[soft music] ANNOUNCER: Support for this special conversation comes from the Gertrude J. Sandt Endowment, the James H. Olay Family Endowment, the Sidney and Helen S. Friedman Endowment, and from viewers like you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Anne Danahy.

School districts across Pennsylvania are grappling with teacher and administrator shortages.

Fewer people are going into the field and others are leaving.

Joining us to help us understand what's behind those shortages, who they're affecting, and what changes could help address them are two experts.

Ed Fuller is a professor of education at Penn State.

His research has focused on K through 12 education, including opportunities and turnover among teachers and school funding in Pennsylvania.

Jacquelyn Martin is superintendent of the Keystone Central School District in Clinton County.

She's worked in education for more than 30 years, including as a teacher, coach, and principal.

Ed Fuller and Jacquelyn Martin, thank you both so much for coming in to talk with us today.

Thank you, Anne.

Thank you.

Ed, could you start us off by talking about an analysis that you recently did looking at education trends in Pennsylvania, and specifically, the fact that more teachers are leaving the field, so we have a higher attrition rate in Pennsylvania.

And this comes at a time when it's getting harder to attract students to go into the field of education.

Can you kind of give us some perspective on that?

How big of a deal is this?

Right.

That's a great question.

We did see increasing attrition over the last couple of years.

And in fact, this last year was a pretty monumental increase in teacher attrition.

It increased all the way to 7.7%.

And that was almost 10,000 teachers last year.

That was the highest attrition rate in number of teachers we've lost since 2014, which is when the data started.

And again, you're right.

It comes on the tails of a long decline in the number of people becoming teachers.

So there was already a teacher shortage before attrition went up.

And now, it's just making it way, way worse.

So pretty much everybody in the state is experiencing some type of shortage of teachers.

And Jackie, is that in keeping with what you're seeing?

So you're in a largely rural school district.

What are you seeing, and how is it impacting the district?

There are some areas of certification that we're seeing more struggles with filling, in particular, speech and language teachers, school psychologists who are part of our teacher professional staff members, foreign languages in all different types of foreign languages.

And because of those shortages, we are having to decrease the number of cores offerings that we would typically offer.

So we're kind of down to Spanish and German.

And again, as people retire or leave the profession or go to another district, it's more and more difficult to backfill teachers who have any expertise in foreign languages.

So it's actually impacting what courses that you're able to offer the students that it's gotten to that effect.

Right now in the elective areas, absolutely.

Because again, if you're not offering those language programs in middle school, then students are less likely to take those courses in high school.

And what are you seeing at the state level across Pennsylvania?

Are there particular subjects and areas like they're seeing in the school districts or is it a kind of across the board?

It is.

I think everybody's experiencing some form of shortage, but it differs across district and area of the state.

So there are some subject areas that are traditionally hard to fill.

And they're even harder to fill special education, foreign languages, where we only prepared five Latin teachers last year, which is why you can't find one.

And English language learner and then some other subject areas.

Higher level math and science are always difficult to fill.

But some districts suffer more.

Underfunded districts, which serve a lot of kids of color in a lot of kids living in poverty have historically suffered from a shortage.

It's just much more severe now.

And so we've really paid a lot more attention to the shortage now because it's expanded outside of those underfunded districts and really affected every district in the state in one way or another.

Some people have much more acute shortages, but everybody is encountering some type of difficulty right now.

Now, we're all feeling it.

And are certain people more likely to leave education too?

That's something that you found too.

And I think that's really interesting and I'm sure concerning.

Yes.

Always, people who are retirement age are more likely to leave and beginning teachers are more likely to leave.

But I also found that teachers of color are more likely to leave.

And that's particularly important in Pennsylvania where we don't have near as many teachers of color as we need.

We're substantially below the percentage of students of color.

And it turns out recent research has shown that teachers of color are more effective with not only kids of color but also with white children as well.

So we really need those teachers in our classrooms.

And we're losing them at a really alarming rate, and we're not filling the holes that they leave with our preparation programs.

And is the situation different now, Jackie, than when you started in education some 30 years ago?

Absolutely.

Not only are we seeing shortages in some particular areas-- and I mentioned some earlier-- but also, I'd like to add like technology education.

The number of college programs, teacher certification programs across the state I think has dwindled to one for technology education.

Art and music educators are also very difficult to find.

But even in other content areas where we may have seen a candidate pool of 15, 25, sometimes 30 teachers vying for one position, our candidate pools are sometimes less than five.

Wow, so a very different situation.

I want to talk about some of the factors that are going into this a little bit more, including teacher pay, but also some of the other factors too.

And we reached out to our listeners and viewers and asked them to submit questions and comments about that.

And we're going to take a look at a couple questions and comments that we got about changing expectations in education.

And I'll just want to get your thoughts on this.

So we heard from one person.

This is Denise.

And she says that pay was low before and people still went into teaching.

I had no problem with the amount I was paid and would have gone into teaching for less.

But things have changed, and it's not for the better.

So we got that one.

And then we also heard from David.

And he said, "Holding public schools responsible for student outcomes regardless of the home conditions students come from is the prime source of frustration."

