Help Wanted

Next Steps in Addressing the United States’ Teacher Shortage

Abstract

The COVID-19 global pandemic impacted the United States’ educational landscape by intensifying the teacher shortage. In particular, significant help is wanted in filling public school vacancies in specialty areas, which has resulted in non-instructional staff teaching in classrooms and impacting school operations. Federal, state, and local education agencies are taking steps to attract teacher candidates and retain current teachers, but will these efforts be enough? Education preparation programs are making changes to their programs to ensure they support teacher candidates while obtaining their initial teaching license. This article will define the teacher shortage, explain the impact of the pandemic, and discuss action steps being implemented to address the teacher shortage. The article will showcase insights from scholarly literature, observations, and document analysis. The purpose of this article is to provide a review of the relevant literature exploring actions being implementing at the federal, state, and local levels to address the teacher shortage. By reviewing these steps, education agencies and teacher preparation programs can evaluate for their own future actionable steps to recruit and retain teachers.