Widely recognized as a nationwide issue, the severity of America’s teacher shortage has culminated in a record number of emergency certifications and millions of dollars in pay incentives to fill Oklahoma classrooms. Nonetheless, as working conditions, large class sizes and an increase in student behavioral issues exacerbate the situation, most urban and rural school districts remain in a decade-long struggle to recruit and retain teachers.
Some recent efforts show mild promise for strengthening Oklahoma’s teacher pipeline. According to studies conducted during the 2023-2024 academic year, more students are enrolling in higher education degree programs for one of Oklahoma’s most critical occupations.
“In this last academic year, our state system institutions conferred 3,038 degrees and certificates in the field of education,” said Stephanie Baird, the associate vice chancellor for system analysis and reporting for the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education. “This is a 1.6 percent increase over the last 10 years at all award levels (…) So I think we’re having some promising rebounds in the area of education and teacher prep programs in the state of Oklahoma.”
While stakeholders view any progress as a step in the right direction, a 1.6 percent enrollment increase would suggest about 50 additional students are pursuing education degrees now as opposed to a decade ago, a number that pales in comparison to the 4,676 emergency certifications issued between June and December of the 2023-2024 school year — a record high in Oklahoma compared to the previous record set last school year with 4,574.
“We’ve been in just such an emergency situation of trying to fill spots in classrooms, and I think we’re now seeing the result of that in a lot of areas, of just putting people in front of classrooms that aren’t prepared to teach, they’re not prepared to inspire, they’re not prepared to encourage students,” Regent Jeff Hickman said during the Dec. 4 board meeting. “I think we have people that are just occupying spaces that didn’t have the preparation to inspire our students to fill these critical workforce needs like we used to have.”
In recent years, Oklahoma’s elementary and middle school students have received low proficiency scores in English language arts and mathematics. Asked if the teacher shortage is impeding student learning and their subsequent test scores, Goldie Thompson — associate vice chancellor of teacher preparation and teacher programs for OSRHE — said the impact of having underprepared educators could “sometimes” be seen in student outcomes.
“Our comprehensively prepared teachers have a better impact on student learning outcomes,” Thompson said. “They have certain competencies and standards that they have to learn so that they can be effective practitioners in the classroom. Whereas sometimes, when you go through the alternative pathways, they may have a specific degree in a certain area, but they never went through a comprehensive teacher ed program.”
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, an alternatively-certified teacher said Oklahoma’s requirements for receiving an alternative or emergency certification are low.
“All [emergency certification] means is sign the dotted line saying that you’re going to teach and go to a couple professional development sessions,” the teacher said. “You can do all of your professional development things, which those happen three days before the start of the school year.”
Some districts hold emergency and alternatively-certified teachers out of class a few days throughout the semester for additional training sessions, and they are required to pass multiple exams to prove mastery over their certification subject area. Once a teacher has completed the required hours of training and has passed the exams, they can formally receive teacher certification.
The Oklahoma State Department of Education provides the guidelines and requirements for receiving alternative teacher certification through the state’s alternative placement program:
- a bachelor’s degree with specific GPA or work experience, or a terminal degree (such as a Ph.D, J.D. or M.D.);
- demonstrated competency in a certification area with specific documentation; and
- once accepted into the program, participants must complete six to 18 college credit hours or 90 to 270 clock hours of professional development.
The requirements for alternative certification differ slightly from emergency certification, as individuals seeking an emergency certification follow similar guidelines for initial approval, but then must pursue a traditional teacher certification on their own time while employed at the school district, according to OSDE regulations.
Whether a teacher transferred school districts or left the profession altogether owing to pay, working conditions, health treatment or to care for family — common reasons experts cited during interviews for this story — the teacher turnover rate has increased the demand for teachers in the state and “has been shown to have negative effects on student achievement,” according to OSDE’s 2021 Oklahoma educator supply and demand report.
“The turnover rate is kind of ridiculous,” the alternatively-certified teacher said on the condition of anonymity. “It’s insane. There are new teachers every single year in core subjects. The main thing to me, from where I’ve experienced teacher shortages, is just with our classroom size increase. (…) When you make a class size way bigger like that, it’s just, I mean, it’s just chaos. If you have two or three personalities that just set everyone else off, it’s just pandemonium.”
