Many teaching positions unfilled as school year starts

As schools around the country resume classes this month, the struggle to fill teaching positions continues for many of them.

The troubling trend began in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, when one in every 10 teaching positions nationwide was not being filled by a certified teacher, according to a 2023 study conducted by Marguerite Franco and Susan Kemper Patrick of the Learning Policy Institute (LPI).

In South Carolina, over 1,600 K-12 education jobs were unfilled at the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year, another report found. It was “nearly a 10% increase from the year before when 1,474 openings were reported, and it is more than double the figure from three years ago, 699.” 

In Pennsylvania last year, school districts reported 2,000 teacher vacancies and “6,500 … teaching on emergency certificates,” with an added concern that the “teacher retention rate is 6%,” another report found. 

Specialist positions can be particularly difficult to fill.

In Iowa, the Urbandale Community School District is currently facing a vacancy of 30 special education positions, a similar shortage it experienced last year.

The LPI study found that “47 states plus the District of Columbia had an estimated 286,290 teachers who were not fully certified for their teaching assignment.” And out of the 21 states that provided published vacancy data, there were 27,844 unfilled teacher positions.

At minimum, “314,134 positions were either unfilled or filled by teachers not fully certified for their assignments,” representing nearly 1 out of 10 teaching positions nationwide, the study concluded.

The trend may be leading young people to avoid the profession, too. One University of Chicago-affiliated research group found that “fewer than one in five Americans (18%) would encourage a young person to become a K-12 teacher,” due to pay, lack of school resources and stressful work environments. 

Lawmakers in many states are responding by establishing new internship programs, making teacher certification easier and increasing pay, but the results may take another year or two to be seen.