How to Fix California’s Teacher Shortage

The California Department of Education reports that in the 2021-2022 school year, there were more than 10,000 teaching vacancies in the state. 

Moreover, the number of people pursuing teaching credentials has gone down year after year. According to a recent report by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the number of new teaching credentials issued in California has decreased from 19,184 in 2020-2021 to only 14,309 in 2022-2023—a sharp 25% decrease in only two years.

The reason for the teacher shortage is not a lack of qualified personnel, but rather a lack of teacher credentials being issued by the government.

This shortage could easily be fixed by opening the market up to those with just a bachelor’s degree instead of forcing individuals to go through a costly post-graduate program to become certified as teachers.

According to a recent report from the Strada Education Foundation, almost half of college graduates are “underemployed” 10 years after graduation, working in jobs that don’t require a four-year degree.

Those individuals could better put their education to use by teaching, but current state laws prohibit it.

Teaching credentials in California typically cost thousands of dollars to acquire and can take one to two years to complete. This discourages people who have already spent thousands of dollars on tuition and four years of their lives to get a bachelor’s degree.

Moreover, unlike a master’s degree, which might carry signaling value in multiple domains, teaching licenses are only useful for teaching, making them more like a trade school than a typical degree.

With a master’s in a subject such as international relations, someone could potentially be a diplomat, work for an international business, or work in a litany of other professions. However, with a teaching credential, someone can only teach.

It would be better to eliminate the requirement altogether and judge instructors based on their merit rather than their ability to jump through a series of financial and bureaucratic hoops.

In 2024, the job market for college graduates is very difficult; CNN Business reports that the unemployment rate for college graduates ages 20 to 24 is 12% as of May 2024. 

It is not unreasonable to suggest that many of these unemployed graduates, after facing the brutal reality of the job market, would consider teaching if it were not for the costly barriers to entry.

Other states have already made strides in the right direction. Texas allows school districts to issue teaching permits. In 2022, Arizona passed legislation to allow future instructors to complete their teacher training simultaneously with their bachelor’s degree, rather than forcing them to complete additional education.

Teaching is not for everyone. I taught English to first and third graders for a year in Moscow, Russia, and very quickly realized that I was not cut out for elementary education. If I had been forced to obtain an expensive teaching license before this experience, I might have felt more pressure to remain an instructor because of the “sunk costs” involved.

The media today often provides two contradictory headlines: articles about a teacher shortage and, simultaneously, articles about a white-collar recession.

There is a way to kill both birds with one stone: Eliminate the teaching credential requirement so that educated people can use their skills by teaching.

California’s teacher shortage is manufactured, the result of government policy that prevents people who are capable of being excellent teachers from easily applying their skills.