Education: Teacher Famine

Many U.S. educators last week foresaw an “educational collapse” because of a shortage of teachers. Teachers not only leave school to go to war (some 39,000 have been drafted). They also leave for better paid wartime or other private jobs (since Pearl Harbor some 37,000 have done so).

Teacher turnover is double the normal rate, teachers’ college enrollments fell 22.2% this year, and next year a shortage of 75.000 is predicted. Emergency teaching certificates (recently issued at around ten times the normal rate) and the recall of retired teachers have usually meant lowered standards. Local troubles:

> In Illinois 1,000 rural schools have closed (TIME, Jan. 4).

>In Minnesota some towns lost all their teachers, then their replacements too.

>In Mississippi 30-40% of classrooms may be empty next year unless teachers’ resignations stop.

> In 19 Oklahoma counties, 43 schools have closed.

> In California 50 rural schools have closed, with more shutdowns likely.

> In Idaho the state superintendent foresaw that next year hundreds of schools would be “crippled and wrecked.”

>Throughout the country, private preparatory schools, with relatively few women teachers, were generally hard hit. Examples : The Pawling School at Pawling, N.Y. closed its doors last spring. Hollywood’s swank Black-Foxe Military Institute had a 50% faculty turnover.

> There were nationwide complaints of a special shortage in the field of physical science, physics and chemistry teachers. While war put a premium on the study of these subjects, and classes grew in proportion, war also drew the teachers off.

> Educators everywhere wanted a clarification of the Government’s vague position on whether the “educational world” was considered an essential industry. Where, exactly, did teachers stand in regard to selective service? Only when the educational system knew this could intelligent wartime planning be expected.

Of equal, perhaps more importance was the continued—and now crucial—question of teachers’ pay. Said Executive Secretary Willard Earl Givens of the National Education Association:

“Of our 894,000 public-school teachers, principals and supervisors, 40% are paid less than $1,200 annually. Nearly 8% are paid less than $600 for the present school year. Living costs have advanced over 20%, teachers’ salaries less than 7%. As salaries rise in industry and private employment, teacher shortages appear in the best-paying city systems, are intensified in rural areas. Unless a way is found to relieve the financial difficulties of teachers, our schools will suffer and millions of our children will be handicapped for life. If our schools are to carry effectively the increased wartime burdens, they must have federal financial help.”

The Senate Considers. The National Education Association was doing what it could about it. Secretary Givens was in Washington last week leading the fight for a Senate bill sponsored by Utah’s Elbert D. Thomas and Alabama’s Lister Hill. Major features: a federal fund of $200,000,000 for each emergency year to pay teachers’ salaries; a permanent federal fund of $100,000,000 annually to help relatively poor states raise educational levels. The bill would increase teachers’ salaries, bar cuts in state school budgets, leave distribution of federal funds to state authorities, forbid Federal control of schools.

Opposed were voices from richer states (California, Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Nevada) which would lose on the deal. Likewise opposed were States’ rights diehards. Observers held out little hope for the bill. But nobody denied that the low level of teachers’ salaries played a big role in a U.S. educational crisis far deeper than that of World War I.