Short on Teachers, Long on Schemes for Recruitment

Recruiters from Massachusetts came calling in Berkeley last week, looking to hire a few good teachers. To sweeten the state’s appeal, they came offering $20,000 bonuses to be paid out over four years.

“We’re looking at perhaps lawyers, housewives who have parenting experience, community activists, engineers who have worked 20 years in Silicon Valley,” said Alan Safran, chief of staff for the Massachusetts Department of Education. “We want leaders from any aspect of life.”

Massachusetts launched the recruiting effort last summer, partly to offset the bad publicity created when 60% of the teacher candidates failed a competency test. But sending headhunters to California took some gumption.

That’s because California faces the largest shortage of teachers in the nation, needing to hire 27,000 annually for at least the next decade. By comparison, Massachusetts needs only 2,500 a year.

But it’s not only Massachusetts that California must compete with. Nationally, schools need to hire an estimated 2 million teachers over the next decade. That number might even be low, because President Clinton is committing more than $1 billion a year to reduce class sizes nationally to no more than 18 students through grade 3.

Like Massachusetts, a growing number of districts are offering signing bonuses or other incentives. Baltimore, for example, last year started giving out $5,000 grants to help new hires buy homes there. To draw people from out of state, the district also kicked in $1,200 to help defray moving expenses.

California has yet to begin treating teachers like bonus babies. But it isn’t sitting on the sidelines either.

The same week the Bay Staters came calling, California’s Center for Teaching Careers rolled out a $2-million television advertising campaign.

The 30-second ad features a young, energetic teacher who rides his bike to school and then leads his students in a lively science lesson. “There’s a place in California where you can do something important with your life every day,” the voice-over says. “The place is the classroom.”

The ad is just the most visible evidence that California policymakers are taking the problem seriously. Budgeters already have increased spending 11-fold on a program that forgives education loans for college students who agree to teach for a certain number of years. The state has endorsed alternative pathways, such as internships, into the classroom. Those programs make it possible for untrained candidates with college degrees to earn a salary while learning to teach.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is grooming its own employees as teachers. The district is helping 4,000 teaching assistants get their college degrees as preparation for becoming teachers. The district is also helping 1,300 other employees obtain teaching credentials by providing them free training that normally would cost $7,000 to $10,000.

Gov. Gray Davis is seeking $10 million to help districts statewide train their teaching assistants. He’s also increasing the teacher training budget for the California State University system and trying to get the University of California more involved.

Recruitment isn’t the only issue.

Under Gov. Pete Wilson, the state poured money into mentoring programs that try to ensure that new teachers get off to a good start. Without such support, studies show, up to half of teachers will quit within five years.

Research conducted for the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning shows that only about half of the 15,000 California residents who earn teaching credentials each year actually end up in the classroom.

Some of those credentialed teachers only want to teach in schools where they live and the nearby schools aren’t hiring. But most are discouraged by the inadequate resources that hobble many schools, such as shortages of desks, books and other basic supplies.

Even though California has a long way to go, the state’s efforts earn the praise of David Haselkorn, the president of Recruiting New Teachers, a Boston-based nonprofit that is helping states deal with the teacher shortage. “I don’t think you solve this problem with some flashy bonus program,” he said.