The U.S. Education Secretary Wants To Build A Path To Teaching. Here’s The Problem With That Approach.

A strong education system starts with teacher recruitment. We are committed to building a path to teaching for diverse populations so that our schools have leadership that reflects our commitment to equity and inclusion.

— Secretary Miguel Cardona (@SecCardona) July 5, 2022

The U.S. Secretary of Education’s tweet is sort of on point.

It's true that there needs to be a path to teaching, and that we need to be conscious of which populations that path does or does not serve.

But before we throw too much effort into building a path, we need to remember this:

We did not arrive at our current location in the profession (Florida, we hear today, has 9,000 teaching positions to fill) because of damage done to the path to teaching. We are not at this dismal position because a plethora of prospective teachers are out there saying, “I would love to become a teacher, but I just can’t seem to find a way to do it.”

Colleges cut back education departments because enrollment dropped. Teachers have been walking away from the profession at a steady, elevated rate for at least a decade.

Teaching has become a progressively less attractive profession. The NEA says that teacher pay has actually dropped over the last decade, and that was before inflation spiked this year. Gag laws restricting what teachers may say in the classroom have become more widespread and restrictive, even as some states have contemplated severe penalties, and teachers who dare to speak up are called groomers and pedophiles. Activist groups are training members to “monitor” teachers’ social media.

For twenty years, high stakes testing has dominated the teaching landscape, despite its lack of useful results. After an initial burst of support, teachers were targeted as one of the pandemic culprits, with some vocal critics demanding that teachers get back to work regardless of threats to their health. That and the nation’s non-reaction to more school shootings have help create the impression that the respect once given the teaching profession has been replaced with disdain and indifference.

The hard-nosed reaction to complaints about the profession has always been, “If you don’t like it, quit.” And that’s exactly what thousands of teachers have been doing.

Teaching is an unusual profession in that every prospective recruit has had a dozen years to observe the profession. Teacher’s working conditions are not only student learning conditions—they are also the profession’s recruitment conditions. To recruit a diverse teaching work force, make sure we have the best possible working conditions for the teaching force we already have.

There are steps the federal government can take for easing the path, especially when it comes to the high cost of college preparation for a low-paying profession.

But building a path is not enough; at the end of the path there has to be a worthy destination, a place that people actually want to go. Make the destination appealing, and building a path will become so much easier.