With schools reopening across numerous states this month, it is becoming clear that the country is facing a teacher shortage.
The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it is partnering with several major job search companies to try to address the teacher shortage that is plaguing many school districts across the country today.
According to a White House memo provided exclusively to USA TODAY, the companies will set up ways school districts can recruit and hire prospective teachers and for teachers looking for jobs to find openings.
To get the ball rolling, First Lady Jill Biden will be joined by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, other administration officials, governors, and executives from Recruiter, Handshake, and Indeed to discuss new actions geared toward addressing the teacher shortage.
Along with discussing these new actions, additional ways that the federal government, state and local governments, education organizations, and the private sector can strengthen the teaching profession will also be discussed.
It is a big problem and one that has been brewing for a number of years, dating back to at least the George W. Bush administration.
Biden’s Education and Labor departments will encourage state and local officials in a letter Wednesday to use funds provided in the American Rescue Plan, which congressional Democrats passed in 2021, to increase teacher pay.
Schools received $130 billion from the rescue law, while local and state governments received an additional 350 billion in direct funding. The administration is also committing more than $100 million in the Labor Department’s next round of apprenticeship grants to the education sector.
A recent USA TODAY analysis of existing research suggests many of the teacher vacancies are related to shortages that predated the coronavirus pandemic and concentrated in schools serving large percentages of nonwhite students or children living in poverty.
Meanwhile, a recent study found persistent and widespread shortages of non-teaching personnel, from bus drivers to custodians, with many of the job shortages persisting into the new school year.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, in an interview Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, said the teacher shortage is a symptom of a “teacher respect issue.”
He said new college graduates earn 33 percent more than the average teacher and that teachers have seen just a $29 salary increase over the past 25 years when adjusted for inflation.
“That’s unacceptable,” Cardona said, describing teachers forced to work as ride-share drivers on weekends. “We have to lift the profession.”
