22, they will likely hit their peak benefit period around the age of 53.

If lawmakers truly want to keep great late-career teachers in the profession, they should revise the system that pushes them out in the first place. The best way to do this would be to move to a new type of pension system where teachers’ retirement plans would continue to accrue wealth as they continue to work through their 50s.

If we view Senate Bill 75 as a temporary fix (it does have a sunset built in) to address an immediate issue of teacher shortages, then the bill is fine. It is not, however, a fix to a teacher pension system that pushes out individuals who have so much more to give.

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Stories about the teacher shortage conjure images of overwhelmed teachers across Missouri struggling to manage overflowing classrooms and a growing student population. If you never looked at the statewide numbers and only at media headlines, you might think the sky was falling. A few examples: “The Profession that Prepares People for all Other Professions is Diminishing (in Missouri),” “Teachers in Missouri are Not Returning to the Classroom,” and “A Look at the Local Impact of the Teacher Shortage Crisis (in Missouri).”

While the statewide trends are relatively minor, they still directly contradict the idea that teachers across the state are in short supply. The figures below depict statewide trends.

Student enrollment numbers have bounced back a bit from the COVID-19 dip and currently sit at 863,000. Nevertheless, prior to the pandemic, enrollment had been falling every year since 2013, and the 2022 number is still not close to the 2020 enrollment figure of 879,000. Conversely, teacher FTE (full-time equivalent) rose during the pandemic, and actually increased by a greater percentage (0.78%) than enrollment (0.41%) in 2022.

Even with the first positive enrollment growth since 2013, the student enrolled to teacher ratio still decreased from 12.29 to 12.26. The national student enrolled to teacher ratio has been decreasing for a long time, from 27 in 1951, to 20 in 1976, and to 16 in 2000. In 2020, the national ratio was 15.2, almost 3 whole students higher than Missouri’s total.

If the student-to-teacher ratio is so low, why are schools feeling the heat? The answer: there is a shortage of teachers to fill specific positions, not a shortage of teachers in general.

Five districts account for 50 percent of teacher vacancies in Missouri, and many of these vacancies are in a few subject areas—including special education, English-language learning (ELL), and mathematics. Allowing school districts to pay teachers more to fill these high-need vacancies—pay differentiation—is something I have discussed before, and could help solve this problem. Luckily, House Bill (HB) 190 is currently progressing through the Missouri Legislature, and it would allow for pay differentiation in our state.

There are districts in Missouri with needs for specific teachers. But that does not mean the whole state has a teacher crisis, and the data make it clear that Missouri is not facing any systemic teacher crisis. It is unfortunate that some Missourians may be getting the wrong impression from some inaccurate headlines, and one would hope that going forward we can have a debate that takes the actual facts into consideration.

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If a school has more than a 5% teacher vacancy or is filled with non-fully certified teachers, then it qualifies as a “high-need school.” “High-need subject areas” are defined as subjects in which a district had to leave a position vacant or filled the position with non-fully certified teachers in the previous year. Missouri uses a “single salary schedule,” which sets a salary floor for teachers with a bonus for master’s degree holders. Currently, a district cannot pay a science teacher more than an English teacher with similar experience and degree level—a master’s degree in physics is equivalent to a master’s degree in English.

As an example: under HB 190, a district could offer a new special education teacher (a high-need position in many districts) a salary above the current salary floor to recruit the teacher. Districts are also allowed to raise the salaries of current teachers in high-need subject areas in order to retain them. There are some limitations—HB 190 does not allow a district to demote a different teacher in order to use this enhanced flexibility to recruit or retain a teacher. Districts are limited by their own budgets, they can choose to offer these high salaries, but they must make space to do so without lowering other teachers’ salaries.

The broader debate on this topic is about an alleged teacher shortage in Missouri. But the problem is not quite that simple, or quite that broad. Missouri is having trouble recruiting teachers in specific subject areas, such as special education and mathematics. The problem is also highly concentrated; 5 school districts accounted for almost 50 percent of school vacancies in 2022. Given that Missouri is having trouble attracting teachers for certain high-need areas and schools, it makes sense to allow districts to pay certain teachers more in order to persuade candidates to fill those jobs.

