Since slightly less research made the selection for my blog over the past few weeks, I am also taking a look at the studies I placed on the ‘to read someday’ pile. This one is from October 2024, but remains highly relevant. This study by Matthew Kraft and Melissa Arnold Lyon examines the state of the teaching profession over a few decades, which can help us reflect on the teacher shortage.

They do not do this by isolating a single factor, but by juxtaposing four things over a period of fifty years:

• how the profession is viewed (prestige),
• how many young people want to do it (interest),
• how many people actually prepare themselves (entry),
• and how satisfied teachers are once they start doing it.

By combining these four, we may also gain more insight into the teacher shortage.

And the story is remarkably consistent across the four lines, based on American data. There was a sharp decline in the 1970s, a recovery in the 1980s and 1990s, followed by a period of relative stability, and then another clear downturn starting around 2010. Anyone looking at the profession today is therefore not looking at a temporary dip, but at a phase that is weaker than before on multiple indicators simultaneously.

That is interesting in itself, but it becomes more relevant when considering the interplay:

• Prestige influences interest.
• Interest influences inflow.
• Inflow helps determine who enters the profession.
• And the experiences of those teachers, in turn, feed the image young people have of the profession.

All of this is therefore not a loose collection of problems, but a system that reinforces itself, in good times as well as in bad.

The figures are less spectacular than the narrative we sometimes build around them, but precisely for that reason, they are more credible. Interest in the profession is declining, but not to zero. Satisfaction is declining, but not disappearing. That makes it tempting to think that things aren’t so bad after all. However, when multiple lines slowly decline simultaneously, you do indeed end up with a structural problem in the long run.

The study also does something that is often missing: it places possible explanations side by side without pretending there is a single cause. Salaries certainly played a role in the 1970s and again after the financial crisis. But they do not explain everything. Job security, autonomy, public perception, the cost of education, changes in the labour market… it is all part of the same mix.

Perhaps even more importantly, some explanations work in different directions simultaneously. More regulation can increase quality, but, at the same time, limit the influx. Stronger unions can improve working conditions, but also influence the image. That is often what makes the debate so difficult: measures that are logical in one area have side effects elsewhere.

What this study makes particularly clear is that quick fixes rarely work here. You can raise salaries, but if working conditions do not change, the problem simply shifts. You can launch campaigns to improve the image, but if teachers’ experiences do not align with them, the effect will not stick. The system responds more slowly and is more complex than policy measures often assume.

What the study also shows, looking further back in time, is potential hope. If the decline over the last ten to fifteen years is structural, then recovery is also possible. We have seen this before. However, back then, it did not happen through a single intervention. It happened through a combination of factors moving simultaneously in the same direction.