Almost a month into the third quarter for public schools, newly graduated teachers and soon-to-graduate student-teachers settle into their classroom tasks.
But it’s not enough.
Twelve thousand teaching positions open up annually in North Carolina public schools. But the state’s colleges and universities produce fewer than 6,000 licensed teachers in that same time, according to Director of Professional Education Michael Maher.
“The state of North Carolina operates on a deficit every year,” he said. “Education is very cyclical. It has to do with the [student population] growth in the state from outside.”
Educating educatorsThe University has had a hand in lessening this void, Maher said.
“There’s been tremendous growth,” he said. “Our enrollments are growing. If you look in terms of sheer numbers, the college itself is growing.”
Last May, the college certified 185 undergraduates and 153 alternative licensure students, a growth of more than 200 percent from 2002 statistics.
And Maher said these numbers will continue to increase due in part to initiatives, such as STEM grants, and new programs, like the elementary education and master’s of art and teaching majors. The first class of elementary education majors, totaling approximately 30, will graduate in May with rates projected to double by next spring.
Jeffrey Reaser, professor of English and coordinator for the English secondary education alternative licensure program, said he accredits much of the University’s contribution of certified educators to alternative licensuring programs.
“N.C. State has been really leading the way with alternative licensures,” he said. “[It was] the only institution last year to increase alternative licensure plans.”
Through N.C. Teach, an alternative licensure program that allows teachers to take distance-education classes toward their licenses while teaching at their schools, educators are getting into the classrooms sooner, Reaser said.
“In two years, we’ve effectively increased our number of licensed people through [N.C. Teach] six-fold,” he said.
And Maher said more teachers are graduating from the University in other ways as well.
“For at least the last five years, N.C. State has produced almost half of the licensed teachers in math [in the state],” he said.
And up until two decades ago, the state was a surplus state, producing more teachers than jobs in public education.
Keeping the FaithMore important even than filling teaching position is retaining those educators, Reaser said.
“One of the biggest things that can improve teacher retention,” he said.
And reasons for teacher turnover, according to Reaser, vary from parent issues, lack of mentorship, unsupportive administrators and strains from external requirements.
“Overwhelmingly, they love to teach, but they hate being administrators [in their classrooms],” he said.
The teacher turnover rate is around 12 percent, a growing trend, according to a 2006-2007 report from the N.C. Department of Public Instruction. To fill this need, North Carolina hires 59 percent of its public educators from outside its state lines, Maher said. And according to Reaser, teacher shortages and turnovers are the most problematic not in areas around the University like Wake County, but in rural regions.
“Most education crises are overblown quite a bit. Where the crisis really exists here is in the rural counties [such as Northeast North Carolina],” Reaser said. “They’re putting any warm body they can in order to fill jobs, because they have to.”
Teaching the publicMaher said the state is working to put highly qualified teachers in the vacant positions.
“The state is taking measures to take away some of the barriers of becoming a teacher,” he said.
According to Maher, these educational issues are in the public eye more than ever.
“Education is a part of the national interest now,” Maher said. “No Child Left Behind has been a big part of it and the shortages.”
Reaser agreed, adding that everyone should have a vested interest in these topics.
“It’s one of those issues that everyone of us should pay attention to,” he said. “We don’t recognize what happens socially in schools. What we see and think we know about the education system — the good and the bad — is far from accurate.”