And one more comment kind of in that same vein.

And this one is from Sue.

And sue says she recently retired after 32 years.

The demands of the job increased exponentially over the years.

She spent thousands of dollars out of pocket to buy supplies.

So she's spending her own money.

And she says every single one of society's problems lands at an educator's doorsteps So there's quite a bit going on there, but some of the same sort of sentiment.

Jackie, what about that idea that there's this increasing pressure and expectation from teachers?

Well, I will say first, educators have kind of this saying that nobody teaches for the fame or money.

And that's true, but you still have to eat.

You still have to be able to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

And with beginning teacher salaries being so stagnant for so long or just inching up when you think about inflation and the cost of living, it's very difficult for people to sustain a living wage through education alone.

Most teachers that I know, particularly beginning teachers, have second or third jobs to help support themselves.

The other thing I would say is, as some of those viewers had said to you, there are more strains and stresses on school districts because one of the things that we know is that the mental health crisis in our nation has been exacerbated by the most recent pandemic.

And so our students are coming to our school districts or coming into our school buildings with a lot more burden and maybe a lot more mental health issues that have to be addressed before learning can occur.

And so as those needs of our learners have changed, the response by our educators has to change as well.

ANNE DANAHY: But it has to change, but it also means that there's more pressure on them, I would imagine.

There is.

And I think one of the other pressures too unrelated to the mental to the mental wellness of our students and staff, though, relates to the technology changes.

If you think about the technology changes that I've experienced as an educator since 1990, I think it was 1993 when I had the first opportunity to be in a professional development session and log on to the world wide web.

And technology has just changed exponentially since then.

And in many cases, our students are more technologically literate than our educators.

And so that's a pressure and a strain.

And thinking into the future, how is AI going to impact education?

And how are we going to use that to help or prepare our students for the future when sometimes our students know more about technology than we do?

Right.

And you heard a lot of different things going into that.

And you can almost hear the frustration in those comments too.

And we've talked about some of the factors.

But how does play into this?

How much are teachers getting paid?

How does it compare to what they were in years past?

Right.

Pay, for any job actually, pay is the number one reason why people go into the profession or leave the profession.

So the average teacher salary in Pennsylvania has actually declined since 1990 in constant dollars.

So what you're making now is lower than relative to what you were making in 1990 when we were teaching.

And so we're not rewarding teachers as much.

And at the same time, their cost have gone up a lot.

So inflation, the cost of getting a college degree.

I didn't have any student loans when I graduated because higher ed was largely subsidized.

It's not anymore.

And so our graduates come out with $40,000 in student loans, and they're going to start at a salary where they can barely afford to find a place to live and probably have to have a used car and then they're trying to pay off student loans.

It's not an attractive economic decision right now to go into teaching.

What would you say to the devil's advocate or someone who gives you a little pushback and say, I don't know.

I think if you have a $40,000 starting salary or whatever the average salary is, in Pennsylvania, that sounds pretty good.

And they get summers off.

Right.

Well, summers off is a whole issue because nobody really takes summers off when they're in education.

That's definitely a myth.

Anybody who's worked in education knows that they worked a lot of hours unpaid as a teacher.

I know I did.

But what we have to remember is beginning teachers have a college degree.

And what you want to do is compare what your salary is for a beginning teacher to other people with a college degree.

And it's often lower than other people with a college degree.

I did a study where I looked at nursing salaries in the same labor markets in Pennsylvania.

In 16 of those 22 labor markets, nurses made $10,000 more than teachers.

So there's a huge incentive to go into health care and stay out of education at this point because you can make far, far more money in a different field than education.

So it might be people-- if you compare it to just an average salary that includes everybody and not just college graduates, yeah, it might look pretty good.

But these are people who had different opportunities.

They could have chosen a different field.

And they still could and could make a lot more money doing something else.

We did get a question.

And we're going to take a look at this.

We got a question from a listener or viewer, and we will see what Maxine has to say.

She says, "I taught for many years in the school district of Philadelphia.

It was tough.

We cared about our students, but were disrespected by the state, school board, and general public.

Students there came to us from backgrounds with financial and experiential deficits that we were expected to fill.

The state continually tried to prevent the district from getting its federal money.

So teachers paid for supplies, books, et cetera, all while being paid lower than teachers in wealthier districts."

So this gets back to some of the issues that we were talking about, just the expectations and that varies from school district to school district.

Jackie, how does that work out for school districts because the amount of revenue that you're bringing in for a school district depends largely on the real estate base.

That's where a lot of the funding-- not all of it.

You get some from the state.

But a lot of it comes from-- In our district, approximately 60% of our budget is taxpayer funded.

And that's a pretty large burden for a rural area.

Our school district is the largest geographic in the commonwealth, and we have 980 square miles.

But over half of that is state lands, which does not produce revenue like you can produce in a suburban or an urban area.

So of course, when you think about all of the rural areas in Pennsylvania that are similar to what Keystone Central has, especially you get into the northern tier, you look at a lot of those smaller districts, they are in remote locations.

