How to Solve the Career and Technical Educator (CTE) Shortage

ALLAN SHARROCK: Hello, my name is Allan Sharrock, I'm an industrial technology teacher at the West Rand School District in Huntsville, Missouri. Today I'm going to be talking about how to solve the career and technical educator teacher shortage. The data I've got is collected from Missouri Department of Education from 2011 to 2021. A Chinese proverb states that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. It is my goal and hope that today I'll be planting some seeds to where we can help grow more industrial technology teachers in the future and my presentation will benefit and help you move forwards.

In Missouri, our K-12 schools should have the ability to train our students to meet the skills trade industry; however, Missouri is not meeting the workforce requirements. A Gallup survey of 1,000 Missouri employers found that only 15% of employers agree that high schools are preparing students for the workforce. One factor could be the shortage of properly trained career and technical educator teachers.

Methodology. Again, requested 10 years of data from the Department of Secondary Education. I separated out VOTECs and elementary buildings from high schools and middle school buildings. For our international audience, VOTECs are a vocational technical center that allows our sending schools, our small, rural schools, to send our students to that location to get more specialized training. For example, if we only have two or three students in our entire school that are interested in computer programming, it would not be cost effective to hire a computer programmer instructor for just those students. But with several rural schools out there that may have two or three students, it now is more cost effective to send those students to a VOTEC.

I further isolated and remove the following courses from my data. The reason why these courses are less related to manufacture and building trades and only pertain to elementary buildings. So the classes that you see in this Excel document I didn't feel closely related to what is known as a traditional shop class, where students are coming into the shop and they're building dog houses, they're turning bowls, they're working a lathe, they're doing welding, things of that.

I'm not discounting the quality or the purpose of these other courses, but from our small school rural perspective, and the different manufacturers in the area, we're looking for wrench turners and individuals that can weld and swing a hammer and can read a measuring tape, and these courses right here just weren't close enough to help for my data.

Here are other data points that I requested from the Department of Secondary Education. How many industrial technology/technical education programs are there in the state by zip code at the middle and high school level? What is the degree of the teacher? How did they get certified to teach? There are many different ways to get certified in the state of Missouri. Some ways are that you just take an exam called the Praxis exam. Then you have what's known as Project Lead The Way. Then you have the TAC certification or a traditional four-year program. We'll be talking more in detail about those programs in a minute.

How many years of teaching experience that each teacher has. And then do we have any data on how many traditional industrial art programs there are in the state by zip code? One thing to note in the state of Missouri is that we have different degree requirements to teach technical education. At the high school level, you must have a Bachelor's of Science. You must also take what's known as the MOGEA exam and a Professional Knowledge exam for both the high school and middle school. The GPA requirement is the same for both the VOTEC and the high school, but what is also important to note is that to teach at the high school you must have 26 hours in general education classes. 15 of those hours are general education work and 10 hours are in field work.

The teach at a VOTEC, you must only have an Associate of Applied Science, which is a 2-year degree. You don't have to take any special tests. And you only have to take 18 hours in education to learn how to do lesson plans, behavioral issues, things of that nature. So as you can see, already to recruit individuals to teach at the high school or middle school we have a cost difference a education difference that are barriers for recruiting potential individuals to teach at these types of facilities.

It's important to note that if we don't have the right individuals at the middle and high school programs, it's going to be hard for those individuals to give a positive experience for those students to encourage them to enter the trades or to go to a VOTEC. When we look at all the different certification methods to teach shop class in the state of Missouri, from 2011 to 2021 we've gone from 465 certified teachers to 321 teachers.

Certification methods. Again, all states have many different types of certification programs. You can have alternative certification programs, you can have college recommended. What college recommended means is that an individual graduates high school and goes to an institution, a 4-year institution, to get what is now known as a technology education degree. You can also teach-- if you have a PhD, you can transfer. If you're certified in a different state, you can transfer to Missouri with and without a test.

What's also important to note is we have what's called a test endorsement. Now, in the state of Missouri if you are certified to teach any subject, let's say art, if you can go and you can pass the test endorsement for technology education, a.k.a. industrial technology, you are now licensed and certified to teach shop. So it doesn't matter if you know how to weld; if you can pass that exam, you're now certified to teach that subject. They also allow transcript analysis. So if you are an engineer, for example, they can look at your program, and look at the classes, and they can say these will count and certify you to teach also in the state of Missouri.

They have the ABCTE certification. It's just like we call it the anybody can teach certification. And then we also have what's known as a visiting scholar. So again, the what's very, very important for my data going forwards is that if you're licensed to teach any subject, if you pass that practice exam, you can pass and you can now teach that subject. And so I'm going to have data in the future that's going to be kind of scary to find out who's filling these shop teacher roles.