Despite the logic of HB 190, several lawmakers voiced their opposition in a recent committee hearing, claiming it would “pit teacher against teacher” and that the bill would end up “doing a lot more harm to the culture of the district and the staff and schools than good.” These complaints don’t add up. There’s already significant pay differentiation in schools among teachers—veteran teachers make more money, and so do teachers with advanced degrees. Paying teachers in certain subject areas more money is just one additional variable.

This policy might also encourage Missouri teachers to gain additional skills and certifications in order to qualify for higher-paying positions. An English teacher might spend time learning about special education reading to become a teacher in a high-need subject area and receive the corresponding pay increase. This could potentially help schools fill vacancies faster, as it may be easier to promote from within instead of embarking on an external search.

We have a narrow problem in Missouri with hiring specific teachers, and that means we need a targeted solution. Pay differentiation is an idea worth strongly considering, and the objections from critics, at least so far, don’t have much merit. I’m glad to see that the legislature appears to be taking this idea seriously.

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Districts have implemented this new schedule to lure teachers to their schools during a supposed teacher shortage. However, Show-Me Institute Distinguished Fellow of Education Policy James Shuls has raised questions about how serious this shortage is (if it exists at all). But even if we were to grant that teacher shortages are a problem that districts need to address, the four-day school week will generate new problems, which could be amended by a complementary policy–open enrollment.

Forcing families to adapt to a four-day school week is a significant change that will be disruptive for many parents—particularly those with younger children—whose employers are more committed to the traditional five-day work week. For families of children using the free/reduced-price lunch program, there may be additional difficulties for finding care and proper nutrition on the extra day off. With that said, parents who work from home or otherwise have the flexibility to accommodate the shorter school week might find that the new policy is a good fit for them. Every family is unique—which is why the Missouri State School Board’s recent interest in the possibility of instituting open enrollment statewide holds so much promise.

Open enrollment would enable parents in Independence and the surrounding districts to decide for themselves which schedule works best for their families. If the four-day school week would create serious problems for a family in the Independence district, the chance to move their children to a nearby district that has classes five days a week could be a lifesaver. Conversely, there are probably families in the area surrounding Independence that would benefit from the four-day schedule if they were allowed to switch districts. With open enrollment, districts can offer options while decision-making power remains with the parents.

In any case, the welfare of the children should be the paramount concern of all involved, and the effect of a 4-day school week on learning remains a subject of controversy. Paul Thompson at Oregon State University recently published a study evaluating the impact of four-day school weeks. He noted the numerous benefits that accompany attending school in-person, including face-to-face interaction with both teachers and peers along with opportunities for structured group activities. On one hand, four-day school weeks reduce these benefits and increase weekend learning loss; some students may be more vulnerable to these effects than others. On the other hand, an additional day off provides extra downtime for students and teachers and increased opportunities for students to spend time outside school with their peers. Acknowledging both the positives and negatives, Thompson finds that if schools maintain the same number of hours of instruction they had in a five-day week, these negative effects (reduction in test scores) are mostly negated (but still exist). However, if instructional time is not maintained, the negative effects are strongly pronounced.

Just like individual families, individual students will handle a four-day school week in different ways; it will be a better fit for some than for others. The trick is matching each family and student with the right schedule, and that’s a job best left to parents. If the trend toward a shorter school week has staying power, we’ll learn more about its long-term effects in the years to come. In the meantime, open enrollment has the potential to maximize its benefits and minimize its shortcomings.

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As I previously discussed, the Independence School District cited teacher shortages as a reason for moving to a four-day school week. My goal in the presentation of application and vacancy data is to give the public a better sense of what Independence means when they say “shortage.”

The 2022 data reveals a clear drop-off in the number of applications for job openings.

In 2018, the district had 2,485 applications for 162 job openings (15.3 applications per vacancy).

In 2020, the district had 1,878 applications for 138 job openings (13.6 applications per vacancy).

In 2022, the number of applications clearly dropped. The district received 967 applications for 161 jobs (6 applications per vacancy).

