Florida should be rolling out the red carpet for public school teachers. It’s become increasingly hard to find people willing to endure low pay, the rising cost of living, lack of resources and the stress of running a classroom full of children — not to mention periodic active-shooter drills and the chance of actual school shootings.
There’s no single reason why educators are leaving the profession, and, likewise, no silver bullet for solving a teacher shortage affecting the entire nation. But demonizing educators — calling them leftist “woke” indoctrinators who want to brainwash children into hating their country — certainly won’t help Florida’s case. Yet that’s precisely the rhetoric coming from the highest echelons of state government in the past months.
The number of advertised teacher vacancies in Florida jumped 104% compared to pre-pandemic numbers, going from 2,135 in August 2019 to 4,359 in January 2022, according to the Florida Education Association. At the same time, universities are graduating fewer teachers. The number of education degrees granted annually in the United States peaked at 200,000 in the 1970s. In 2018-19, there were fewer than 90,000 degrees, according to the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.
