Although I've only just skimmed this report, it looks excellent, perhaps one of the most excellent I've seen on the issue. You need to get this into the hands of the right people at the California Department of Education.
The problem with education addressing technical workforce needs is simply the people. The Education sector by and large is filled with dare I say it, the wrong kinds of people to implement these types of changes. There's a certain mindset, attitude, and personality required for engineering type work and studies, and most people in the education sector just don't have it. And changing people in education is a slow process, that often happens just one retirement at a time.
To me, things will start improving when education as a whole can embrace the following:
- Competitive salaries with other similarly-qualified professionals in private industry. Without competitive salaries, you're not attracting the best people to the profession. The best people are going places where they can make more money.
- Opportunities to earn a salary year round by working year round. If you're a teacher, you are paid to work for 186 days out of the year. Not all teachers want to just lounge around for the other days. That's not why we all became one. I want to work harder for the school and district, but it needs to be compensated. Living expenses don't vanish for two months out of the year.
- Salary-based incentives for teachers to work harder and/or longer/extra hours to prepare and improve their programs. Currently in education, why would anyone work harder, when they would make the same amount of money by working as (minimally) hard as everyone else. Let there be time-and-a-half overtime. Right now if you work extra hours, which would be considered overtime in most private industry, you make "half", honestly, because it's different work that they value less than classroom instruction, and they pay you LESS than your standard hourly rate.
- Different pay for different work, and the opportunity to advance up the salary schedule faster by working harder, not just based on years of service. Why do senior teachers who race to beat each other out of the school parking lot at 3:00 each afternoon earn double that of a second or third year teacher who is staying until 6:00 or 7:00 PM every day to build his or her curriculum and lab? The proverbial dangling carrot needs to be a larger carrot, dangled closer to the teachers earlier in their career. In our district, the salary for new teachers is flatlined with no advancement for 5 years. How depressing is that?
- Why does a teacher who has only a class set of desks, chairs, and textbooks to take care of make the same amount as a teacher who has to install, configure, repair, and maintain technology, equipment, supplies, and machinery?
- Reduction in equity between teachers. Recognize that certain people, regardless of number of years of service, are worth more, because of what they do and/or how they do it.
- Reduction in the amount of red tape and hoops new teachers need to jump through just to become one. You look at it, and it's like, "who would ever want to sign up for this?"
- Reduction in the bureaucratic BS at the state level. Say you are credentialed to teach engineering with a Bachelor's degree that included up through multi-variable Calculus and Differential equations, and you've been teaching many years, and you then want to teach a class period of Algebra or Geometry, you can't, because your credential does not authorize that. And to gain that credential, there is no clear path for it to simply be added. You start over, from scratch, just like any fresh college grad off the street. Who would do it?
- Many smaller high schools would be reluctant to hire a full time person for just engineering type courses. But if that person could also teach a section of math or Physics, you've hit the jackpot. But they can't because of the above.
- Reduction in administrator turnover and reassignment. The average time a school principal serves the same school and site is only like 3 or 5 years. It takes longer to implement a vision.
There's plenty of qualified individuals who are working in industry, that would make wonderful teachers, and likely even have the desire to do so, but when you look at the pay cut they'd be taking, they would be setting themselves back YEARS in life financially.
So in essence, I think we all recognize the problem, and the potential fix, but I'm not too hopeful that much of anything will change. And it's not like there hasn't been dollars for it. There's been more dollars pumped into this initiative than you could ever believe. But it's been a lot of the wrong people directing where it goes.
Yes, engaging in a career that you enjoy is not all about the money, but there are still bills to pay, and that's not a fact that can just be ignored.