Per DESE guidelines, the district reports the level of shortage on a 1 to 5 scale, where 4 and 5 indicate shortages. Despite having fewer applications, the district reported fewer areas of shortages (7 certification areas rated 4 or 5, compared to 10 in 2018 and 2020). Just one certification area, industrial technology, was rated as a level 5. The district had 3 applications for 2 job openings, but only 1 application was from an appropriately certified individual.

Despite the decline in applications, the district had zero vacancies left vacant in 2022.

I should note, the district did see an increase in the number of positions filled with individuals who were not appropriately certified. In both 2018 and 2020, the district filled two positions with such teachers. In 2022, the district filled 12 positions with teachers without the appropriate certification.

We should note that “not appropriately certified” is a broad category. It includes, for instance, hiring an individual who is certified to teach high-school math to teach middle-school math where they are not certified. A certified teacher could simply take and pass a certification area test in another area to obtain this additional certification. “Not appropriately certified” may also include individuals who do not have an education degree, but are working toward certification. We do not know the full credentials of the individuals hired by Independence.

The Independence School District is clearly experiencing a decline in the number of applications received. Nevertheless, according to DESE’s definition of a shortage, “fewer applicants than positions available,” the Independence School District did not have one shortage area in 2022.

There are a couple more numbers that readers should consider when considering the severity of the supposed shortage in Independence. From 2018 to 2021, district enrollment declined by 576 students. Yet, the number of full-time equivalent teachers increased by 22.

I repeat the questions asked in my first post. Based on these numbers, what do you think? Does the Independence School District have a teacher shortage? And is that shortage severe enough to justify a move to a four-day school week?

The post Does the Independence School District Have a Teacher Shortage Problem? 2022 Data Update appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I believe that the topic of teacher shortages is an important policy issue that deserves careful attention, especially when the solutions to the supposed crisis may cost state taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

To better understand the shortages, Show-Me Institute Research Assistant Avery Frank and I requested the data DESE uses to determine the level of shortages in Missouri. Each year, school districts report the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) vacancies they had in each certification area. They also report the number of applications for positions and whether the position was filled or left unfilled. Additionally, each school district rates its level of shortage in each area on a 1 to 5 scale. On this scale, a “1” is “considerable surplus” and “5” is “considerable shortage.”

We have begun to analyze these data and plan to release a more detailed state report. Given the move by the ISD, we believe it is important for parents and policymakers to have a better understanding of what a “shortage” of teachers looks like in Independence.

The data we received span from 2018 to 2021. Unfortunately, Independence is only present in the data in 2018 and 2020.

In Table 1, I present the number of FTE vacancies in 2018 and 2020 and the total number of applications. As you can see, the district received an average of 15.3 applications per vacancy in 2018 and 13.6 in 2020. This ranges from a low of one application for one school psychologist position (not a teaching position) in 2020 to a high of 172 applications for one secondary social studies position in 2018.

Table 1

In Table 2, we present the number of certification areas rated 1–5 in each year. As you can see, a total of 10 areas were suggested to have some degree of shortage in each year.

Table 2

When we asked DESE for a clarification on these rankings, this is what it provided:

Degree of Shortage–Perception of the supply of available teachers as compared with number of positions vacant. Valid entries are the numbers 1 through 5 using the descriptions below:

1. Considerable Surplus–Many applicants available, inquiries received frequently.
2. Some Surplus–More applicants than jobs, applicants easy to locate, inquiries received often.
3. Balanced Supply–Adequate number of available applicants.
4. Some Shortage–Fewer applicants than positions available.
5. Considerable Shortage–Applicants very difficult to locate for available positions

Based on these definitions, it does not appear that ISD is reporting its shortages in a manner consistent with the DESE definitions (see Tables 3 and 4). In both years, ISD reported level 4 or 5 shortages in ten areas. Based on the DESE definition, “fewer applicants than positions available,” not one of these certification areas in the table below would qualify as a level 4 rating, let alone a level 5 rating.

Table 3

Table 4

In each year, just one position was left vacant. In 2018, the district did not fill one speech- language specialist position (not a classroom teaching position). In 2020, the district did not fill one secondary mathematics position. Given that the district had 42 applications for four openings, it is likely the position was not filled due to a purposeful decision on the part of administrators.