Their challenges are even greater.

And so I believe that the most recent court case on the unfair funding for Pennsylvania schools being unconstitutional, it was about time that came to light.

And really, this is going to be a monumental time for changing and evolving education in Pennsylvania to where it should be.

ANNE DANAHY: And for people who aren't familiar with that, there was a court case and it was challenging how schools in Pennsylvania are funded.

And it was successful.

We're still kind of waiting to hear, is that right, what the state's going to do about that.

Right.

There's a basic education funding commission right now that's going across the state listening to testimony.

And they have to come up with a plan on how to generate revenue and how to distribute that revenue across districts.

But at this point, it looks like-- well, we hope we put more money into the system.

We need more money.

We can't just rearrange the money, right?

We can't just redistribute it.

We don't have a sufficient amount of money.

It's such a great decision because we have for decades underfunded specific school districts like Philadelphia, Reading, places like that.

And so when you don't have the money as neighboring districts do, it's harder to hire qualified teachers, you have higher teacher attrition.

You have less experienced teachers.

You have less access to counselors.

You have less access to librarians.

It's harder to find administrators, and you have higher administrator turnover.

All of those things have negative impacts on student outcomes.

So we had created a system and had accepted a system where it essentially guaranteed that some children, particularly children of color and children living in poverty, were not going to get the same opportunity to learn as wealthier students in predominantly white districts.

It was just completely unfair system.

Well, I also talk with Sherri Smith, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators to get her thoughts on these topics.

So we'll listen to what she has to say about it and then we'll come back and discuss.

Sherri Smith, thank you so much for talking with us.

It's great to be here.

Thank you.

One of the issues that your organization has been focused on is what you're calling the education pipeline, attracting students, teachers to the field of education.

But it comes at a time when many schools and school districts are actually having a harder time keeping teachers in those positions and then attracting new students into the field of education.

What do you think are a couple of key factors behind that challenge of attracting teachers?

Yeah.

Thank you.

There couldn't be a more critical issue for us to be discussing right now for the future of education in commonwealth as well as nationally.

So there's a lot of factors I think that are impacting it.

And I call it almost a perfect storm that has created this crisis.

So first of all, let's talk about the cost of higher education and what teachers need to become certified, along with having 12 weeks where they can have additional work and need to student teach.

So the cost of that for our teachers has become a difficult journey for them financially.

And then when you start your teaching positions, again, teacher salaries aren't the highest paid profession.

And so salary for our teachers are a problem, not only to be able to live off of that salary and hopefully raise a family, but also to be able to pay back all those student loans that they had to be able to get educated for a teaching position.

So that's become a problem.

I'd say at the same token, there's a lot of reasons why becoming a teacher is not as, I would say, as attractive as it has been in the past.

We've seen it over the last few years.

There's been a lot more politicization in public education or toward public education.

And so our teachers many times didn't take these jobs because of the salaries in their pace, but they took it because of their passion and caring and love that they have for students and wanting to work with our young folks.

And we get questioned a lot more in education.

During the pandemic, parents became much more educated, I'd say, on curriculum because students were being educated from home and those types of things.

And so there's a lot more of questioning of what teachers are doing.

The job has become more difficult to manage on top of, let's not forget, the mental health issues that all of us have seen but also seeing that in our students and our teachers in our schools.

So the mental health and the aggression from students has made teaching more difficult to be able to manage classrooms.

So the job's gotten more difficult.

That has some of our teachers leaving the profession earlier than they typically would have and a difficult time trying to attract new teachers into a profession where we all look for satisfaction in the job as well as the fact that it pays us at a salary where we feel like we can live our lives and raise a family.

What do you think the state and school districts need to do to start to address that?

I mean, you referenced the pay of teachers, but that can be a challenging issue coming up with the funding to do that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So those are all those issues we need-- so you can't fix just one problem.

You got to fix all these issues.

So the salaries is definitely something that we need to discuss.

And I know that statewide we've had those discussions looking at what pay should be for our teachers.

Obviously, public schools are paid through state dollars and taxpayers, so there's limitations on the amount of funds that our schools have.

And be able to raise those salaries becomes a problem.

So hopefully, with the fact that we have a commonwealth court case that says that we need to more equitably fund our schools across Pennsylvania that additional funding is forthcoming, and we'll be able to get those salaries for our teachers up to a more attractive level so that we can get some of our best and brightest young folks into the world of education.

And there are shortages among administrators, superintendents too.

As someone who has worked as a superintendent who's been in education for 35 plus years, do you think the same factors are at play there or is it different reasons?

Yeah.

No, I think it's all a ripple effect, right?

If you can't get teachers into the classrooms, that's many times where we recruit for our principals and for our superintendents.

And so that's become more lean.

Also, I would tell you as a school administrator and as a superintendent, again, there's much more conflict to manage.

And the jobs have become much more difficult to be able to satisfy what is many times differing of opinion on how we should be educating our students in public education.

So the jobs have become more difficult, again, less attractive, and we have less of a pool of our teachers and such to pull from to get into our leadership positions.

