By, Laila Gopalani
Baldwin High School
Every year, thousands of Pennsylvania teachers leave their jobs, forcing Pennsylvania schools to hire unqualified teachers. A large factor of the teacher shortage in Pennsylvania is the teacher attrition problem. The increase in vacant teaching positions not only gives jobs to unqualified teachers, causing almost all public school students to have the quality of their education compromised.
To prevent this, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania established the 22 Pa. Code § 49.16 and § 49.83, also known as the Education Induction Plan: a regulation mandating the creation of teacher induction programs in Pennsylvania's public schools. However, even with the implementation of this regulation in 1987 by the PA Board of Education, Pennsylvania’s teacher retention problem is still dire. To combat this ineffectiveness, this reform would alter the Educator Induction Plan by providing a monetary incentive to the participating teachers. Not only would this reform encourage more teachers to participate in the induction programs, but it would supply them with higher pay: a crucial benefit in such a stressful and important field.
Based on years of experience, it was found that attrition rates are highest for very new teachers and very experienced teachers, showing that the current bill designed to keep these groups employed is ineffective. For teachers in their first year of teaching, the attrition rate was 11.3%: a 4.6% increase compared to the average teacher attrition rate in the 2023-2024 school year. This reform increases the effectiveness of the Educator Induction Plan by raising teachers’ salaries in districts where the starting salary was less than or equal to $44,000 each year in the 2022-2023 school year. Teachers will commit to participating in a mentorship by the end of October each school year, and if they do, they will have a $5,000 increase in their annual salaries. To support and fund this action, $70,000,000 will be withdrawn from the Pennsylvania general budget and allocated to its education budget for the reform.
Teachers with only emergency permits have begun to replace teachers with certified teaching degrees. The number of teacher positions filled by individuals who have an emergency permit more than tripled from the 2010-2011 to the 2020-2021 school year. In fact, in the 2020-2021 school year, there were more teachers on emergency permits than teachers who were newly certified. According to the website of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, an Emergency permit educator is requested when “no fully qualified or properly certificated” person is available for hire. Therefore, his drastic increase in teachers with only emergency permits can hurt students’ education. Impoverished school districts are disproportionately affected by this issue. From 2014 to 2022, districts with the highest proportions of students living in poverty had almost double the percentage of novice teachers (teachers with less than or equal to three years of experience) as districts with the lowest proportions of students living in poverty. Furthermore, in 2022, the most impoverished districts had around 16.1% novice teachers while the least impoverished districts had around 9.2% novice teachers.
In Massachusetts public schools, research was conducted to determine if students were negatively affected by the increase in emergency permit teachers. The results showed that between 2021 and 2023, students with emergency permit teachers scored significantly lower on their math and science standardized tests than students of the same school who had been taught by educators with actual teaching licenses. Since there are more emergency permit teachers in lower-income school districts, students’ educations of these districts are unfairly affected (as seen through the test scores) compared to the higher-income schools with more fully certified teachers.
With the monetary incentives that this reform would add to the preexisting Educator Induction Plan for lower-income districts, more teachers of these districts would participate in the mentoring programs. These connections between coworkers would allow for a more supportive work environment, thus decreasing the annual teacher resignations in minimum-wage school districts. When fewer certified teachers resign, fewer emergency permit teachers would be hired, and students of lower-income districts could finally begin to receive the higher quality public education that they are entitled to as citizens of the United States.
Annapaola Fike ‘26 shared her experience attending a public school in New York City, as her school was affected heavily by the teacher retention problem. She mentioned that a large number of certified teachers had left during her eighth-grade year, so “[she] wasn’t really being taught that much and [her] finals didn’t go great” after spending months being taught by a teacher with an emergency permit.
Arguably the most pressing issue that affects the teacher shortage is the insufficient pay for the amount of work that teachers handle. In the 2022-2023 school year, the average annual teacher salary was 16.5% lower than the 1995-1996 school year annual teacher salary even after inflation was accounted for. This reform addresses this issue directly by offering to raise teachers’ salaries if they participate in the mentorship programs offered in PA’s Educator Induction Plan. In fact, a 2022 study conducted by the National Education Association showed that 96% of teachers participating in the poll voted that raising teachers’ salaries was the top solution in solving teacher burnout.
Teacher burnout is a key issue regarding teacher resignation. In that same study, a startling 55% of teachers reported having considered leaving their jobs due to excessive stress and burnout. By encouraging teachers to participate in mentoring programs, they are more likely to foster supportive relationships with their coworkers and would be given more time to discuss ways to improve their work environments. According to a study done by Harvard Medical School, increased social connections are proven to decrease anxiety amongst teachers: a harmful issue that most teachers deal with.
A major obstacle that this reform would face would be the wasting of financial resources if fewer teachers sign up for this program than expected. Due to this issue, there is a deadline at the end of October of the given school year by which teachers can sign up. The large sum of $70,000,000 is an optimistic estimate of the amount of money needed for the teachers from the 94 lower-income districts that would qualify to receive salary raises, so there is expected to be a significant amount left over even after each teacher’s salary has been raised. After the participating teachers receive increases in their salaries, the remaining money would be reallocated to fund the PA Student Teacher Support Program, which is a program that provides financial assistance to students enrolled in any PA Department of Education teacher preparation program. Making it easier for students that qualify for financial aid to pay their student loans would make getting a teaching degree a more ideal career choice. This will repeat each year and the original amount of money allocated to this reform will change depending on how many teachers participated in the program the year prior. If too many teachers sign up for the initial $70,000,000 amount, the program will run on a rolling first-come-first-serve basis, meaning the teachers that sign up and start a mentorship first will be prioritized. Those that sign up last will not receive benefits and thus are not obligated to keep participating.
Programs such as Pennsylvania’s Educator Induction Plan directly combat this issue by aiming to lower the teacher attrition rates across the state, so encouraging participation in the mentorship programs that the Plan offers is a key facet of its success. The sooner lower-income public schools have a more constant stream of properly certified teachers, the sooner their students will be able to have equal academic opportunities as all public schools in the state. No one’s academic potential should be limited due to their socioeconomic status.
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