By Charles Sosnik

Nobody told me there’d be days like these.

If you are in administration, you are dealing with some very frightening numbers right now. Last week, Learning Counsel CEO LeiLani Cauthen wrote an article that detailed the current teacher shortage. According to Cauthen, “28 percent of teachers have quit, been lost, or shuffled into different roles, mostly promotions into administration with added duties, while keeping many part-time duties in the classroom. That’s an estimated 638,000 teachers at a time when most schools and districts already didn’t have enough teachers and the worst drought of graduating new teachers coming into the workforce in history. Even pre-pandemic, K12 schools were losing up to 500,000 teachers a year, 15 percent of the workforce annually, due to burnout. Add to that, extra-large helpings of burnout during the pandemic plus the 10,000-per-day boomer retirements nationally, and K-12 schools are seeing a mass loss like never before with little hope to recoup before the next school year.”

This teacher shortage has been coming for years, even though the pandemic seems to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Back in 2018 we told you, “Unless we believe technology is a magic bullet that can replace our disappearing teachers, we need to figure this out. If not, in a few years we may be yearning for the good old days of 40-student class sizes.

Here are a few additional facts to add to the mix:

• Almost half (46 percent) of teachers who graduated from a school of education and accepted employment in a US school district will leave the profession altogether within the first five years.
• Schools experiencing periods of high turnover are more likely to hire teachers who are not fully licensed.
• High-poverty schools are more likely to have vacancies and are more likely to fill positions with first-year or non-credentialed teachers
• In the past eight years, the number of students enrolled in traditional schools of education in the U.S. has dropped from 609,106 to 337,690
• In the past eight years, the number of students enrolled in non-traditional teacher preparation has risen from 38,595 to 66,173.
• By 2025, the number of new teachers needed is expected to be over 300,000 per year, while the expected supply of new teachers is expected to be just over 100,000.”

Well, it seems like we were a wee bit conservative on our estimates. In reality, according to Cauthen, “The number of college students studying to become teachers is less than half what it was 50 years ago.” Learning Counsel Research projects that fewer than 70,000 new teachers will apply to schools in 2022, only about 10 percent of the need.  If you are a current administrator, imagine now what will happen if you only get 10 percent of the teachers you need.  How many empty classrooms? How much will your student-to-teacher ratio balloon? In many states, ratios are set by law, and yet if you can’t get the workforce, you will be forced to compromise. 

Adding existing needs of schools for teachers to new resignations projected in 2022, and schools are projected to have a shortfall of nearly 1,000,000 teachers and administrators – over a quarter of the entire workforce.”

Don’t panic

Okay, panic a little. This is fixable. But it isn’t fixable by simply replacing the teaching staff. Unless you have a magic wand (or the most intense recruiting plan in the history of teaching), you cannot replace the teaching staff. It simply no longer exists and based on the numbers of candidates in schools of education and alternative programs, it isn’t coming back. Instead, you need to get very intimate with two little words.

Hybrid Logistics.

That’s HYBRID LOGISTICS.

Think of it as Amazon-style just-in-time logistics for your learning delivery.

Cauthen describes it as, “Converting all or parts of your curriculum to the new efficiencies of Hybrid Logistics, which rearrange time and space use while offering better personalization through teachers more succinctly using their essential skills. The Hybrid Logistics proposition allows those certified or credentialed faculty to be “stretched” but not overburdened.  This is the first model to deftly utilize human teaching more efficiently in a “middle-ground” between fully virtual and fully live-on-campus schooling.”

Eventually, the entire profession of teaching is going to morph, and there will be more employment, not less – and technology will be a big part of that. For the time being, we have to work with the resources we have. To that end, I invite you to call on Learning Counsel Innovation Services. Our team can help you move to a solution that you can live with, and one that does not sacrifice learning quality to find a solution that is tailored for your district. Contact the Learning Counsel here to inquire about assistance in this area.

Because no one told us there’d be days like these. But fortunately, there is a way home with Hybrid Logistics.

About the author

Charles Sosnik is an education journalist and editor and serves as Editor in Chief at the Learning Counsel. An EP3 Education Fellow, he uses his deep roots in the education community to add context to the education narrative. Charles is a frequent writer and columnist for some of the most influential media in education, including the Learning Counsel, EdNews Daily, EdTech Digest and edCircuit. Unabashedly Southern, Charles likes to say he is an editor by trade and Southern by the Grace of God.