‘The teacher crisis’: SC vacancies jumped 26% as COVID worsened, study finds
The coronavirus pandemic appears to be exacerbating South Carolina’s teacher shortage, according to a new report that found teacher vacancies were up 26% compared to last year.
South Carolina districts reported 699 teaching and service position vacancies as of early this school year compared to 555 at the beginning of last school year, according to the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement’s annual educator supply and demand report.
Teacher vacancies can result in larger class sizes — as class sections without teachers are combined — more classes taught by long-term substitutes and elective and specialized classes not being offered at all, education officials said.
Teacher advocates have long suspected the pandemic would worsen South Carolina’s teacher shortage, but CERRA’s report offers hard data to support those beliefs.
“We had a pretty good feeling that we had a continuance and an acceleration of the state’s teacher shortage,” said Patrick Kelly, a Richland 2 teacher who serves as director of governmental affairs for the Palmetto State Teachers Association. “But to see that kind of data presented should absolutely set off alarm bells.”
Kelly said, and CERRA acknowledged, that the report’s findings may not even fully capture the impact COVID-19 has had on school districts because it doesn’t account for teachers who left their job after the surveys were administered in October. It also fails to reflect the many teachers who have continued working only because they already had signed contracts for the 2020-21 school year before the pandemic’s full impact was known.
“If you did the same report now, you’d find an even more alarming number (of vacancies),” said Kelly, who believes the teacher recruitment group’s report “only scratches the surface.”
For that reason, CERRA’s research coordinator said she plans to follow up with districts in January to get a better sense of vacancies at that point.
“We’ve had so many inquiries from legislators and policy makers on what’s the true impact of COVID? Are teachers still leaving?” said Jennifer Garrett, CERRA’s coordinator of research and program evaluation. “We need some hard evidence to say whether or not that’s happening.”
The state Department of Education released a statement in response to the report, made public Dec. 17, calling on state and local leaders to take action to address South Carolina’s struggles to recruit and retain quality teachers.
“The pandemic has intensified the teacher crisis in our state as evidenced by the report released today,” state Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman said in the statement. “Now is the time for state and local leaders to come together for current and future educators by supporting financial incentives, policies, and programs that will help ensure we have a strong, high quality teacher workforce serving our students for years to come.”
Spearman’s statement advocated for the retroactive funding of teacher step increases — pay bumps tied to years of service put on hold by the pandemic — a minimum 2% salary increase for all teachers next school year and a number of other actions intended to enhance teacher recruitment and retention.
The state Department of Education made the same monetary asks in a recent budget request, which would set aside nearly $52 million for the pay raises and another $50 million to reinstate annual step increases.
The average South Carolina public school teacher would earn about $2,200 more per year if the 2% raise and step increases were included in next year’s education budget, Education spokesman Ryan Brown said.
A recent comparison of all 50 states and the District of Columbia found South Carolina ranked 40th in public school teacher salaries, with an average salary of just under $51,000, according to the National Education Association.
The starting salary for a South Carolina public school teacher is $35,000.
Brown said he believes teacher pay and low morale are the primary drivers of the teacher shortage in South Carolina.
“Teachers don’t feel valued and respected is the first thing,” he said.” Pay is generally right there next to it.”
The Department of Education is limited in its ability to unilaterally make changes it believes will enhance teacher retention, but has during the pandemic eased certification requirements and streamlined evaluations in ways that could provide teachers greater flexibility going forward, Brown said.
Turning around the state’s teacher shortage isn’t as simple as retaining more teachers -- teacher departures actually decreased 10% compared to last year, according to CERRA’s report -- it will also require attracting new ones.
Brown said his agency has stepped up efforts to recruit educators by bolstering teacher prep and support programs and hopes to capitalize on any goodwill generated by teachers’ extraordinary efforts during the pandemic.
But the number of graduates from state education programs, which rose slightly last year, is back down again and has dropped 30% in the past eight years, according to CERRA’s survey.
“This is a shortage of teachers that can’t be remedied through simply hiring more individuals because there’s no one in the pipeline,” Kelly said. “It’s not as simple as just going out and finding someone to plug in when we have a vacancy.”
The dearth of new education graduates is compounded by the state’s growing struggle to retain early career educators, the supply and demand report shows.
More than 42% of teachers who resigned this past year had five or fewer years of experience teaching in the state, and 16% were first-year South Carolina teachers, according to the survey.
Thirty-six percent of first-year teachers hired for the 2019-20 school year did not return to a teaching or service position in the same district this school year, the report shows.
While early career teachers historically leave the profession at higher rates than their more experienced counterparts, the rate of exodus this year outstrips anything seen in recent years, data show.
For that reason, the jump in teacher vacancies may not represent just a temporary pandemic-induced blip, but could have a longstanding impact on education in South Carolina, Kelly said.
“If districts don’t prioritize finding ways to retain the workforce, I think this will absolutely have an effect,” he said. “Because if these teachers leave and don’t come back, we won’t be able to replace them.”
Kelly said he fears teachers who leave the profession this year due to concerns over COVID-19 may be loath to return to teaching after the pandemic subsides.
“I’m not sure they’ll turn around and come back to a profession where they’ve been undercompensated and increasingly feel like they are disrespected and not valued as professionals,” he said.
It’s difficult to say whether the surge in vacancies this school year will extend beyond the pandemic or be fleeting, said Brown, who acknowledged being somewhat surprised the state didn’t have even more open teaching positions, given the circumstances.
Garrett, the CERRA researcher who compiles each year’s report, took a rosier view of the findings and what they say about the state’s educators.
“With the pandemic, one would assume that that would cause more departures, maybe more early retirements, just resignations in general, but we didn’t see that,” she said. “I think the big takeaway is that teachers are dedicated, and for most of them a pandemic is not going to force them out of the classroom.”
CERRA has been conducting its annual educator supply and demand survey since 2001. Nearly every public school district in the state responded to this year’s survey, with the exception of one of the state’s 79 traditional public school districts and one of its eight independent career and technology education centers.
This story was originally published December 17, 2020 at 6:46 PM.