In total, the district had 76 vacancies over the course of these two years in areas deemed shortage areas. The district received a total of 463 applications for these positions, an average of 6.1 applications per vacancy.

Our data are of course limited, and we can only report on the data DESE provided to us. Of course, these are the data DESE uses to determine shortages. Nevertheless, it is possible the district has more data available, and we would be pleased to present those numbers as well.

Based on these numbers, what do you think? Does the ISD have a teacher shortage? And is that shortage severe enough to justify a move to a four-day school week?

12/21/22–Correction: The data we received from DESE contained information for the years 2018 to 2022. The Independence School District application and vacancy data were present the following years: 2018, 2020, and 2022. Once we received the data, we merged the vacancy data with district demographic data from DESE. Because we did not have 2022 district demographic data, the 2022 observations were dropped from the data set. We have now recovered those data and will post an update that includes the most recent numbers.

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One glaring problem I see in the report is a complete lack of thought to almost anything besides compensation. Don’t get me wrong, compensation matters, and the commission is absolutely right to consider compensation. But if you are going to examine why there are reported teacher shortages, you ought to do a better job looking for causes or kinks in the teacher pipeline. Simply surveying existing teachers about whether they’d like more money (they would) will not help us answer the most pressing questions.

What are the causes of our current teacher shortage? They are certainly varied. But one thing the commission never seemed to consider was the current hiring practices of school districts.

From 2011 to 2021, enrollment in Missouri public schools dropped by nearly 30,000 students. The largest drop was post-COVID, with the state losing over 20,000 students in that year alone. Nevertheless, the trend is clearly downward.

It would make sense, given that total enrollment in the state has been decreasing, to see a similar decline in the number of teachers. Fewer students, fewer teachers needed. But instead, we see the opposite happening. As enrollment drops, the state continues to add to the number of teachers. In the table below, I present the number of full-time equivalent teachers (FTE). From 2011 to 2021—the same period that the state lost 30,000 students—the state added 2,475 FTE teachers. As the state dropped 20,000 students from the rolls, it only lost 10 FTE teachers. This brings the ratio down from 13.2 students per FTE teacher in 2011 to 12.3 in 2021.

If we looked at non-teaching staff and administration, we’d likely see similar trends. Indeed, Economist Ben Scafidi found exactly this when he looked at the data from 1992 to 2015. During that time period, Missouri student enrollment increased 9% while teachers increased 28% and all other staff increased 24%. Hiring seems to be uncorrelated with trends in student enrollment.

Why didn’t the commission consider this? Why wasn’t someone willing to ask the question, “Why are we increasing the number of teachers when the number of students is dropping?”

If you want to understand the teacher shortage, this is pretty important information.

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If you are like most people, you’d choose more pay.

If this survey were conducted with everyone in your company, what would it tell you?

It would tell you compensation preferences among people currently employed by the company.

That’s it.

It would not tell you whether boosting compensation in these ways would increase retention. It wouldn’t tell you whether you’d get more candidates applying for jobs if you did these things.

Of course, you may infer those things . . . but you could be wrong.

If you wanted to know those things, you’d need to design a better survey and you may need to survey different people.

For instance, if you want to know why people are leaving or staying, then you should ask that question. You should ask people who left the job why they left and what would have enticed them to stay. You should ask current employees if they’ve thought about leaving the company and, if so, why? Those questions would help you better understand how to retain people within your company.

Similarly, if you want to know more about recruiting applicants, you’d need to ask different questions and ask questions of different people. You’d ask your employees, “What attracted you to this job?” You’d ask people not employed at your company if they ever thought about applying for a job at your company and what would entice them to work for your company.

The questions you ask matter, and poorly designed surveys do little to help us answer the questions we really want answered.

Now imagine you were going to base a $29.5 million decision on the results of this survey. You’d think you’d want to get the questions right.

Well, you would unless you were the state’s Blue Ribbon Commission looking at the state’s teacher shortage.

The figure below shows the question the commission asked teachers. As Gomer Pyle might say, “Surprise, surprise, surprise.” Teachers want what anyone asked this question might want—more money!

