Nationwide Teacher Shortage Leaves States Looking To Fill Thousands Of Positions
SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) -- School districts around the country are looking to fill teaching positions as a shortage lingers well into the start of a new year, and now a Stanford professor is releasing the first comprehensive look at how bad the nation's teacher shortage really is.
This isn't just a Bay Area problem. Tampa Florida still has thousands of slots to fill, and Arizona's turnover rate is so high it still has to fill positions months into the school year.
"Salaries have declined. Working conditions have gotten worse - larger class sizes - less access to the materials for teaching," Stanford Professor Linda Darling Hammond told KCBS.
Hammond is head of the Learning Policy Institute, which studied the shortage. She says this is the first major shortage since the mid-90s.
The shortage is especially severe in math, science, bi-lingual and special-ed. This comes as more kids are enrolling in public schools but the teachers that are in the classroom are thinking about retirement or switching careers.