And as someone who was in the thick of things during the COVID pandemic working for the State Department of Education, you saw firsthand that was creating a lot of trauma in school districts, a lot of intense feelings among parents, among students, just all the challenges that were going into that.

Do you see that in some ways is having a ripple effect on schools and attracting teachers?

Yeah, there's no doubt.

I mean, the issue of not having as many teachers getting into the profession was something that's been coming along for quite a while.

But the pandemic really exacerbated all the issues.

Certainly, teachers having to pivot on a moment's notice to teach online from home was a big transition for our teachers to be able to do that.

The last two years, we've been more back into what we'll call a normal pattern of how we educate our students in public education in our schools more regularly.

And we're building out of that.

Every year, I'm hearing from our superintendents across the state that it's better.

At the beginning of this year, I had some of our superintendents say it was a super positive start to the year.

It was great.

I feel like our teachers and our parents are trusting us again back into the environment we're in.

So I do think that as every year passes, we're going to get a little bit smooth out some of the things that happened at the pandemic.

But that was a disruptive three years for everybody, much less for us in educating our students.

Do you think that there are other things that the state and that school districts, educators in general need to do to start to try to continue to smooth it out, as you said?

So there's the issue of salaries, but then you mentioned a number of other factors going into these challenges too.

How can school districts and the state work together to put that in a better place?

Yeah.

I think our school leaders are working hard at that is that it's the culture that you have in your schools.

Your trust with your community, with your parents, your trust across your staff.

So making the environment a positive environment again where everybody works together for the benefit of our students to reground ourself.

I call it a reset.

It's time to reset what our responsibilities are and to work together for the best interests of our students moving forward.

And I'm seeing that.

I think it just takes time.

The pandemic, again, was a very disruptive time for all of us.

And I think we're still working through those issues in every profession.

Why we stand out is because, well, we have our most precious resources, our children that we're responsible for.

And so we take a lot of the attention, I think, why is it this move out yet.

We're working on it.

Students did not gain as much instruction when they were at home that they do in the classrooms face-to-face.

And so we're still working that through.

And again, I think give us another year or two and I am absolutely positive that we'll be past all those things and we stop talking about the ripple effects of the pandemic and move forward in creative and innovative ways for our students.

So it sounds like you have a positive outlook on that front.

Do you have a positive outlook too when it comes to attracting and retaining teachers and school administrators?

Do you see that kind of turning the corner in the future?

Yeah.

I think it's going to take a few years on that one.

I'll be honest with you.

I think we're going to have to work really hard at that collectively, both our legislators, our administration at the state level, as well as all of our schools moving together is that we've got to start recruiting.

The profession needs to start looking more attractive so people can go back.

I got into education because my love and my passion was to help our students that had special needs.

And I know there's a lot of people out there that have that passion and that love too to help children.

So we need to make sure that we create that environment so they want to get back into teaching and doing that.

But it's going to take some time.

This problem wasn't created overnight.

It wasn't created the last five years.

It's been multiple years of differing factors.

And I think we have to pay attention to all of those factors and address them.

It's not just salary.

There's a lot of other issues I think that we need to work for.

And I'm going to be positive that six, seven years from now, we're going to have our classrooms full of certified teachers again that feel that they can do the job that they got into education to do, which is to care, love, and educate our children.

Sherri Smith, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, thank you so much for talking with us.

My pleasure.

Thank you.

Well, you both heard that.

One of the things that Jerry Smith said is that she's hopeful about attracting educators to the field, but it could take several years to do that.

People either have to go to school in education or go back to school and get certified.

Ed, does that mean that the problem of shortages could actually get worse before it gets better?

Yeah.

The data that I've seen and looked at suggests that it will get it will get worse in the next couple of years.

A lot of it depends on what happens with the school funding court case and what money they put in.

Interestingly, if they put a lot of money in, there'll be a greater demand for teachers, which is going to exacerbate the shortage.

So if the state doesn't actually do anything to address the supply of teachers, we could actually be in a substantially worse position in three or four years.

So you really have to do both things.

Right now, we're really not focused on solving the teacher shortage at all.

We haven't passed hardly any bills, and we're just kind of ignoring it and hope it gets better.

And if it continues to get worse, more and more kids are going to suffer because of that shortage.

What do you think the state can do in the long run to attract and retain those teachers?

So you're saying if they put more money into it now, there's going to be an increased demand so we might see just for a little while at least that the problem will get even worse.

But if they do want to solve the problem in the long run, are there just examples of specific things that could happen?

Right.

Increasing salaries always help, but it's really expensive.

The other thing to do is make college much cheaper for people who intend to go into education through either loan forgiveness or direct scholarships to say if you're going to teach, we'll let you go to college for free if you go to one of our universities.

A lot of states do that now.

We can do a statewide teacher working condition because that's the other primary reason people leave is their working conditions.

And collecting that data and making it available to administrators to help use that data in and work with teachers to improve the working conditions of teachers would help greatly as well.

A statewide campaign to uplift and elevate the profession of teaching.

Right now, the prestige of teaching has plummeted.

Just completely plummeted.

