Possible Solutions
September 19, 2022
The Texas Education Agency created a teacher vacancy task force in response to the increase in loss of teachers. They will meet every other month for one year to discuss ways to aid teachers in their careers.
In the meantime, in order to staff more teachers quickly, alternative certification programs, in which uncertified teachers go through an online training program to then be put in the classroom under observation for a year to get certified, have become more common in recent years.
“These programs have really increased across the state,” Supak said, “as some teachers might have had a different profession and are now looking to become teachers.”
However, according to Kelvey Oeser, TEA’s deputy commissioner of educator and system support, teachers who go through alternative certification programs are more likely to leave the profession than those who went to a four-year university.
Wyer attributed that to a need for more support by the school district. Without good teachers, there’s no good learning. — Amy Wyer, Faculty Success Coordinator for Texas A&M University
“The school doesn’t do a good enough job with mentoring the new teachers and offering professional development to foster good pedagogy and classroom management,” Wyer said, “because neither of those things come naturally to most people.”
The constant struggle with teacher retention has blurred the lines for the future of Texas education, but, according to Medina, there’s still hope.
“There’s a teacher down the hall who has a degree in economics and now a master’s in education; it’s his second year teaching, and he’s killing it,” she said. “I think for all the noise and news it gets that teachers are leaving the profession, it’s important to remember that this is a profession that we need that people are still joining.”