Schools throughout the country are grappling with teacher shortage, data show

CAT Tracks Editor's Note:

What a stoooooopid article!

I don't buy into the "CNN is FAKE NEWS!" babble...

...but this was certainly NOT news, an annual trip down teacher shortage lane.

But, what was totally irresponsible was the answers posed to the question:

"So what's causing this?"

And all CNN can come up with is:

Math and science teachers aren't paid enough. Salaries for US secondary school teachers have largely remained the same over the past two decades, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

And...

Teaching in the US is too demanding. About 8% of teachers leave teaching each year, with two-thirds quitting before retirement, according to the Learning Policy Institute. This is double the percentage of teachers leaving the profession in countries like Singapore and Finland.

Yeah, well, and when the next total eclipse rolls around, teachers - all teachers - will still not be paid enough, not even close to what they are worth!

As for the "too demanding' argument...

Lynn Sorrells (principal of a high school in Dorchester County, Maryland, who was the main focus of the article) started teaching 26 years ago because she loved seeing the light-bulb moment when a kid grasped a new concept.

Well, press fast forward, and:

..."The reality of contemporary public education ... (is) that it's amazing; it's fulfilling; it's a calling." But it can also be exhausting, she says.

Well, hell, neither Sorrells nor the interviewer bothered to mention the elephant (and the donkey) in the room...

...that 26 years ago was before two presidents of the United States (and their assorted nutty secretaries of education) secured passage of No Child Left Behind and Race To The Top and made it their mission to lambast public school teachers, calling them everything but children of God...

...culminating in Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos, the Wizard of Ooze and the Wicked Witch of the Midwest.

Oh, yeah, sure makes me want to be a teacher when I grow up!

If I (who gave 39 years of my life to public education) were to start all over with what I know now...

...well, they couldn't come up with enough money to make me be a teacher.

Anything but teaching!

So, teacher shortage?