Wisconsin Still Struggling to Find Teachers

Tuesday, July 25th, 2023 -- 3:00 PM

(By Corrinne Hess, Wisconsin Public Radio) Maddison Iwen beams when she talks about teaching fourth graders at Coloma Elementary School in the Central Wisconsin-based School District of Westfield.  

According to Corrinne Hess with Wisconsin Public Radio, the University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate, who will begin her fourth year heading a classroom this fall, says she was born to teach. But even with this enthusiasm, Iwen knows it might not be for everyone. In fact, Iwen says teaching isn’t what she thought it would be.

"I had a very privileged view of education, coming from a very white, middle-class background," Iwen said. "I didn’t see how much work has to go on behind the scenes to truly meet the needs of all my students. I think being a teacher means much more than curriculum and content. It's absolutely wearing five or six hats at a time and being OK with that."

That challenge may be making the career less attractive at a time when women, who traditionally made up the majority of classroom teachers, have many more options than in the past. Nationwide, fewer college students are majoring in education.

This week, about 100 early-career teachers were at UW-Madison for an event aimed at supporting new educators. The group gathered at the annual conference as both the number and share of new college graduates with a bachelor’s degree in education have decreased over the last few decades.

The decline has occurred even as the overall number and share of people with a college degree has increased. In 2019-20, the most recent year with available data, colleges and universities awarded 85,057 bachelor’s degrees in education, about 4 percent of the more than 2 million total degrees issued that year, according to a report last fall from the Pew Research Center that analyzed data from the National Center for Education Statistics. 

That was down 19 percent from 2000-01, when colleges and universities issued more than 105,000 bachelor’s degrees in education, or roughly 8 percent of all undergraduate degrees, according to Pew. Leaders of some Wisconsin universities say their education programs are steady or growing despite those national trends.

But that doesn't seem to be leading to an increase in teaching job candidates in the state. In Wisconsin, Department of Public Instruction data from 2021, the latest data available, showed 5,391 people graduated with teaching degrees, but only 3,618 of those graduates became teachers in the state.

Wisconsin's teachers are overwhelmingly white, almost 95 percent; and female, about 72 percent, according to DPI. Teacher retention rates are 67 percent after their first five years, according to DPI.

Pew's research found only 16 to 18 percent of Wisconsin's teachers are under 30 years old. With fewer people going into education, and many of those leaving the profession early in their careers, school districts are struggling to attract and retain teachers.

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