And one thing about teachers. If we can write a test, we can pass a test. so when we look at the background from 2011, in 2011 versus 2021, in 2011 we had 325 teachers that were certified to teach industrial technology. That's what they went to school for. Now in 2021, we only have 156 instructors. These are the people that went to school to learn how to be a technology educator. Everybody else teaching right now did not go to school to teach industrial technology.

So when I looked at the data, I really thought when I started out this process, I thought a lot of the Industrial technology teachers would be like me. They went to school to learn how to be an Ag teacher and just happened to get hired to be an industrial technology teacher. However, my data was incorrect-- not my data but my assumption, I should say, was incorrect. Most of the teachers that are filling the roles of these shop programs right now come from a general education background.

Again, certification methods. When we look at it from 2021 to 2011, the college recommendation was cut in half. If you look in 2021 now, at the test endorsement tab, you'll see 114 instructors are filling that current role now. So we are increasing the amount of teachers that are just passing the exam and are filling our shop teacher roles.

So what is the future of career and technical educators? Well, the current average years of teaching for all the shop teachers is 17 years. If every teacher was 17 years of experience, started teaching at the age of 21, in 13 years they would be eligible for retirement. In Missouri, we have what's known as the 80 and out rule. It's like the age of yourself, how many years you've been teaching, and when that equals 80, you're eligible for retirement. In the next 13 years, 151 teachers will have retired or be eligible for retirement.

Now, if you look over on the left-hand side, you might say, OK, so how many universities are out there that are currently teaching technical education to get people certified? In the state of Missouri, there's only three universities offering technical education. Lindenwood. Lindenwood is in Saint Louis and it was started in 2019. Central Methodist. It's a new program in 2021. And the University of Central Missouri. It's only graduated 15 students from 2011 to 2019. 5 of those students went into industry.

What's also important to note, something I'm a little bit proud of, is that the Central Methodist program was started up through my work of working with that university to help develop a program in which community college students that have an AAS in robotics, manufacturing, welding, et cetera, that they can take those technical classes at our local community college and then transfer to Central Methodist University to complete their 4-year degree. The same thing was created with Lindenwood University, and they partnered up with Saint Louis Community College. So three universities in the state of Missouri have to fill this college requirement of getting people certified. It's just, quite frankly, not enough.

So how many high schools and middle schools are currently offering industrial technology courses? In 2011, there were 359 programs out there counting all the schools. And now in 2020 there's 428. So when I looked at this data, one thing that kind of popped out to me is that I knew that we had a shop teacher shortage, but who's filling the gap? Well, it's those general education teachers. What I found was that most of the general education teachers, their background was math and science.

For those of you that are unfamiliar, most states have a lot of standardized testing out there. And it's usually high stakes testing that involves a lot of vigor, a lot of pressure from the administration, and a lot of pressure from politicians. And so if you are a math and science teacher and you have this pressure exerted on you, you have students that are not exactly fans of math and science, and you have a shop teacher that is retiring, if you're already in the school district, odds are, if you want that position, the building administrator is going to transfer you into that position.

And the reason why is because we've already established from the previous slide that not very many people are available to fill that role. But what they do have is they have a math or science teacher that they know they can trust, and maybe that math or science teacher, you know, they took high school shop or something like that, they're kind of a handy individual, they won't bat an eye about putting that person in there. Now, I'm not going to dog on math and science teachers, but the reality is, just like me with an agriculture education background, we don't have the same skill sets as somebody that went to a 4-year degree for technology education.

I don't have the same skill sets as somebody that's gone through a robotics program at our local community college and has gone on to graduate from that 4-year college. I don't have that background. So because I'm not strong in robotics, I'm not going to teach a lot of robotics lessons. If you have a math or science teacher and power tools scare them, or they feel like kids are going to get hurt using power tools, odds are they're not going to select a lot of lesson plans that deal with swinging hammers, running a lathe, and things of that nature. Why? Because they're risk adverse. Nobody wants to get fired, nobody wants to get sued.

But if we don't expose our students to these different things, we're not going to inspire or encourage them to enter the trades because nobody wants to pick a career that they've never done. And that is the crux of a lot of why I have a concern of how we're doing certifications and the individuals filling our buildings. And again, 465 teachers back in 2011 were certified to teach. And again, 2021 322. Whenever I took the teachers that was-- took the numbers and I did a linear Excel forecast based upon how many years that they were teaching and when they expected retirement, as you can see, at the current projection, 2025, 275, 2040, not very far away, we're only going to have about 80 teachers that are going to be certified, that have gone to school for industrial technology.

When I used to work at a local community college, I taught maintenance and manufacturing. And when I was trying to develop and create this program, what I call the 2 plus 2 program in which a student can go to a community college-- to again get those technical classes-- and then transfer on to a 4-year university to get their teaching degree, I wanted to poll my students and find out what would be some barriers for these individuals to enter the teaching field. The number-one reason is low pay.