I’m not saying we shouldn’t pay teachers more money. Maybe we should. What I’m saying is that that the state should not base important and complex decisions on poorly constructed surveys that tell us what we should already know—people like being paid more.

The post This Is Not How You Design a Survey, DESE appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Missouri Blue Ribbon Commission has been tasked with finding solutions for this “crisis.” The commission proposed additional funding for the Career Ladder Program (opportunities for professional development and extra pay), Grow Your Own Program (local teacher recruitment), and raising the base salary for teachers to $38,000.

Two key questions arise from this proposal:

1. What is the nature of this teacher shortage? Is it truly a crisis?
2. How will handing out more money solve the issue?

To answer the first question, it is important to note that the total number of public school teachers in Missouri (71,055) in 2020–2021 is the highest it has been in the past five years. One might think this is a normal occurrence because the population of the United States is increasing.

However, public school enrollment in Missouri has been steadily decreasing, from over 915,000 students in 2016 to under 860,000 in 2021. Additionally, enrollment is projected to dip below 800,000 by 2030—a 10 percent drop in less than fifteen years.

So, what gives? Why are schools feeling the burdens of shortages and claiming that there is a crisis if they have an increasing number of teachers for a decreasing number of students?

It is not because of a shortage of total teachers, but a deficiency of specific teachers. Teachers for special education, mathematics, physics, and biology are in low supply.

One of the reasons for these specific vacancies is the lack of pay differentiation for teachers. In Missouri, public school teachers are expected to be paid equally across the board, whether they are special educators, calculus teachers, or elementary music teachers. This isn’t to say that any of these jobs are easy—there are difficulties in each of these different sectors—but objectively, a special educator and calculus teacher require higher credentials than an elementary music teacher.

Lack of additional pay likely means many future teachers are not pursuing credentials that cost additional time and additional money because it doesn’t pay off. This contributes to a lower proportion of teachers entering these fields.

This brings us to my second question: How will raising pay across the board solve this issue? It won’t. If the ratio of special educators to elementary music teachers is 1:1, an additional uniform $6,000 raise likely won’t change the ratio. The problem of specific teacher vacancies would remain. While the commission’s idea of increasing salary and recruitment is the right one, the funding needs to be allocated more carefully.

If the commission wants to solve this “teacher crisis,” pay differentiation, or at least extra compensation in these low-supply fields, needs to be implemented. The extra time and money required to become proficient in high-demand fields should be balanced with a pay increase, and teaching roles could then be more evenly filled in Missouri.

The post Pay Differentiation Can Heal Missouri’s “Teaching Shortage” appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Dan Goldhaber is an AIR vice president and director of Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at AIR. He is also an affiliate professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Washington, the director of the Center for Education Data & Research, and the co-editor of Education Finance and Policy.

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The post Is There Actually a Teacher Shortage? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Let’s cut through all of that. America has been on a teacher (and other school staff) hiring bonanza for decades. Ben Scafidi of Kennesaw State University has shown that while the total student population in American public schools grew by 100% from 1950 to 2009, the number of teachers grew by 243 percent and administrators and other staff grew by a whopping 709 percent. If that’s not enough, Mike Antonucci wrote earlier this week that since 2008, the American student population has remained essentially stagnant while the number of teachers has grown by 12.4%. He quotes noted researcher Richard Ingersoll stating that the “ballooning” teacher workforce is financial “ticking time bomb.”

Is struggling to keep up rates of teacher growth far outpacing student growth really the same as a “shortage?” I don’t think so.

Since at least the 1950s, America has prioritized reducing class sizes. Pursuing that policy has had consequences. It has meant hiring a lot more teachers, and, generally, paying them less. In other words, the public school system requires more and more teachers each year and has less to offer them. We shouldn’t be surprised when public schools struggle to fill teaching positions. Focusing less on class size reduction and more on hiring the best possible teachers that we can (and paying them accordingly) could help.

How we pay teachers matters as well. It similarly should not surprise us that we see schools struggling to find math and science teachers. Because we pay all teachers equally though step-and-lane pay scales, those who can make more money outside of schools (like those with backgrounds in math and science) are forced to take a financial hit when they decide to become a teacher. Allowing for pay variations that take into account the labor market demands for different skill sets is one way we might attract more math and science teachers.

