By Jane Mayer and Jesse Soza, Ed.D. Los Angeles Unified School District alone employs 27,747 teachers, which doesn’t account for the thousands more employed by charters (typically younger and more likely to burn out) or private school teachers. Based on statistics, more than 11,000 of these highly passionate and well-educated members of our society will...

By Jane Mayer and Jesse Soza, Ed.D. Two previous articles in this series, here and here, have detailed the enormity and the complexity of the teacher turnover problem in our country: more than 1 million teachers entering and exiting the classroom every year, and somewhere between 40 percent to 50 percent permanently exiting within five. This lack...

*UPDATED This is the first in a five-part series about teacher sustainability in Los Angeles and California public schools and the available solutions to reversing teacher turnover. When I was growing up in Birmingham, Ala., nearly 30 years ago, the same teachers taught kindergarten year after year. It was almost a given that my sister...

California’s teacher shortage is only going to grow more problematic unless the state takes action, according to a new report from the Learning Policy Institute. The report, Addressing California’s Emerging Teacher Shortage: An Analysis of Sources and Solutions, analyzes the origins of the shortage and also offers policy recommendations on how to fix it. “Our analysis...

A poll released today by EdSource and the Learning Policy Institute shows that the majority of California voters are concerned about the teacher shortage facing the state and support the state’s taking action to help fix the problem. The survey of 1,002 registered voters, which was conducted by the The Field Poll, found that 64...

Facing a statewide and national trend in a shortage of special education teachers, LA Unified officials are mounting an aggressive campaign to find them. And, if they can’t find them, the district is training the teachers themselves. “We are out and relentless as far as it goes for teachers, because university enrollment is down for...

By Emilio Solano Growing up Mexican-American in a predominantly white community in Oregon, I never had a Latino teacher. I remember men of color working as security guards and coaches, but no one of my ethnicity led a classroom. Even in our textbooks, Cesar Chavez merited just a paragraph. While many Los Angeles residents know we...

Among the biggest challenges facing California school districts in the coming years is a growing teacher shortage. Enrollment in teacher preparation programs has plummeted since 2008, and more than 100,000 teachers are expected to retire in the next decade. Despite the gathering storm, the state lacks any cohesive strategy to solving the problem, according to a...

Acknowledging the challenges facing new teachers with the aim of helping them have long careers, LA Unified is offering classes this month to help freshly-minted teachers learn how to deal with stress. The district is offering a the New Teacher Summer Institute, a five-day series of workshops, with about 1,800 teachers expected to take the courses....

As LA Unified is currently laying off hundreds of teachers and other employees to deal with a looming budget crisis, there is perhaps one piece of good news for any teacher getting a pink slip: it has become an “employees’ market” for teachers in the state. Due to a growing shortage, many large districts are...