No one's tracking how big Texas' teacher shortage really is
NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - You've likely heard about the teacher shortage in Texas.
Figuring out how exactly how many teacher positions remain vacant, though, is tough.
"This is a huge problem," said Eli Melendrez with Texas AFT, a union representing more than 65,000 school employees.
Melendrez has been working to figure out exactly how many teacher vacancies there are. It's not easy, in part, he says, because it's not something the state tracks.
"The most frustrating part is that we know that they can," said Melendrez. "They collect all different kinds of data about, you know, teacher tenure, even teacher ethnicity."
To piece together just some of the data, Eli and a co-worker last month looked at online job postings for the state's 50 largest school districts and found thousands of openings for teachers.
"Every single websites lays it out differently. So we had to kind of painstakingly go on each district's individual websites," he said.
The Texas Education Agency has created a task force to study the problem of teacher vacancies.
Different organizations, including Texas AFT, have proposed different solutions. But, Melendrez says they're working blind, without any real idea of how big the problem is.
"It's like trying to solve a math problem when you don't even know what numbers you're dealing with," he said.
The TEA does track how many teachers leave the profession each year, and last year, it reported more than 11 and half percent of teachers retired or resigned, the highest figure in at least 15 years.
It reported the total number of teachers working in Texas hit its highest number, too.
What it doesn't know is how that's stacking up against the demands of a growing population of children.
In a statement, the agency said, "Staffing concerns primarily fall at the local level and the individual needs for districts and campuses fluctuate each year. Because of that there is no firm number of vacancies to reference."
Texas AFT says it's asking the TEA to create a standardized way for districts to report the number of vacancies they have and to require they do so. If that doesn't work, they may ask state legislators if they'll step in.
"This would be information the public would really want to know," said Melendrez. "I think every parent deserves to know."