Employed by the Oklahoma City Public Schools District, the alternatively-certified teacher agreed with Hickman: Those joining the profession through alternative pathways are often unprepared for the realities of teaching.
“I would say the most important thing is child psychology, like knowing how kids think, because the battle that I have most of the time in the classroom is getting them to want to learn it right. I wasn’t an education major or anything like that, but I would assume that part of the things you would learn in college or university studying education is how the adolescent mind thinks — how to show them that this is valuable, that this is something they need to learn.”
‘Very frustrating and disappointing’
To exacerbate the situation, federal COVID relief funding — known as the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund — expired Sept. 30. Used by OKCPS and other districts to support “premium staffing” for addressing pandemic learning loss, the federal dollars allowed school districts to improve teacher-to-student ratios during the pandemic. With the ESSER expiration on the horizon, the Oklahoma Legislature added $214 million of undesignated funding into the state equalization formula during the 2023 session amid broader education negotiations.
Nonetheless, last year, OKCPS leaders cited the conclusion of ESSER funding for the decision to eliminate some educator positions, which caused class sizes to climb significantly this school year.
“It makes no sense,” said the OKCPS teacher. “We’re in the midst of a teacher shortage, and yet we have to lay off the teachers we do have? It doesn’t make any sense.”
The alternatively-certified teacher said the school they work at did not renew several teacher contracts for the 2024-2025 year, forcing some classes to combine and further strain the remaining teachers.
Those less than ideal circumstances brought even more attention to the need for educators. For some parents, class size increases have helped them realize the gravity of the situation.
“At the end of last year, we were told that they were — due to funding going away and then due to the projected number of students that would be coming into the elementary school — letting go of a teacher,” said concerned OKCPS parent Audrey Gauthe. “I did not understand how we could be letting go of a teacher when all I’d ever heard of (is how) it was a crisis that we didn’t have enough teachers, and how difficult it would be to find a teacher. And so I was just confused, but I was also trying to trust the system.”
Gauthe is the mother of two OKCPS elementary and pre-K students. Gauthe said her daughter’s elementary school let go of a beloved second grade teacher, whom she described as being a good fit for the children with an exceedingly good personality and credentials.
Disheartened with the condition of Oklahoma’s educator workforce, Gauthe said she worries about the spike in alternative and emergency certifications.
“To say that we’re OK with someone coming in with a subpar certification, that’s just very frustrating and disappointing,” Gauthe said. “It seems that we need to put extreme focus on the importance of having good teachers, quality staff and stuff, and [for] them to be able to feel comfortable in an environment where they’re not strained.”
Feeling more responsibility to ensure their district provides OKCPS students with an adequate education, Gauthe said parents were considering drastic measures to retain qualified teachers.
“Parents were even trying to come up with ways of like, ‘How much do they make? Could we fund another position to keep this teacher?’ Because we didn’t want it to affect the schools,” Gauthe said. “One of the parents said, ‘It would still be less than having to figure out how to get my child into a private school and how to pay for a private school,’ so they were at that point.”
Legislative, district incentives aim to attract teachers
As the Oklahoma Legislature’s 2025 session begins, Senate Education Committee Chairman Adam Pugh (R-Edmond) and Vice Chairwoman Ally Seifried (R-Claremore) held a press conference Monday to announce their proposed education bills.
Among bills touching on topics such as cell phone bans in schools, math and reading proficiency rates, and moving local school board elections to November, Pugh discussed Senate Bill 201, which would increase the state’s minimum teacher salary schedule to keep up with surrounding states’ pay increases. SB 201 would raise Oklahoma’s minimum starting salary for teachers from $39,601 to $50,000, a proposal Pugh called “the most important thing” Oklahoma can do “to solve our teacher shortage.”
“Two years ago, the state of Arkansas set their minimum at $50,000,” Pugh said. “Our state neighbor to the east is cannibalizing our teacher workforce. (…) We will continue to work on teacher pay. We know that our neighboring states, in all directions, are focusing on the same, and this won’t ever just be a one-year discussion. Every year, we need to reevaluate the marketplace and make sure that we’re paying our teachers what their skill sets and the marketplace demands.”
Pugh expressed frustration with a lack of OSDE data on teacher position vacancies, but he said legislators know the needs exist.