And in fact, from around 2000 to now, the percentage of parents who would suggest that their child go into teaching has fallen by 50%.

So there's just not much prestige there too.

So we have to address that somehow as well.

OK.

So a couple of different options for ways to address it.

Jackie, from your perspective, what do you think the state and local governments could be doing to hopefully attract and retain teachers?

Well, I concur with everything that Ed has mentioned.

But additionally, and I've talked to many state legislators about this idea as well as the deputy secretary of education, is to change the certification requirements, update them, make them more contemporary and more meaningful and authentic.

Why not allow local school districts to apprentice their teachers?

Rather than paying for additional years of education on campus classrooms, why not get student teachers into schools much earlier for a longer period of time to where they're actually working under the direct supervision of an experienced teacher on site.

So I think that has an opportunity to grow legs and maybe get moving.

But another thing that we've been doing in the Keystone Central School District is through our career and Technical Center.

Believe it or not, there was not until this year an education program approved by the commonwealth.

And so we applied a year and a half ago to have our own education program in our career and technology center.

And so starting this fall, we are doing a grow-your-own program that is an approved program by the state.

And as students-- we had an early childhood program, but not just a general education program.

And so by pairing those two programs together, students have more opportunities and options about their future.

And then additionally, and you and I have talked about this before is the research is that when teachers do get certified, they really want to teach where they grew up.

And so if rural school districts are not doing grow-your-own programs, the idea that you would attract educators from other areas of the state is pretty slim.

So if you can grow your own, you can keep them.

And then additionally working with universities and colleges for articulation agreements whereas students who are in our career and technology program could almost be duly enrolled in college and high school at the same time.

So there's a lot of opportunities here for us to modernize what we've typically thought of secondary education and post-secondary education in a way for us to merge and fast track that with really a better authentic learning experience for new educators.

OK. We're going to take a quick break here, and then we're going to come back and continue that discussion.

If you're just joining us, I'm Anne Danahy.

And today, we're talking with experts about the shortages some school districts in Pennsylvania are seeing among teachers and administrators.

So we were just talking a little bit more about some of the practical realities some practical steps that school districts and the state level could do to hopefully address this issue.

And it sounds like what I'm hearing is it's not just any one thing like, OK, you just increase the funding, check, and that's done.

It's a number of variables.

And Ed, I want to go to one that you said, which is the prestige.

I'm wondering how the politics that we're seeing not just at the state level but nationally too are playing into this.

The prestige of being a teacher has lessened over the years.

I mean, this comes at a time when politics can be very divided.

The state, the national, and schools have definitely gotten drawn into that politics, whether we're talking about what books are in the library or what lessons kids are learning.

I wonder, do you see that as a factor?

And do you have any thoughts about how teachers and school administrators might be able to address that?

And we'll start with you, Ed.

Yeah.

I do think it's playing a part.

I mean, teachers, you become a teacher to help kids, right?

And that's your focus in the classroom, helping those kids.

And now, teachers are often having to deal with outside influences, people asking them to provide every lesson plan, which is an unreasonable expectation.

They're looking at the books that you're using and calling you names.

I mean, some of them are really-- I mean, teachers are largely being attacked for doing their job in some places.

And so given the relatively low pay, people are wondering like, why am I putting up with this?

And the economy is really robust right now.

So there's lots of job opportunities.

If you're in a job where you don't make as much money as you could and now people are calling you names and attacking you for doing your job, why not move into a different position?

And that's one of the reasons why the teacher attrition rate went up so much last year.

Jackie, what are your thoughts on that, on how school districts, teachers, and the community can kind of all work together to be on the same side, the same team?

JACQUELYN MARTIN: I do think One of the positive things about teaching from home during the pandemic, many parents saw how much teachers did to work and prepare for their children and realized, wow, not everybody can be a teacher.

It really takes a special person that has a passion for developing others and really caring about kids and other people's kids.

So I feel like in some ways, teachers were able to get some of that respect back.

I also feel that we've been putting a lot of efforts in locally to make employees feel valued and appreciated during their workday.

What can we take off their plate?

How can we stop adding more and more to their plates?

What can we take off of their plates?

And how can we provide additional supports, keep the high expectations, but keep the high supports that they need to do their jobs well?

And is that something that you've seen be able to work effectively in your school district that teachers that they do appreciate that?

I mean, obviously, of course, money is a factor.

But you only have so much control over that.

Have you seen that work?

Yeah.

Actually, one of the things that I've seen work across three different school districts, two here in Center County and one my current district, and that's just a scheduling issue.

It doesn't cost any additional money to schedule teachers to have a common planning time to where they can co-labor so they can have that professional learning community and that network.

They can actually divide and conquer the work.

They can share planning.

They can share their ideas.

And that alone is probably one of the most important professional development techniques that does not cost any money that I've seen support teachers of all levels at any grade level and any content area.

Having that collegiality and that collective efficacy of teaching is just huge.

We got this question from one of our listeners or viewers, and we're going to take a look at that.

And we'll see what you have to say about this.

And David writes, "Holding public schools responsible for student outcomes regardless of the home conditions students come from is the prime source of frustration.

