NATION Teachers can't find jobs as hiring pattern shifts
The soft economy helps ease teacher shortage.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Melissa Mertz figured she was a lock for a teaching job when she started looking for work in the Pittsburgh area: Her r & eacute;sum & eacute; includes degrees in English and foreign languages, a master's in education and two years of experience teaching Spanish.
Five months later, all she has landed is a part-time job at a clothing store.
"I haven't even been on an interview," said Mertz, 26. "I did not receive one call of interest, in all of the applications that got sent out. I talk to my friends, other new teachers, and I'm finding the same issue coming up. People just can't find jobs."
The nationwide teacher shortage that once had school districts scrambling to find enough instructors to fill classrooms has eased significantly as the economy has cooled, according to groups that track education employment.
The American Association for Employment in Education said preliminary results of its annual survey of hiring patterns indicate that demand for teachers has fallen for the second straight year and is at its lowest level since 1998.
Soft economy
The group's executive director, B.J. Bryant, said the soft economy has meant more people willing to work for a teacher's pay and fewer jobs to go around. Instructors in a few subjects do remain tough to find -- most notably math, bilingual education and all areas of science and special education, Bryant said.
"Last year we measured 10 or 12 fields as having a considerable shortage," Bryant said. "This year there are three."
The Philadelphia School District, which opened the 2002 school year with about 120 teaching vacancies, expects to have almost none when students return to class in September.
The district's director of recruitment and retention, Tomas Hanna, said applications for jobs are up 25 percent, and nearly 800 new hires will be on the job in September. The district recently laid off 65 social studies, art, physical education and biology teachers because it had too many.
In California, budget woes have led to more than 3,800 teacher layoffs this summer, according to the California Teachers Association. In San Diego, school officials said they are sorting through 22,000 job applications from teachers seeking work.
New York City officials said last year that the district's teacher shortage -- so severe in the late 1990s that the city began recruiting hundreds of teachers from Europe -- had effectively ended after it raised its starting salary by 22 percent.
Similar incentive programs were enacted nationwide in the 1990s.
Massachusetts offered signing bonuses of up to $20,000 to people who changed professions in mid-career to become teachers. Maryland was among several states that allowed veteran educators to "retire" and start drawing a pension, while continuing to teach for their full salaries.
Questions remain, though, about how much the shortage has really eased, or for how long.
Highly qualified
New federal regulations require that a "highly qualified" teacher be in every classroom in core subjects by the 2005-2006 school year, meaning that the instructor must be certified or licensed, hold a bachelor's degree and demonstrate competence in the subject they teach.
The U.S. Department of Education said in July that nearly half of the nation's middle and high school teachers don't meet those standards now. A study this year by the Texas A & amp;M Institute for School-University Partnerships said 23 percent of the new teachers hired in Texas for the 2002-2003 school year were not fully certified in their subjects.
It is not clear yet whether schools will be able to get enough teachers certified to fulfill the law's requirements, Bryant said.
Additionally, some worry that the shortages will return if the economy recovers. Baby boomers, now delaying retirement until their stock portfolios recover, might feel freer to finish their careers. A recovery of the job market might also prompt teachers to leave the classroom for professions with higher pay -- a chronic problem in the 1990s.
"When everyone is losing their jobs, they say, 'Well, I'll go teach," said Richelle Patterson of the American Federation of Teachers. "But what happens when the economy turns around? Does that mean they go back to their old jobs?"