Teacher Shortages | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Fewer young men and women want to become teachers, according to a report from the UNC system. It is easy to see why enrollments in schools of education have decreased as much as 23 percent or more over the past five years. Public education is getting beaten up from every angle. Teacher pay has been stagnant; many in the profession are demoralized. And with the ever-changing initiatives and priorities respect for educators, including teachers, has decreased.

    We can adopt a glass-half-empty view of this enrollment decline but we would be better served to see it as an opportunity to rethink the whole teacher education equation. So let's take out a clean sheet of paper and begin.

    If our goal is to have the very best schools of education, schools utilizing the most modern and effective training methods in preparing the best and the brightest future teachers, we should begin by acknowledging that we have too many teacher training schools, certainly too few schools of excellence. We cannot dictate which private colleges have schools of education but we can do so within our public university system and should reallocate resources to fewer but better schools of education.

    Most every young person beyond the elementary grades has (or has access to) smart phones, tablets and/or laptop devices. They can tweet, text, email, Google and play games on them. It's how they communicate, learn, play and relate to the world. Mark Edwards, the national Superintendent of the Year with the Mooresville Graded Schools, said one of his first hurdles was matching teacher skills with existent student skills in technology and spent a summer instructing his teachers how to use the new technology and online teaching resources. Our schools of education are largely stuck in old-school methods of training teachers to stand in front of a class lecturing and desperately need reforming.

    Next we must address prospective teachers. Amanda Ripley, in her seminal book, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way, says that Finland and other countries that made the decision to have the best schools of education also committed to accepting only the top 10 percent of high school graduates into those schools, a decision that paid huge dividends. Not only do these countries have really smart, inquisitive academics in the classroom, but the whole nation quickly learned that only the best and brightest could become teachers. It wasn't long before teachers assumed the same level of respect as doctors, engineers, scientists and other professionals, like it once was in our country. The heightened respect translated into improved morale among teachers and improved conduct from students.

    If we have the best schools turning out the best teachers it follows that we must treat them accordingly. Ripley says that countries that have the smartest kids don't always pay teachers the most, but she says it's time we took the pay issue off the table by paying teachers enough so that it isn't a distraction to the main issue, outstanding student outcomes.

    North Carolina must demand nothing less than the best...from our schools of education, from our teachers and yes, from parents and students. Teaching is an honorable and essential profession, one in which we can ill afford shortages. We can fix this problem.

    Publisher's note: Tom Campbell is former assistant North Carolina State Treasurer and is creator/host of NC SPIN, a weekly statewide television discussion of NC issues airing Sundays at 11:00 am on WITN-TV. Contact Tom at NC Spin.