On February 28, 2023, the Senate Education Committee held a hearing to hear from various groups about the teacher shortage in Pennsylvania. Schools are trying to find qualified people to staff classrooms while the number of people interested in pursuing a teaching career is down.
Tanya Garcia, the state’s deputy secretary for postsecondary and higher education, pointed out that in 2010 the state certified about 21,000 new educators. Last year, it was 6,153, a 70% drop. At that rate, there are not enough new teachers to replace those that are retiring or choosing to leave the profession. The root causes of this drop in new educators seems to be the rising cost of college, stagnating teacher compensation, and the amount of stress associated with the profession.
Suggestions to fix the problem included: creating paid student teaching, addressing the cost of obtaining teacher certification, raising teacher salaries, creating alternative pathways to certification, better school mentor programs, and more support from school administrators, to name a few.
It is the intent of the Committee to work on determining what may be the best path forward in dealing with the issue.
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