Private schools know this, and that is why they all have some form of selective enrollment.

This includes criteria students and parents must meet to be accepted and responsibilities students and parents must continue to meet for the student to remain enrolled."

Ed, I mean, is that a fair assessment?

Do you think that public schools are subject to different rules?

And that means it's more difficult, more challenging for them?

Yeah.

So one of the things is public schools don't get to select who comes into their school, right?

If you live in that boundary, you can enroll in that school no matter what the disability, no matter what the experiences of that child are.

And as a teacher, I think when you're looking at it in a microcosm of your classroom, yeah, it can be very frustrating because you're having to deal with all these kids and some who are really way behind or have mental health issues or all kinds of different problems.

But that's the role, right?

We know that's the role.

The issue I think is we don't give schools and educators the resources that they need to address all those issues.

And when you don't have the appropriate resources, you feel frustrated because you can't do the job that you need to help every single kid succeed.

That's part of that school funding court case.

Teachers want to help every kid.

That's why they're there.

They just don't have all the resources they need to do that.

Right.

Jackie, so you do want to have those high expectations for all the kids.

You want to work with all of the kids.

But at the same time, teachers have a limited number of hours in the day to do the planning and to teach the students.

How do you deal with that?

Is what Ed's saying true that you need that extra support?

Absolutely.

That was a lot.

You said a lot in a short time there, Ed.

But I'll go back first to what you said, Anne.

The public schools in America are one of the greatest.

With all its faults, really, is one of the greatest education systems in the world because we do educate all students.

And that's a challenge.

So they come to us.

We want to make sure that the whole purpose of public education is to prepare citizens to be productive and to feed our workforce.

Those are the two key reasons that we have public education.

So in order to do that, we do need resources and we need to be able to support our teachers so that they can do the best job that they can do to produce those productive citizens.

Well, we talked to some students and residents in the area to get their thoughts on teaching.

And we're going to take a look at what a couple of them have to say, and then we'll come back and get your thoughts on that.

From my perspective growing up, I mean, I still remember my kindergarten teacher, my first grade teacher.

So it's not necessarily about learning the material that young, but just being able to make those connections with teachers.

So teacher shortage, I could see how kids might not be as in love with school as like I was when I was growing up.

And we know that class sizes are related to performance.

If there's a teacher shortage, there has to be more people per class.

That's going to lower the quality of education that people receive.

Probably in the long term, it will have bad consequences.

Well, I think teachers are critical for students at all levels.

And if we don't have good teachers, our children aren't going to be well educated.

They're going to have gaps in many of the skills that they should learn.

So it could really have some long-term implications.

I think with less competition for being a teacher, it'll make the candidates not as good for sure.

Jackie, what about that idea that a teacher can have such a huge impact on students' lives?

I know I remember my elementary and my middle and my high school teachers.

And I know when I've run into them, they still remember my name, which is always so amazing to me?

But how do you continue to provide that impact when you are seeing all of these challenges, financial strains, and other pressures?

Well, it's a priority.

Relationships matter.

And learning is personal and social.

And when you look at all the brain research, students are more likely to learn when you're teaching them material that is within their zone of proximal development but also that they're in a safe space to take some risks.

So education has evolved so much.

We're no longer sitting in rows watching a teacher stand in front of the room and regurgitate expert facts that impart their wisdom upon students only for them to regurgitate that back.

The expectation now to prepare students for a 21st century career or productive citizen in the 21st century is really to provide learning experiences that take what students need to know, understand, and do, and learn that through ways that they're interacting with others, where they can become creative problem-solvers.

They can be respectful collaborators with their peers and with others.

They can just use communication to talk with others, talk through problems.

And if you think about those soft skills or what we'll call employability skills, that's really what schools should be all about, especially now when we know that students have in the palm of their hand at any point in time any content knowledge that they need is in their hand.

Can they decide to use critical thinking to determine what is credible knowledge in that device?

How are they going to use that knowledge to apply that to a solution or something that they need to actually do?

And so if you don't have a relationship in the classroom with the teachers in among-- and it's not just the teacher to student.

A teacher relationships among all the learners in that classroom to create that community of learners.

That's the best place for someone to learn.

And you're always going to remember an experience that made you feel welcome in a trusted environment.

And so that's why so many people do remember their favorite teacher.

And most people will not tell you their favorite teacher is because of what they taught them.

It's how they made them feel when they were teaching them.

Ed, what about that idea that there could be more teacher turnover because of the situation that we're in right now, and then that could have an impact on students learning.

Right.

In what the young man said and Jackie just said too is teaching is all about relationships, right?

You have to have strong relationships with your students at any level, even higher Ed where I'm teaching undergrads right now.

It matters.

But when you have high teacher turnover, you break those relationships, right?

That relationship is then gone.

Somebody new comes in, you have to start all over.

And the kids become more wary of doing that.

And it becomes harder and harder as your teacher turnover is higher.

And then during a shortage, if somebody leaves, you can't fill a position.

Now you have a long-term substitute for a while and then another long-term substitute and maybe a short-term substitute.

