There Is No National Teacher Shortage
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America’s students are going back to school this month. According to many media sources, districts won’t have nearly enough teachers to greet them. The Washington Post has warned of a “catastrophic teacher shortage.” ABC World News Tonight called it a new “growing crisis,” and Rebecca Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, called it a “five-alarm” fire. The Wall Street Journal warned of a “dog-eat-dog” scramble to hire underqualified instructors, and results from a national survey found a surge of teachers planning to quit or retire early.
For several weeks, I watched this Great American Teacher Shortage narrative bloom across the media landscape. Because of my reporting for my series, I was predisposed to believe it was real. The U.S. is rife with shortages, including of infant formula and monkeypox vaccines. But I was also skeptical, because so many public-education controversies—see: the debates over remote schooling, the proper way to teach American history, and controversial laws
