FREE ESSAY ON SHORTAGE OF QUALIFIED , LICENSED TEACHERS IN THE U.S.

SHORTAGE OF QUALIFIED , LICENSED TEACHERS IN THE U.S.

There is a large and rapidly increasing shortage of qualified, licensed teachers in
the United States. This affects every parent and every child. Each year an increasing
number of children are in classrooms with and unlicensed, unqualified teacher. There are
many reasons for this shortage, but unless we figure out how to regulate this problem
this
shortage will continue to exist. 
My girlfriend believes that If the teachers' salary was raised it would dramatically
increase the interest in teaching. Let's face it we are a money based society. The
1998-99
academic year salary was $25,735 a year,(Fair Teachers Pay Association) far less than
the
salary for other college graduates. My friend works at Bell Atlantic Mobile and makes
$40,000 a year without a college education, key word's "without a college education."
The public does not want thirty students in a class anymore. Class size reduction
to fifteen or twenty students per class is becoming more popular as the research begins
to
show lifelong gains for students in smaller classes. By making the class size smaller
the
schools are in immediate need of teachers the government just throws a body in front of
a
classroom and excepts it to work. This is only poring more gasoline on the fire, how will
I
expect my kids to get a good education when this kind of negligence is happening.
The thing that bother's me the most is that we do have enough qualified teacher's
in the country to fill every classroom. The problem is that a lot of them are ex
teacher's
who left teaching for a better paying job. The F.T.P.A. did a survey on what it would
take
for the ex teacher's to come back to teaching. The result's to the survey showed that
the
desired salary the wanted came out to $63,495 a year. 
I plan on talking to my local political candidates to push these views in office. 
if we continue to push the fact's in their face they have to do something about it. I
also
think that schools that know they have a teacher or teacher's who are not qualified
should
stage a temporary boycott to support the parents and children who must deal with this
problem.
Whether people choose to disregard the statistics, there is no doubt going to be a
huge shortage of teacher's in the immediate future. The only way to avoid this is to
attract and keep more qualified teacher's than the present system allows.