What a lot of our audience members don't understand, or maybe are not aware of, is that most of our community college students in America, many of them come from a lower socioeconomic status. And to convince one of those individuals that has a robotics degree in which they can go out and make $70,000 to $100,000 a year that now, hey, why don't you become a teacher and make $34,000 a year, and put up with kids, and put up with parents? They're just not really interested in it. Again, low pay was the number-one reason. The private sector, plain and simply, pays more. Because again, they don't have a lot of money, they don't want to go to two years more of school.

And then the next big reason is student behaviors in class. Teachers don't make enough a lot of times to put up with the type of behaviors that we're dealing with. And COVID has only made it worse. So again, you can see the following data of why students did not want to go on to pursue a 4-year degree.

So what are my recommendations? We could, as a state, as Missouri, remove the bachelors of science requirement and say, you know what, whatever it takes to teach at the VOTEC, we're going to require those same factors for the high school and middle school. Here's the problem with that, in my opinion. This reduces educator pedagogy. I am firm believer that if somebody went to four years of school to learn how to be a teacher, they would be a more effective teacher. Because they would take more classes on lesson planning.

They would have a couple more classes on student psychology, and be, quite frankly, more mature. You can graduate high school 17, 18 years old, go to community college, be done 19, 20 years old. I'm just not a big fan of having somebody that's 20 years old inside of a high school. I just think that could be an issue. But if they go to a couple more years of school, they graduate 21, 22, they're a more mature individual, they would have had more classes, and in my opinion, be better trained to tackle the challenges of classroom management.

As a state, we could pass legislation requiring schools to advance shop teachers higher on a salary to 90% of the market rate. Again, when you make $34,000, $40,000 a year max start coming out of college, it's a pretty hard pill to swallow for a lot of these individuals to make that kind of salary when they can make twice that much.

We could require, and what I am pushing for in the state of Missouri, is I would like to require all universities to accept community college technical courses as content credit for technical education teacher programs. Now what this means is that if a community college student takes an electrical class, that only transfers to be a technical educator. We're not saying that a community college electrical class is the same thing as a electrical engineering class; it's two different things.

In fact, the electrical engineering class is probably the least, in my opinion, the least effective class that would translate to a high school shop class. We need these hands-on courses that community college courses teach. And they train our graduates to do. We need those skills inside of the high schools. So again, I feel like this is the best path forward. And I would encourage a lot of the listeners today to talk this over with your Chamber of Commerce and say, hey, is this something we can get started?

The big thing is universities. Universities are not going to like this. And the reason why is, 1, they don't like to be told what credits do they have to accept. 2, they view it as competition. The reality is universities, community colleges, big business, small business, it's all the same. It's all about the money. And universities will be very adverse to this because they will view it as they're going to lose students and tuition dollars. But I feel like we can allow universities to nest these career and technical education classes underneath any content area.

So for example, if a school does not have a technical education program but maybe they have an agriculture education program, we have to have shop teachers that understand how to do classroom management, and agriculture education, they have some shop classes but they also have classroom management classes. So you can take these one or two community college student graduates that have taken these technical courses that have that 2-year degree and you just put them underneath the Ag Ed department. But if they don't have an Ag Ed department, at the end of the day, all that community college student needs to learn is how to manage classes. Put them underneath the P.E. department, put them underneath the science department, it does not matter. And we have to do something and we can't continue to allow people to come up with excuses. So just let them go to whatever department that the university would allow them to nest under and let them get their 4-year degree.

Basically, the skills gap is a reflection of what we value. To close the skills gap, we need to change the way the country feels about work. Mike Rowe. Mike Rowe has been a great advocate for the skills trade industry. And I feel like if you're not familiar with him, you need to really get familiar with him because he's a great advocate for our trades.

So hope today that I've brought some awareness to this critical need. There's not an employer out there that does not wish they had more individuals with more technical skills. There's employers out there that would just be happy to have a worker, one that shows up on time, but bonus if they can read a tape measure. So I'm hoping that my presentation will help you try to figure out what trees can you plant to help grow that next workforce.

What trees can you plant? Does that mean that you need to go out there and start beating up universities? Maybe not. Maybe that's not your role. But what you could look at doing is donate cut off scrap metal to your local shop program so students can practice their welding. Do you have scrap wood that are cut offs that you no longer need that your local shop program can use? Can you go and touch base with the local shop teacher, industrial teacher, ag teacher, and say, hey, what do you need for your program? And if you go out there and you ask them, odds are they're going to need something. These are different trees that you can plant.

Form an advisory committee for your local shop and ag teachers to help explain to them what skills you would like in your next workforce. And don't just explain it to them, help train them and/or provide resources to them. These are all effective things that you can do out there to plant these little trees. They'll grow the next forest of workers.

So again, connect with your local community college or VOTEC and see if they need any technical advisory committees. Donate to schools. If you didn't know it, equipment, training time, consumables, they're all welcome and many times their tax write offs. If you want to connect with me, here's my LinkedIn profile. Hope you've enjoyed this presentation. Thank you for your time.