“Why do science teachers leave a school?”
or
Numbers Say: The High School Physics Teachers Shortage Will Be Fixed In 130 Years.
According to this report
in 2013 about 40 % of high school students took a physics course.
According
to this source https://www.census.gov/hhes/school/data/cps/2013/tables.html
in 2013 there were close to 16,000,000 high school students in the U.S. That would give about 4,000,000 graduates. Forty percent of this number is equal to 1,600,000 students.
The more accurate number is 1,400,000; in 2013 this many high school students were enrolled in a physics course (thank you David Meltzer for finding out this information: see Appendix I).
Let’s use a very conservative estimation.
The more accurate number is 1,400,000; in 2013 this many high school students were enrolled in a physics course (thank you David Meltzer for finding out this information: see Appendix I).
Let’s use a very conservative estimation.
Let’s assume that each class
had 30 students, and one teacher was teaching four classes. That gives us about
11,666 physics teachers.
According to PhysTec coalition
only 1/3 of all high school physics teachers have a degree in
physics or physics education.
Which means, high schools need
to hire about 7,777 properly prepared high school physics teachers.
According again to
PhysTec coalition, the members of the coalition graduate about 60 teachers per
a year.
Keeping this pace, we need to wait for about 130 years until every
high school in the U.S. will have a highly qualified physics teachers.
Please, note: we only talk here
about a high school level, only about physics, and only about 40 % of students!
Adding middle school science teachers and including all students
would quadruple the number.
Clearly, whatever PhysTec
coalition is doing, will not help us to solve the problems of a science
teachers shortage.
The problem even deepens if we
take into an account the fact that many teachers do not stay in schools for a
long time.
The Guardian says,
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/sep/15/not-enough-teachers-science-shortage-teaching-jobs
that too many of teachers leave
the profession, and too few qualified professionals go into the profession.
If we assume that our
calculations are correct, and The Guardian is right, the focus has to be shifted
from teacher preparation to teacher retention and professional
development of in-service teachers.
The next natural question to
ask is why do teachers leave a school?
In the context of this
publishing we should rephrase the question to: “Why do science teachers
leave a school?”
What do we do these days when
we need to find an answer to a question?
Of course!
We Google it!
But what does it mean if even Google does not have an answer?
It simply means there is no
data on this matter; no one publishes on this matter; no one study this matter.
I could have been speculating
and offering my own opinions, but why would anyone take my speculations
seriously?
That is why I just stop here (but continue in Appendix II).
If anyone would like to
share their thoughts, please just post your comment!
******
Appendix I
From David Meltzer
On the number of high school students taking physics
Source:
Susan White and Casey Langer Tesfaye, High School Physics
Courses & Enrollments: Results from the 201213 Nationwide Survey of High
School Physics Teachers (AIP, College Park,
MD, 2014). Available at: https://www.aip.org
This report examines enrollments in high school physics during the
201213 school year.
Appendix II
From Jane Jackson
Why do teachers leave? Teacher morale has plummeted in recent years, with educators saying that school reform has made them the scapegoat for problems in public education.
According to a Sept. 2016 report by the Learning Policy Institute at Stanford University, most teachers who leave do so because of dissatisfaction ranging from physical conditions such as class sizes, facilities, and classroom resources ‹ to unhappiness with administrative practices, such as lack of support, classroom autonomy, or input to decisions ‹ to policy issues, such as the effects of testing and accountability. Assessments & accountability measures are the biggest dissatisfactions.
Reducing attrition by half could virtually eliminate shortages.
Fewer people are entering teacher preparation programs. Enrollments are down 35 percent and graduates dropped by 23 percent between 2009 and 2014.
Download the full report (Sept. 2016) at
https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/comingcrisisteachingbrief
From me:
Jane Jackson makes a good point. In simple terms, teachers have to do too much work for too little money. And there are many social reasons for that. Still, would be useful to see the ranking (!) of the factors of the teacher dissatisfaction. Also, the reports (one of which is this https://
To learn more about my professional experience:
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