Sec. 3. Findings
971 words·~4 min read·
/bill/116/s/4917/is/section-3A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.
Congress finds the following: Prior to the COVID–19 pandemic, the United States was already experiencing a shortage of more than 100,000 qualified teachers. Likewise, prior to the pandemic, public employment in elementary schools and secondary schools had yet to recover the level it had reached prior to the losses of the Great Recession. According to the Economic Policy Institute, more K–12 public education jobs were lost in April than in all of the Great Recession—a loss of 468,800 jobs in public school employment alone.
Half of these losses were among special education teachers, tutors, and teaching assistants. Losses were also significant among counselors, nurses, custodians, and other building maintenance staff. An analysis from the Learning Policy Institute found that if there is a 20-percent reduction in State contributions to education funding, this could result in the loss of nearly 460,000 teaching positions nationwide, or over 12 percent of the public school teaching workforce. This is a more significant downsizing than witnessed during the Great Recession, when significant Federal investment of about $110,000,000,000, including an Educator Job Fund, helped save 288,000 and 134,000 education jobs at different points in time.
Teachers of color face unique barriers to entering and staying in the profession. For example, teachers of color are more likely to enter teaching through less comprehensive pathways due to the high cost of traditional teacher preparation programs and the debt burden faced by college students of color. Lower quality pathways can result in less effective teaching and high turnover rates. Research shows that candidates who receive comprehensive preparation are 2 to 3 times more likely to stay in teaching than those who receive little training.
In many cases, however, teachers of color are more likely to begin teaching without having completed comprehensive preparation and enter instead through routes that include minimal or no student teaching or integration of key coursework, leaving teachers to learn on the job. Before the COVID–19 pandemic, enrollments in teacher preparation programs had been on a steady decline for years, dropping 39 percent for undergraduate and post-baccalaureate programs between 2010 and 2017—resulting in over 277,000 fewer professionals working their way toward the classroom.
The economic impact of COVID–19 threatens to put the ability to afford high-quality teacher preparation further out of reach for prospective teacher of color who already faced higher affordability barriers prior to the pandemic than their white counterparts. Similarly, institutions of higher education—including under resourced Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Serving Institutions
(MSIs)of higher education—are under fiscal strain. Both phenomena threaten to further hinder students—especially historically underserved students—access to a well-prepared and diverse educator workforce. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Serving Institutions
(MSIs)of higher education have an outsized role in preparing teachers of color. For example, despite the fact that only 14.2 percent of all public school teachers earned their bachelor’s degrees from MSIs, nearly 40 percent of all Black teachers in the Nation earned their bachelor’s degree at an MSI. Nearly half of all Latino teachers with bachelor’s degrees earned them at MSIs. Further, roughly 25 percent of Asian Americans and Native Americans with BAs in teaching earned them at MSIs, while almost a third of Pacific Islanders with BAs earned their degrees at an MSI. Teacher residency programs like those supported by the Teacher Quality Partnership Grant Program, are a high-quality and diverse teacher preparation pathway into teaching. Nationally, about 49 percent of residents are people of color. That is the similar to the proportion of public school students of color and far more than the 20 percent of teachers who are people of color nationally. Furthermore, prior to the COVID–19 pandemic, principal turnover was also a significant issue. Research from the Learning Policy Institute and National Association of Secondary School Principals found that 35 percent of principals leave their schools within 2 years and that approximately 18 percent of principals were no longer in the same position one year later. In underserved schools and areas, this turnover rate was even higher at 21 percent. Additionally, a recent poll of principals found that 45 percent are planning to move up their plans to leave the profession due to the conditions spawned by the COVID–19 pandemic. Reducing principal turnover also has a significant impact on student performance and teacher retention. Principals are the second most important school-level factor associated with student achievement. Studies have also show that teachers cite principal support as one of the most important in their decision to remain in a school or the profession. Without sufficient Federal support to States, local educational agencies, and teacher and principal preparation programs at institutions of higher education, educator layoffs and shortages will be exacerbated by the economic crisis caused by the COVID–19 pandemic and historically underserved students, including students of color and students from families experiencing low incomes, will bear the brunt of these layoffs and shortages. Data consistently show the disproportionate impact of COVID–19 on people of color and communities of concentrated poverty. Further, decades of data show that students of color, students from low-income families, and English language learners, as well as those with special needs, who are experiencing homelessness, who are in foster care, who are involved with the juvenile justice system, and whose families are engaged in seasonal work, have long been underserved by the current education system. Federal relief aid should be contingent on States and local educational agencies protecting students most heavily impacted by COVID–19 and students historically underserved in education in the United States from having to bear the brunt of shortfalls in school funding and other impacts of the virus on schools. Countries that have physically reopened schools successfully—and only once infection rates were under control—have provided schools with the resources necessary, such as personal protective equipment, to continue education and keep children and staff safe.