Overcoming Mississippi's Chronic Teacher Shortage

Tanya Rodges teaches biology at Shaw High School

Over the last few weeks our in-depth series “Mississippi’s critical teacher shortage” looked at why Mississippi has too few qualified teachers. In our final installment, MPB's Sandra Knispel examines possible solutions.

Not having enough qualified teachers, means too many students are taught by teachers on emergency licenses. A majority of those stop-gap licenses will run out over the next two to three years, leaving many school districts scrambling for teachers. That’s why several financial aid programs offer a quid-pro-quo for education majors: teach for a year upon graduation in a critical needs area in Mississippi – and we’ll pay your tuition. The William Winter Teacher Scholar Loan is one such program. Its namesake, the former Mississippi governor, has worked for decades to improve the state’s public education system.

“We don’t have enough good teachers. We have, I think, an adequate number of teachers in most school districts, but we need to look at increasing the quality of our teachers and increasing the financial rewards that go to teachers," Governor William Winter said. "We’re not going to compete very effectively with our surrounding states when they’re paying their teachers a lot more money than we are.”

“Until the economic incentives change we’ve lost the battle for public education in this country,” added Ben Guest, program manager at the Mississippi Teacher Corps, which recruits non-education majors from top universities nationwide for two-year stints in Mississippi’s most under-served areas. “Until teachers are paid more, until the starting salary is much higher and the ceiling – the maximum salary – is much higher… right now in Mississippi you start at $32,000. With a PhD and 25 years in you end up with about $57,000. So you start low, [and] you end low," Guest said.

The problem with low salaries means the brightest students won’t consider education as a viable profession.

“The bottom third of college graduates in this country … the number one area they go into is education. So, we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel," Guest explained. "We’re getting the lowest caliber of graduating seniors.”

State Superintendent of Education Hank Bounds, who is now Mississippi's new higher education commissioner, concedes that higher salaries might attract better and more teachers. But then, money is tight. The Department of Education is trying several things...

“We’re making a request to the legislature this year, a financial request, that will allow us to recruit more broadly nationally and internationally," Bounds said.

The State Department is also expanding its virtual schools program, in which high school students across the state can enroll in web-based elective classes to take courses not offered at their own school. And then there are several alternate route programs that target mid-career professionals and recent non-education college graduates to fast track them through an intensive teacher training and certification process.

“This is the first year in the history of our state that we’ve actually produced more teachers through our alternate route programs than through our traditional university preparation programs," Bounds said.

Just last month, Mississippi State University was one of 14 programs nationwide to win a 5-year federal grant. The university will receive just over $3 million total in order to churn out 35 highly qualified teachers every year. Part of the grant will also go towards ongoing mentoring of these new teachers… something that Shaw High School principal Martha Jackson says is crucial for retention.

“ You put a first-year teacher in a classroom and just leave ‘em there. You can’t do that," Jackson explained. "So, a lot of them are leaving because they are frustrated and I think a lot of that frustration could have been relieved had they had that support from colleagues and administration.”

[Nat sound Rodges rapping…]

Tanya Rodges is biology teacher who drills ecology stanza by rapping stanza at Shaw High School in the Delta. She’s has been a science teacher for 12 years. It is highly qualified teachers like her that the state cannot afford to lose and needs to hire more of. Rodges for her part says she’s here to stay and is now enrolled in a fast-track program to become a school administrator.