And the kids never get a chance to establish a strong, trusting relationship where they feel safe to risk and to learn, right?

So that's one of the reasons it's-- the current attrition rate is really disturbing.

And the shortage rate is impacting students.

At the basic level, it makes it much harder to have strong relationships.

I want to look at a question or two that we got kind of looking at the other side of it.

And these people were looking at some of the-- they're saying that yeah, there's shortages, but there's also other things we can do.

So we'll take a look at these questions.

This one is from Gary.

And he says, "There are certainly teacher shortages, but there are far too many administrators."

And Ralph said, "There are some real good teachers out there, some are just overpaid babysitters."

So kind of two sentiments that we're looking at it from the other direction.

What about this idea that there's too many administrators that if we're going to have more funding for schools, it should just go directly into the classroom, Jackie?

Well, there are over 500 school districts in Pennsylvania.

And I think it's very difficult and maybe a little risky to make a blanket statement like that.

It just doesn't hold water and I think each individual school system has to determine, what are the needs that you have?

For administrators, what are the roles of those administrators?

And what a lot of people don't see on the backside of schools is all of the mandates that come out of the federal, state, and local policies that somebody has to be managing and paying attention to.

And so a lot of times, administrators are bogged down with unfunded mandates on top of that.

And so there's just-- I think it's even harder when you're in a smaller school district because you automatically have less administrators because your ratio, but yet the responsibilities for the laws, they don't change.

It's the same laws that have to be followed, the same tasks have to be completed whether you have 500 students or 5,000 students.

And so I think it's really difficult to make a blanket statement like that without really drilling down to the specifics in individual districts.

Ed, do you have any thoughts on that there are too many administrators?

And it sounds like maybe they're getting too much bureaucracy.

Well, one is, yeah, like Jackie said, it's a bureaucratic system.

You need people to implement all these rules and regulations.

The other thing is, people don't understand what administrators do.

They're often hidden from the world.

Even when you're a student in a school, you don't see what administrators do often.

They'll come in the classroom and be in the lunchroom and then the hallway, but a lot of that work is invisible to most people.

And it's really critical work.

And you have way more special ed kids now, you have way more ELL kids.

There's a lot of administrative burden with those.

There's a lot of paperwork and regulations you have to follow.

Somebody has to do it.

Teachers can't do that by themselves.

They don't have the time.

One principal can't do that and all the other duties of principal.

You really have to have more.

And in fact, my research, I would suggest that in most districts, not all districts, but most districts probably could use more administrators to lighten the burden on teachers so that they can focus on teaching and learning.

Oh, that's interesting.

So you would say kind of the opposite that you'd need even more people able to do that.

Jackie, is that your experience too, that it could help lighten the load on teachers and they could focus more on the teaching?

Well, most of the administrators that I've worked for and with would tell you that effective leaders are out with the teachers and the students in the schools.

And when I'm out of my office or when they're out of their office and they're visible in the hallways, they're talking to students, they're in the cafeterias, they're at sporting events in the evenings, plays, musical events that that's very time consuming.

Well, while you're out doing all those things and you're shaking hands and you're asking kids, how was lunch today?

And let's talk about the game.

And what is it that you're dissecting today?

And so when you're having those conversations with kids, you're not at your office, you're not in that chair, and the emails are piling up.

And so what happens is, you have to schedule yourself time to get out from behind the desk, out from policy meetings, committee meetings on curriculum, instruction, school safety.

We haven't even touched upon that.

So when you think about all of the different facets that administrators have to be knowledgeable and skilled at, and yet they still need to be out building relationships with the people that they're leading, it's just almost an incredible amount of time.

And so what happens is, the evenings are filled not only with student events but also cleaning out emails on evenings and weekends and getting communications back in a timely fashion.

The average principal works 61 hours a week.

And in the summer when they get off, it falls to 52.

ANNE DANAHY: So what are you both telling your students who are interested in thinking about going into education but are concerned about all of these demands that are being put on them?

I tell them, having been a former teacher that teaching was the most rewarding job I've ever had.

You get to change kids' lives.

You get to see kids blossom.

It's just an amazing opportunity to help improve the world.

So it's incredibly rewarding.

I'll also tell them be thoughtful about your pay, your other options, and things like.

You need to make an informed decision and balance that reward with other things.

You need money to live.

You need money to eat and be healthy.

You need to balance that.

I thank them.

I have an opportunity frequently to speak with aspiring educators at different universities.

And I think I'm getting to speak at an education pinning ceremony coming up in December.

And so the message is thank you for being an educator and the rewards are intrinsic.

And again, you start with seeing students grow.

And watching that aha moment in a child is amazing.

But I can say personally, one of the most rewarding parts of my 34 years has been watching teachers grow and developing teachers and principals and other district level leaders because I feel like what you can do in a classroom to grow a child is absolutely amazing.

When you can expand that growth into a teacher and you can grow a teacher and watch them have aha moments that they can turn around exponentially, and then you can just continue to go up and think about those school leaders, It's just amazing.

It's really a great career for many people.

