Educator Shortage
Career Changes, Early Retirements, Fewer New Teachers
Educators love their profession and value supporting students in their learning — it’s why they chose the profession to begin with. But we are at a crossroads: Will we attract and retain the very best educators for our students? Or will we make the educator shortage worse?
Schools are dangerously understaffed.
An October 2021 review of Colorado school districts’ websites shows that there are more than 3,300 open positions in our public schools – 1,125 licensed and 2,251 support professionals. October survey respondents weighed in on their own schools’ shortages and more than a third had open licensed positions and positions filled by emergency licensed employees or long term substitutes in their school. Four out of five had open education support professional positions in their school and almost as many say the substitute shortage is significantly worse than previous school years. Understaffing is putting student learning at risk.
3,300
Estimated number of open positions in our public schools as of October 2021
Overworked educators are leaving the profession.
More than two-thirds (67%) of CEA’s surveyed members in October indicated that they were considering leaving the profession in the near future. Alarmingly, this is a 27 percentage point increase from the 40% of members who said the same thing just last December. These educators most often point to their overwhelming workload and low pay as the reasons to leave and they are considering career changes and early retirement.
