Michigan schools once again are filling more classrooms with instructors who lack all of the required credentials because they can’t find enough certified teachers. But at the same time, student-teacher ratios are shrinking and highly demanded instructors remain on the sidelines.

According to Bridge Magazine, early school year trends suggest Michigan public schools will surpass last year’s use of more than 2,500 long-term substitutes. These numbers are tallied by the state, which has to give local districts permission to employ less-credentialed instructors for extended periods of time. The number of long-term substitutes used in 2018-19 more than doubled from two years earlier, evoking grave concerns of a general shortage of certified teachers.

Public charter schools — which typically serve more low-income students than conventional districts — are disproportionately struggling to fill classrooms with certified instructors. The Bridge article highlights a small but promising alternative program to train and certify college-degree holders to take over charter classrooms full-time. Michigan schools could benefit from having more alternative teacher preparation options to attract potential instructors who wouldn’t undergo the standard regimen.

After all, the number of education degrees acquired in Michigan has steadily fallen to half of the levels a decade ago. That could mean not enough teachers are being prepared to maintain current student-staffing ratios, but it would be too early to jump to the conclusion that the state needs to double the production of certified teachers. Research of national trends points out that over the previous three decades, more than twice as many education degrees were earned as teachers hired. To the extent Michigan fits the pattern, the decline in graduates with education degrees may mean our state has actually reached an equilibrium between supply and demand for the total teaching workforce.

What, though, if the growing need for long-term substitutes is being driven at least as much by changes in demand as by changes in supply? The Bridge story acknowledges, based on an earlier Citizens Research Council report, that “there are enough students graduating from Michigan’s university-based teaching programs to replace teachers who retire and quit.”

But the article omits an examination of public schools’ overall hiring patterns. From 2017 to 2019, the number of teachers statewide grew by 1.6% while the number of students declined at the same rate. Nearly a third of all conventional districts lost students but still added full-time teaching positions.

Taking a longer view, Michigan’s student-teacher ratio has returned to the same range as was the average between 2004 and 2009. Those ratios edged up in the following years, meaning there were slightly more students for each teacher, even as there were fewer students overall. Now there are more teachers compared to the number of students, on average. (Interestingly, the number of administrative staff per student appears to have reached a historic high. As staff numbers rebound to levels from a decade earlier, administrative offices represent a bigger share of school payrolls than ever.)

According to the Michigan Department of Education, in 2018-19 there were 25,573 state residents aged 22 to 64 with active teaching certificates who were not working in a public district or charter school. Unfortunately, that number doesn’t reveal much either about these individuals’ availability and desire to work nor their experience and relative fitness to teach effectively.

More than 4,700 of the inactive teachers are endorsed by the state to teach special education, an area that accounts for an outsized share of the teaching jobs schools are trying to fill. Due to the diverse challenges of serving students with special needs, Michigan offers many different types of special education endorsements. A person who has the precise type of teaching specialty a district seeks may reside in a different part of the state and not be willing or able to relocate. Meanwhile, some districts are seeing many applicants for some general education positions.

There’s not enough data to give us a clear and complete picture of the pipeline for different teaching subjects in all regions. But the apparent mismatch between vacancies and available candidates in one high-need subject area highlights the need for a different approach.

To ensure they get the best possible talent in harder-to-fill specialties, local school boards and district leaders should differentiate salaries and offer other pay incentives. They could redirect funds by reducing administrative or other positions, as well as by phasing out the automatic pay bump for acquiring a master’s degree. Research consistently has shown that that credential has no association with a teacher’s effectiveness.

A full and honest look at the numbers defies simple explanations of a teacher shortage, but calls for smarter policies to tackle real local challenges.

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