Teacher Shortage Impacts Classrooms Across Louisiana

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We have talked about the problems in finding workers in several businesses across Louisiana and the nation. But one of the biggest trouble areas is in the classroom.

The teacher shortage across Louisiana keeps getting worse and there is not much light at the end of the tunnel. Michael Faulk with the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents tells the Louisiana Radio Network this is a trend that we started seeing several years ago.

He says:

"If you look at enrollment in colleges for teacher preparation, those numbers have gone down over the past five or six years. This is not going to be remedied in two or three years. We are going to have dire circumstances four, five or six years from now."

He says fewer young people are choosing to become teachers and retirements continue to climb as many teachers hit that 25 year mark and decide to leave the classroom to go do something else or they simply go to the house.

Faulk cites numbers from the LSU School of Education. He says enrollment is down by 57 percent over the past decade and that will be a problem school districts across Louisiana will face in the years ahead.

What is the big reason for this? Faulk says many teachers don't feel like they are being heard when it comes to what our children should be taught.

"You have curriculums that are being implemented that teachers feel like they don’t have a say. They don’t feel like they are part of the process in giving input."

Teacher retirements in Louisiana are up by 25% over the past year.