The Milwaukee metropolitan area could face a teacher shortage as the number of teachers leaving the local workforce continues to outpace the number of those entering.
The Public Policy Forum released the third and final portion of a study examining education workforce trends Monday morning titled “Help Wanted: An Analysis of the Teacher Pipeline in Metro Milwaukee.”
The study concludes education workforce trends locally and state-wide “easily align with the national figures,” regarding teacher retention — a growing national problem.
“Research indicates that between 40 percent and 50 percent of teachers leave the profession in their first five years,” the study reads. “In Wisconsin, there were 2,153 first-year teachers in the 2009-10 school year. Four years later, 712 teachers – 33.1 percent – had left the profession. Departures were more acute in metro Milwaukee, where 39.6 percent of new teachers in 2009-10 were gone by 2013-14. With a fifth year of data, the patterns for the state and region would easily align with the national figures.”
Data examined in the study revealed the metro Milwaukee region has a shrinking supply of new teachers to replace existing teachers reaching retirement age, which account for nearly half of all teachers who leave.
But the study emphasized that the area’s high number of aging teachers is not the only cause of the problem — 53 percent of teachers who left the workforce in the state between 2009 and 2014 did so before reaching retirement age, and 34 percent were in their 20s and 30s.
“This was a surprising finding for me personally,” said Joe Yeado, a senior researcher for the Public Policy Forum who authored the study. “The districts have challenges retaining the teachers they do have. In looking at why college students are not as much interested in becoming an educator as they had been, that was something we weren’t able to explore just given the lack of data around that, but it’s something that we’d like to continue to explore.”
Here’s a breakdown of the number of teachers who left the workforce in the four-county Milwaukee metropolitan area prior to the beginning of each school year compared to the rest of the state:
As the data indicates, there was a sharp increase in the number of teachers who left the state and local workforce prior to the 2011-12 academic year, shortly after the passage of Act 10.
Act 10, passed in 2011, limited collective bargaining and allowed school districts to get rid of salary schedules included in union contracts that awarded pay increases based only on years spent teaching.
The study notes the timing of the spike, but falls short of connecting the increase in teachers leaving the workforce with the passage of the bill.
“We cannot say definitively whether Act 10 caused the spike in teachers leaving the workforce, but there is an unmistakable break in the trend line immediately following the legislation,” the study reads.
Here’s a breakdown of how the teachers who left the Milwaukee workforce fit into each age group:Â
Compared to neighboring midwestern states, such as Illinois and Michigan, Wisconsin has done comparatively well replacing vacated teaching positions, Yaedo said. Statewide enrollment in teacher education programs fell about 28 percent from the 2008-09 academic year to 2013-14. In the same time period, enrollment fell 57 percent in Illinois and 52 percent in Michigan.
School districts in the Milwaukee area have also done comparatively well, Yaedo said.
“About 10 percent left and were replaced,” Yaedo said. “That’s a little higher than the state — the state had about 8 percent. What we’re finding is that districts in metro Milwaukee are doing a pretty good job filling the gaps, but their continued ability to do so hinges on a steady stable supply of new teachers.”
Future problems could emerge if the workforce numbers hold to their current trends, Yaedo warned, especially if states where the problem is more acute, such as Illinois and Michigan, begin recruiting graduates of Wisconsin education programs.
To combat the area’s growing teacher retention problem, the study recommended the city and state consider adopting a number of policy changes that could encourage more people to enter, or stick with, a teaching career.
Among them, a loan forgiveness program that would reduce teachers’ student loans over time, a performance-based pay scale and allowing part-time employment to teachers who leave their jobs for family care reasons, such as giving birth.
“We hope this can help spark a long overdue conversation about teachers in the region,” Yaedo said. “Like many research reports, it raises more questions than answers. So we hope that the public, school district folks and policy makers will use the data in this report to have a robust conversation.”
To combat workforce losses at the local level, Milwaukee Public Schools spokesperson Tony Tagliavia said the district has increased starting salaries in recent years and “enacted a competitive schedule that allows for salary growth.”
A separate study completed in 2014 by the National Council on Teacher Quality found MPS teachers received better than average compensation during the 2013-2014 school year. The study, titled “Smart money: What teachers make, how long it takes and what it buys them,” examined compensation at the nation’s largest 125 public school districts. MPS ranked 19 after adjusting for cost-of-living.
More recently,  the school board approved a base salary raise of 0.15 Percent in January for the 2015-2016 school year. The raise affected most MPS employees represented by the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association. It did, however, fell short of the 1.62 percent increase sought by the union.
At the state level, Wisconsin Education Association Council spokesperson Christina Brey said better starting salaries, more predictable career paths and clear opportunities for advancement must be established.
“We really need to focus on making this a profession that people will join for the long haul,” Brey said. “It needs to be a serious profession with a career path that is predictable.”
