In the fall of 2022, Tennessee reported over 1,000 vacant teaching positions. Across the state, whether in the hearts of Nashville or Memphis, or in the rural Appalachian countryside towns of Surgoinsville and Rogersville, many students walked into understaffed schools and classrooms. District and school leaders worked hard to hire, but they faced an uphill battle: Educator preparation program enrollment over the past 10 years had declined dramatically, and 20% of teachers in their first three years were disappearing from the rosters, lost to attrition.
Enter the Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education, or Tennessee SCORE. This student-centered, nonpartisan advocacy and research organization stepped up to meet the issue head on. As a first step, Tennessee SCORE aimed to understand and communicate the scope of the state’s teacher shortage issue. They collaborated with an in-state research partner, the Tennessee Education Research Alliance (TERA), to compile and analyze data on the state’s educator workforce and then share what they learned with state and local leaders. They focused on 15 districts, representing nearly 40% of Tennessee’s students and staff.
Drawing attention to the problem statewide was a necessary first step because if leaders and decision-makers didn’t have a grasp on the problem and what was at stake, they wouldn’t have the information they needed to take informed action. So advocates and analysts at Tennessee SCORE and TERA put real data to what were often anecdotal examples of the challenges districts faced. Acting as an external, nonpartisan data source, Tennessee SCORE published an extensive dataset and analysis on the state’s educator labor market, including what preparation routes aspiring teachers used to enter the classroom, salary data, and teacher perceptions of the job.
To tackle the challenges highlighted in the data, Tennessee SCORE took the next logical step and released a white paper exploring strategic staffing models. It also published detailed case studies highlighting four school districts: two Tennessee districts and two districts outside of the state. These case studies offered insights into why these districts chose to engage in strategic staffing work, how they implemented and funded their models, and their results. These case studies provide a roadmap for other leaders thinking about reimagining what teaching can look like in their own communities and have been critical resources for leaders actively working to advance this work.
Now, Tennessee SCORE is working to pull those ideas off the page and put them to work in real classrooms. To do this, it’s planning to bring together a group of forward-thinking districts committed to addressing their teacher shortage challenges through innovative strategic staffing models. Ultimately, they hope to show the rest of the state what’s possible when districts reimagine the teaching role and take action to make it real. Their hope is that these “proof points” will inspire other districts to join them and give leaders the confidence to take action.
Tennessee SCORE believes the state can strengthen its workforce through strategic staffing models that intentionally integrate several state policies:
- Policies to fund schools based on student needs.
- Policies for evaluating teacher effectiveness and paying more for high-performing teachers and teachers who can meet the most pressing district needs.
- Policies to strengthen instructional materials.
By working deeply and directly with districts, Tennessee SCORE believes its efforts could reveal additional opportunities to integrate workforce-strengthening initiatives underway across the state, such as building out teacher residency and apprenticeship programs.
Taken together, Tennessee SCORE’s goal is to create a supportive policy environment for innovative staffing models that benefit both students and teachers by focusing on data, lifting up exemplars, and generating district proof points of what’s possible.