America’s Teacher Shortage Problem: Career & Tech Education Have Largest Deficits; Who Should Be Blamed?

America's teacher shortage problem continues to spread across the nation and it doesn't seem to be stopping anytime soon. In one state, career and technical education programs have suffered the largest blows.

North Dakota is one of the states suffering from teacher shortages. In Grand Forks Public Schools, the teacher shortage in career and technical programs is blamed on "both a shrinking number of schools offering training in specialized areas and not enough encouragement for young students to go into teaching themselves," Grand Forks Herald reported.

Eric Ripley, the district's career and technical education director, said that the teacher shortage problem is so evident especially now that more students are taking career and technical courses. The education programs cater to students' interests and the career pathways that they wish to pursue.

North Dakota's statewide teacher shortages have worsened to the point that some retirees came back to teach part-time to fill the deficits. Data from the state's Teachers' Fund for Retirement found that 325 retirees returned to work at the beginning of the 2016 school year. The figure was the highest number of retirees coming back to teach since 2007.

It's not just North Dakota; almost every state in the country has reported teacher shortages to the U.S. Education Department, The Washington Post wrote. The problems, however, vary from state to state, according to a study titled "A Coming Crisis in Teaching? Teacher Supply, Demand and Shortages in the U.S." published by the non-profit organization Learning Policy Institute.

Districts with teacher shortages have resorted to stopgap solutions, which aren't enough to address the problem and are undermining the quality of education given to students. Those stopgap solutions include hiring people who "are not prepared to teach," swelling class sizes, canceling classes, assigning teachers from other fields to fill deficits and using short-term substitutes.

As for the reason behind America's teacher shortage problem, various surveys found that teacher morale fell in recent years. Teachers claimed that school reform is using them as scapegoats for the issues public education is facing. The report found that two-thirds of teachers leave their posts before retirement age, with the majority citing dissatisfaction over their teaching conditions as the reason behind their untimely departure.

Teacher demand is increasing in the midst of these shortages, The Washington Post further reported. Fewer people are joining teacher preparation programs while student enrollments are expected to rise by three million over the next ten years.