What Teacher Shortage?

Though I'm not a teacher, I work in technology within the realm of (Minnesota) public education, and my wife is a teacher. Every year as budgets get tightened, staff in schools--including teachers, get lay-offs. Yet somewhere, somehow, the public is being lead to believe that there is some giant teacher shortage! Let's get realistic for a minute. If the average person knows that unemployment has gone up and people in all sectors of the workforce are suffering from lay-offs, pay-freezes, loss of benefits, etc., do you really believe that these same conditions somehow don't exist for teachers and other school employees within our financially strapped schools?

So now in Minnesota, there is new legislation to make it easier for people who didn't study to be teachers, to get jobs as teachers. At the same time, there is a lot of "lip-service" about how education is suffering and student achievement is down, yada, yada, yada... So somehow having less qualified teachers is going to fix this! Who would have thought such a thing? Most of us probably know, deep down, it is really just a way to destroy union power, workers rights, and ultimately pay teachers less.

Now if there is an actual teacher shortage, in certain inner-city schools or rural areas, then it seems to me that the best way to get qualified teachers to go work there, is by offering more pay and benefits, not less. Do people believe that teachers are highly paid? In order to get decent pay, most of them have to get their Masters degree--which incidentally, this boost in pay is another thing on the chopping block--along with paying less to teachers who specialize in the arts. Are all of you actually falling for this crap? Apparently Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has--even though he is generally pretty supportive of education as a whole. Did I mention that some people want to close the "achievement gap" by having year-around school? And how will this work since districts are finding that they can't pay for nine-month-per-year school?

In my opinion, as long as the leadership is influenced by the misconceptions made popular by the powers who want to pay hard-working, people less (to supposedly "fix" these shortfalls), nothing good will be accomplished for anyone--including the students. If we can all deal within reality, and look at the big picture, then this completely made-up, fiction that is driving policy won't be believable anymore.

KJC