They suggest women, who made up the workforce in the past, are now pursuing other careers. But factfulness: About 90% of K-5 teachers are still women, and about 75% of K-12 are women.
They blame a lot of things except the elephant in the room – our nation’s fertility rate has plummeted and the number of kids starting schools is shrinking.
Today, our fertility rate is between 1.6 and 1.8. Now may not be the time to pursue a career in education, especially elementary education. As reported on this blogs, school districts nationwide are closing schools and merging and consolidating other schools. So far, this is mostly at the elementary level but many have begun the closure process at the middle school and high school levels. Even smaller private colleges are now impacted.
Here is a population pyramid for Oregon – as you can see, the cohorts below age 25 are rapidly getting smaller. We are on the verge of having too many classrooms and too many teachers. While this is Oregon’s population pyramid the same pattern holds at the nation level.
This is reflected in projected elementary school enrollment. We are just beginning to see the decline in enrollment caused by the decline in births. The U.S. remains an attractive destination for immigrates whose children may make up the shortfall, to some extent. As of now, just over half of all population growth in the U.S. comes from immigration.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cga/public-school-enrollment
Note – my late Dad was a professor of education, focusing on educational technology plus testing and student performance evaluation.