Herbert Stein’s law states that trends that can’t continue, won’t. Continuing to expand the teaching workforce and compensating them through pay schemes out of the 1920s is not going to get us the teaching workforce our children need. Call it whatever you want, but it isn’t good for kids.

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This lesson hit home with me as I was reading about the new certification requirements for public school teachers. Missouri has long had certification requirements. For instance, traditionally certified teachers must earn an education degree, and they have long been required to pass a content exam. Over the past few years, however, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has revised many of the requirements, making it more difficult to become a teacher. Prospective teachers must take a personality inventory (which I’ve written about before), they must pass a more difficult content exam, and now they must also pass a performance assessment.

To many, these sound like good ideas because they are sprinkled with a bit of the truth. We want our public school teachers to be excellent. If we put these screens in place, we’ll get better teachers—or so the thinking goes. The problem is that while teacher licensure screens are an unproven way to improve teacher quality, they are a sure-fire way to shrink the teaching pool.

Take licensure exams, for instance. As I have shown in the journals Educational Policy and the Journal of School Choice: International Research and Reform, licensure exams are very loosely related to teacher effectiveness. Yes, people who do well on tests tend to be better teachers, on average, but there is considerable variation. In other words, some people who do well on a content exam are terrible teachers; while some who do poorly on a licensure exam are great teachers. Screens like this let in some bad teachers and keep out some good teachers.

In a recent working paper, “Can we simply raise the bar on teacher quality?” I show how simply making licensure exams harder will have a negligible impact on the overall quality of teachers in the field. Yet, as a result, we would reduce the number of teachers; further exacerbating teacher shortages. These shortages would do the most harm to disadvantaged schools attempting to compete for the limited supply of teachers.

Missouri’s newest test, the Missouri Pre-Service Teachers Assessment, seeks to move beyond testing only content knowledge. Here is a description of the test from the Southeast Missourian:

The first three parts of the exam are written, and the last has a video component, except in areas where shooting footage is difficult.

In the first part of the exam, student teachers are assessed on how well they know their students and the context of the school in which they’re teaching.

The second part tests them on how they plan to check whether their students have learned the information they taught.

In the third part…student teachers are judged on how they plan to teach their lessons, and the fourth part allows them to demonstrate how effective their approaches have been…

Once again we have put in place a policy that sounds like a good idea. In the end, however, it too will not likely have a positive impact on public education in Missouri.  The problem is that we simply cannot capture great teaching in one of these assessments. Think back to the best teacher you ever had. Would these exams make him or her stand out from his or her peers? Probably not. 

Licensure screens for teachers sound like good public policy, but they aren't. If we really cared about teacher quality, we’d be better off to open pathways into the profession, support teacher professional development, and get rid of bad teachers.  

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Two slides in the presentation jumped out at me. The first one is above.

Dovetailing nicely with the research I have done on rural schools in Missouri, DESE’s slide shows there are shortages in more than 10 teacher certification categories in 16 counties across the state, and shortages in 43 counties in 5 to 9 categories.

What are these categories, you ask? The next slide tells us.

Want to learn Spanish? Are you a gifted student? Interested in learning science? Live in one of these rural counties? Tough luck.

I commend the efforts that the state is taking to try and tackle this problem, but here at SMI we’ve been promoting a solution for quite some time now that would address these shortage issues—a course access program.

MOVIP has already certified courses in these subject areas. (Check out the list for just grades 6 to 8—its huge!) For $600 a year, students in these counties could take Spanish from a vetted source and get credit for it. All they need is the flexibility to reroute 600 of the dollars that the state sends their district to these alternative providers. Course access would do that. More than a dozen states around the country have figured this out.

The state’s current efforts, while laudable, seem to constitute a complicated and labor-intensive process with a high amount of uncertainty as to whether or not they will be effective. Every once in a while the simpler solution is the best one, and I think in this case Occam’s razor favors course access. If the state wants to solve these shortage issues, the state should seriously look into it.

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