Teacher shortage ‘the worst I’ve ever seen’: AFT president

AFT President Randi Weingarten joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the nationwide teacher shortage, job dissatisfaction among teachers, the political environment in schools, and the outlook for the profession and collective bargaining.

Video Transcript

- Fresh survey data from the American Federation of Teachers finds that 79% of those in the industry are dissatisfied with their jobs. Among other things, they say schools have become too politicized. Joining us to discuss is the President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten. Randi, thank you so much for being here, really appreciate it.

You know, I was looking for headlines about teacher shortages. And I saw one headline, "The Teacher Shortage is Real, Large, and Growing and Worse than we Thought." That was from the Economic Policy Institute. That was from 2019. And I would imagine things have only gotten worse over the course of the pandemic with school shutdowns, et cetera. Are we at the most acute point ever in terms of teacher dissatisfaction?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Well, certainly in modern history. And I've been engaged in this work as a teacher or as a union rep for a very long time. And I've never seen it like this. Normally, there's about 300,000-- and I hate saying normally, because the teacher shortage has been normalized-- but normally, there's about 300,000 teachers that leave the profession, 2/3 of whom leave before retirement. It's a very high attrition job.

But this year was the worst I've ever seen. And I want to just separate out-- the pandemic teachers were amazing. They moved to remote without having any good-- with many of them not having really good platforms. You could hear they engaged kids. Parents were very, very grateful. Frankly, parents have been very grateful the whole time.

But what has happened is that the politics and politicians have really polluted what goes on with teachers right now. They've had more and more responsibilities. They were assumed that they would get everything back to normal without having the conditions, without having the salary increases that they needed, as we just saw in terms of the rest of the economy, and then having this constant hectoring, being called pedophiles, being called groomers, wondering whether whatever they said, whether they were going to be pulled into a principal's office if they answered a kids question.

So between the effects of the pandemic, where we had huge issues and challenges that kids brought in of social emotional challenges, and then on top of that, education becoming really politicized, and then you talk about the regular stuff that happens. It was really tough.

- When can teachers expect to see their salaries brought up to speed, brought up to pace, to outpace inflation, to actually get paid what they, quite frankly, deserve at the end of the day?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: So I want to lift up somebody like Michelle Lujan Grisham, the governor of New Mexico, because she saw this, and what she did as part of the state legislative session was increased teacher salaries by $10,000 a teacher. And she just lifted it. That's education as a state role. And she did that.

President Biden's American Rescue Plan gives the money to do this. And we shouldn't be having the fights like we have in New York. There's $4 billion that's left in President Biden's Rescue Plan. And the mayor in New York is not actually lowering class size, is not actually-- is doing cuts instead. So what's happened is that the normal politics have now gotten worse by the electoral politics.

And so teachers all across America are going to be pushing hard for increases. You saw that a little bit last year in Minnesota, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. But you're going to see a lot of that this year through collective bargaining, because that's the only place that teachers can really test for it. And we will be supporting teachers.

But the money is there from President Biden's Rescue Plan, at least in the short term. And frankly, if you take a state like New York State, 99% of the budget will pass this year. Parents get that teachers are really important. The problem is you got a lot of politicians who don't get it.

- Well, or they say they get it, but don't necessarily-- aren't necessarily willing to pull the trigger--

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Exactly.

- --in terms of budgeting for it. Randi, what does all this do in terms of bringing new people into the profession or preventing people from leaving the profession?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Right. Well, that's-- those two, what you just asked, are the things that I am most concerned about, because we asked in our poll, would you recommend teaching to your kid or to your grandkid? And 74% says no. That is the number that has to change. People on the ground understand that conditions have eroded.

People love kids. We can change this around if we change the climate and conditions. Teachers want to make a difference in the lives of kids. But they want these changes. So what we're already seeing is fewer and fewer people are going into schools of education. Kids are smart. They understand what's going on in terms of respect. And what we're seeing this year is 40% of people who we polled said that they're considering leaving in the next year or two.

So one of the things we're bringing to our convention, which starts tomorrow, is this six month work that a shortage task force has done. People from all across the country have been involved in it. We talk to our members a lot. And so we have about 20 recommendations about how to fix this. We have to fix it.

You cannot expect that teachers by themselves are going to be able to do everything. We already ask teachers to take money out of their pockets to pay for supplies of kids. No other profession does that. But we need to give them a raise. And we need to get them the conditions that they need so that they can help kids thrive.

- Yeah, remarkable how high of an export the higher education system is. However, in K through 12, that certainly needs to get a little bit more parity in terms of the funding, a lot more, actually. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, thanks so much for joining us here today.