While pay for Pa. student teachers is coming, advocates say educator shortage needs more attention

When a family emergency hit, aspiring Philadelphia educator Melody Dorsainvil wasn’t sure how she would complete her unpaid student teaching assignment.

Eventually, her Temple University professors scrambled and she was able to make it work, but Dorsainvil — who’s now loving her time student teaching in a second-grade classroom at Hunter Elementary in North Philadelphia — says for many of her peers, there are too many barriers to becoming a teacher in Pennsylvania.

“What we need is a tangible commitment to our future,” Dorsainvil said.

One fix, State Sen. Vincent Hughes (D., Philadelphia) said, is a new program that, beginning in the 2024-25 school year, will pay student teachers in Pennsylvania $10,000 to $15,000 if they agree to work in high-needs districts and promise to teach in the state for three years.

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Hughes, Dorsainvil, and other educators, along with Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr., gathered Monday at Science Leadership Academy at Beeber, a West Philadelphia public school, to tout the new program, and to issue a “call to action” for continued efforts to attract more teachers. (SLA Beeber is home to the state’s first career and technical education program for K-12 teachers.)

There’s a national teacher shortage and Pennsylvania, in particular, has a “teacher crisis,” said Hughes. The commonwealth issued its lowest-ever number of new teaching certificates in 2021-22; there was a 70% drop in teacher licenses between 2011 and 2022.

And in Philadelphia, the need for new teachers is particularly acute. Recent research out of Penn State’s Center for Evaluation and Education Policy Analysis found that Philadelphia teachers leave the profession at very high rates — higher than the rest of the state, and higher than the rate at which local education schools are graduating new teachers. The study found that 20% of charter teachers and 18% of district teachers left the profession in their first year. After five years, the attrition rate dropped to 9% for district teachers but was 17% for charter teachers.

When school began this fall, there were widespread teacher vacancies in districts in every part of the state, said Aaron Chapin, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association.

“That means hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania students arrived in a brand new year and teachers were missing from the classroom,” Chapin said.

Chapin said he wants higher starting salaries for teachers.

“If we want young people to stick around and be teachers in Pennsylvania, we’re going to need to pay them at least $60,000 a year to be teachers,” said Hughes.

State Sen. Jimmy Dillon (D., Philadelphia), who worked as a grant compliance monitor for the district before running for office, noted that Gov. Josh Shapiro’s $48.3 billion budget plan would mean more money for schools — a $1.1 billion increase, to be exact.

But, Dillon said, “more money for facilities, technology, and programming won’t mean a thing if we can’t keep good teachers in our classrooms.”

Dillon said teacher pay “is not competitive.”

“Imagine being expected to hold a master’s degree only to earn a salary that can barely cover your rent and your student loan payments,” he said. And, he said, “maybe the worst part is the shift on how teachers are perceived and treated.”

Monika Shealey, dean of Temple’s College of Education and Human Development, said the student teacher stipend — which so far has $10 million in funding, though advocates have called for $75 million — will help plug holes in the pipeline. But, she said, it’s “long overdue.”

“For some reason, we think that student teachers and teachers should be doing their work as a matter of community service,” said Shealey. “It’s a profession.”