KQED Forum today addressed the rural teacher shortage, which Hailey Branson-Potts wrote about a few weeks ago in the Los Angeles Times. (I was one of the guests)
California has not been spared from the national teacher shortage. The state Department of Education reported more than 10,000 teacher vacancies during the 2021-2022 school year, and Los Angeles Unified School District has 450 teacher openings for this new school year. But shortages are particularly acute in rural communities: Alturas Elementary School, in northern California’s Modoc County, is missing a quarter of its necessary teaching staff. From retention to credentialing requirements to logistically impossible state mandates, the problems plaguing Modoc are common among rural districts. We’ll talk about the problems California’s rural school districts are facing in the new school year and hear potential solutions.
A CalMatters report on where the state's under-credentialed teachers are is here. A Learning Policy Institute Map showing where the greatest percentage of under-credentialed teachers are is here.
It's interesting that nearly all (or maybe all) of the callers featured were urban or suburban. I don't recall any who were rural. I'm not sure of the locations of those emailing the show. But the net result, it seemed to me, was to divert the listener participation part of the conversation away from the rural setting and toward urban K-12 education challenges.
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