Teacher Shortage Has One Solution

* I don’t know what qualifies Bruce Crawford to pontificate on teachers’ salaries and conclude that teachers should demand privatization because “only through privatization can the market do rationally what the union is futilely trying to do arbitrarily and contentiously” (Orange County Voices, June 4).

That kind of warped thinking usually comes out of a Heritage Foundation supporter. According to the NBC Evening News, this country needs 2.2 million teachers over the next 10 years. Guess what? You’ll never get them.

Thirty percent of the teachers in Los Angeles have emergency credentials, while the staffs of some Los Angeles Unified School District schools are 80% noncredentialed.

There are not enough substitute teachers available in the LAUSD, nor in Chicago, where paramedics, nurses, firefighters and police officers are filling substitute positions.

Sadly, the story repeats itself around the country. This situation will only get worse as more and more teachers retire or quit within their first five years of teaching.

All of the well-intentioned but misguided ideas, from freeing teachers from paying state income taxes to providing more staff development time, from spending millions on computers to using standardized test scores for accountability, will not solve this crisis in staffing.

Although the public and its government representatives may not want to hear it, the only thing that will draw college students and others into the profession and keep them there is lots and lots of money.

Teacher salaries must be raised at least 50% immediately.

LOU COHAN

Cypress