And if you have the right support systems and the right network, it can be something that you can do for over three decades.

Well, the idea of the support systems and network is a good segue.

I want to just go back a little bit to talk about that issue of funding at the state level.

So there was this lawsuit and it was a successful lawsuit that the funding system in Pennsylvania is not fair.

I mean, Ed, is there a timeline for this?

Are there certain expectations that we should have?

Or is it in some ways still in the hands in Harrisburg and we don't know the outcome?

It's still in the hands of Harrisburg, and there's no specific timeline.

I think there's a lot of expectation and pressure to do it relatively quickly.

But it could drag on.

I mean, it has to get through the general assembly.

It's going to be a pretty contentious fight, I think.

So I don't know.

Oftentimes, in states, it'll drag out for another decade and trigger a whole new lawsuit if the state doesn't respond in the appropriate way.

So I mean, I hope it goes quickly.

But there's no guarantee that it's going to be resolved at any time soon.

And Jackie, what are your hopes for that, speaking from someone who is from a largely rural school district where funding disparity does show up across the state of Pennsylvania?

Do you have specific things that you're hoping to see come out of it?

Yeah, a couple things with-- this could be a whole other segment.

However, what I would like to say is, one of my colleagues, Matt Splain, who's the superintendent at Otto-Eldred School District, he testified in that hearing that just moving the money around and resituating the money would just be like moving the chairs on the Titanic.

It's a sinking ship.

Something else has got to happen.

And so last year, there was level-up funding, which was determined by which school districts across the commonwealth would receive some form of level-up funding to help even out that.

They used a formula.

And I thought, this is a really great start.

It's a drop in the bucket, but it's a great start.

So last year, we were able to obtain some level-up funding.

And then we were told that this year, it would also be in the governor's budget, which it is in the state budget.

Level-up funding is there.

And for my district, with an $89 million budget, $5 million of that being the ESSER federal funding, which is going away in September.

So all that extra help that we have is going away.

The level-up funding is there, but they're not releasing it.

Our level-up funding was $4 million out of an $89 million budget.

$5 million of that is also, like I said, the federal dollars.

So it's a pretty significant amount of money that is definitely going to impact the number of staffing and also the resources that we have within the district.

So the most frustrating part right now is that the level-up funding is in the budget, it's sitting in Harrisburg, and it has not been released to school districts.

But as of right now, we haven't seen that funding, right?

Well, we have time for one last question.

And I wanted to just talk to you a little bit about why you both went into education.

You both have taught in the schools in K through 12 education.

We've been talking about a lot of the challenges, a lot of the difficulties that go into that.

But then there's the rewarding side of it too.

Jackie, what did you find most rewarding when you were in the classroom?

Why did you want to do that?

I was a health and physical educator so I had two different types of classroom.

I had the gymnasium and I had a classroom.

And what I most loved is being active.

I was also a gymnastics coach.

And so during my younger years in education, in the health classroom, what I loved was that I had all students.

I had students with special needs, students with language barriers, all types of disabilities, and I had them all together.

And so I think that was really something that helped me grow and learn a lot.

And then moving out of the gymnasium, I was an instructional support teacher, which I would help problem-solve why students were having difficulties in the classroom and trying to determine whether or not there were learning disabilities or is it something that we could do differently in the classroom with the teacher?

And so kind to try to problem-solve and remove barriers for students to learn, those were areas that I felt were most rewarding.

And Ed, as someone who now teaches at the college level at Penn State but who also taught math-- am I right-- in K through 12, what drew you to that?

I taught-- and I actually started out in pre-med biomedical engineering and made the dean's list and then dropped out because I always wanted to go into education.

And I finally said, I'm going to make the change.

And I don't regret that at all.

I loved it.

And the reason I wanted to go into it is because you can literally change lives and improve the world.

And that's what was rewarding to me.

I convinced kids to go to college who would never thought of going to college.

And I told them, no, you're amazing.

You can go.

You're good enough.

And I had a lot of kids come and they said, I hate math.

Math is my worst subject.

I still hear that from my students, right?

And I'm like, oh, no, you'll love it after you take my class.

And at the end of the year, they're like, oh, math is my favorite class now because I knew I could teach them.

And I made it fun and they learned a lot.

And now, it opened the doors for them that otherwise were shut.

So it was just amazing to help kids grow and just become productive, young adults.

It's so rewarding.

Well, I've learned a lot talking to both of you.

And then hopefully, people watching and listening to this also will be inspired to maybe give a second look at going into K through 12 education as a career choice.

Jacqueline Martin, Ed Fuller, thank you both so much for talking with us.

Thank you, Anne.

Thank you.

Our guests tonight have been Ed Fuller, professor of education at Penn State and Jacquelyn Martin, superintendent of the Keystone Central School District.

I'm Anne Danahy.

Thank you for watching and listening on WPSU.

And please join us on our next episode of Conversations Live on January 18, 2024 when we'll talk about weight loss drugs and health.

ANNOUNCER: Rewatch this and previous episodes of Conversations Live and more of your favorite WPSU programs on the PBS app.

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