Short on Teachers, Long on Schemes

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.