“We still have a record number of emergency certifications in our state. I have lots of anecdotal evidence,” Pugh said. “I talked to one district last week at an education conference, and they told me they still have almost 150 vacancies, and it’s now about to be the beginning of February. That’s just unprecedented for them.”
Despite the bleak statistics and perspectives, the Oklahoma Legislature has made significant investments in common and higher education over the last seven years. Back then, a looming teacher walkout spurred a historic tax increase that facilitated a teacher pay raise in 2018 and another in 2019. As conservative politicians negotiated new refundable tax credits for homeschool and private school families in 2013, lawmakers added a recurring $500 million into the funding formula for public schools.
In 2022, the Oklahoma Legislature passed the Oklahoma Teacher Empowerment Program — a way for school districts to “identify and designate” 10 percent of their teachers as “advanced, lead, or master teachers,” offering those educators a $3,000 to $10,000 salary increase, with additional one-time stipends for teachers at economically disadvantaged schools.
Deploying non-formula dollars, OSDE has also focused on teacher pay reform by creating the Rural STEM Teacher Bonus Program last June to provide sign-on bonuses ranging anywhere between $15,000 and $25,000, depending on qualifications.
On Dec. 17, Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters announced that the rural bonus program had recruited 61 teachers contracted to teach secondary math and science courses for the 2024-2025 academic year.
“I am so excited that we have once again recruited excellent teachers to Oklahoma to work with our rural students in essential math and science disciplines,” Walters wrote in a press release. “This program is proof positive that innovative, free market solutions will tackle the most difficult problems faced by our rural schools and communities. I look forward to working with the Oklahoma Legislature in the coming year to expand pioneering and highly successful programs like this in our great state.”
With the intention to help college students complete education degrees, former Rep. Mark McBride, who at the time was the chairman of the House Appropriations and Budget Subcommittee on Education, wrote legislation in 2023 to update a law created in 2022 incentivizing education students through scholarships and benefits. Facilitated by the state regents, Inspired to Teach provides teachers the “opportunity to earn up to $25,500 as they complete their Educator Preparation Program and teach in Oklahoma.”
The state regents also administer a legislative program known as the Teacher Shortage Employment Incentive Program, designed to recruit and retain math and science teachers in Oklahoma, as well as Blueprint 2030, a program announced in 2023 to recruit and prepare college students to enter careers in Oklahoma’s critical workforce professions.
Following the implementation of incentive programs to recruit and retain teachers, reports presented at the November and December OSRHE board meetings showed enrollment increases in critical-need fields like education, nursing and various health professions.
Thompson, the state regents’ associate vice chancellor of teacher preparation, said since the 2023 inception of the Inspired to Teach program, there has been a 30 percent increase in freshman enrollment for traditional teacher education programs.
“We’re trying to slowly reverse that trend (of fewer students enrolling in education programs),” said Thompson during the Dec. 5 state regents meeting. “Students are noticing, seeing that as an incentive and noticing the support that they’re receiving to enter the program.”
In addition, individual school districts are creating incentives of their own. Superintendent of Tulsa Public Schools Ebony Johnson said she wants her teachers to feel supported under her administration.
“In addition to the $100 teacher supply allowance that we gave to our teachers just for supplies — that’s in addition to the supplies that they would already have received in their classrooms from just getting supplies from their principals — we’ve also given them a 3 percent retention incentive and other incentive [and] retention efforts we’re working on,” Johnson said.
TPS has also implemented the Grow Your Own program, to help those seeking traditional certification complete the degree hours or necessary training.
“Basically, we’re looking at our own professionals who are currently not teachers yet, but they want to become teachers,” Johnson said. “So teachers’ assistants, paraprofessionals, you know, what do we need to do and how can we continue to support them to become teachers? So (we are) making sure they get connected to additional hours to complete their degrees and putting them on a track to become certificate certified.”
Education professionals propose improvements
In early December, Johnson had lunch with TPS’s teacher of the year, Delaney Kane, and Gov. Kevin Stitt. The meeting spurred a conversation about teacher shortages where Johnson said Kane presented her experiences through an educator’s perspective.
“One of the things that our teacher of the year shared with Gov. Stitt and with others who were present is that when you compare the salaries of the individuals across the country — where achievement is the highest across the country — likely those teachers are making more money, and you see even more academic success for those states,” Johnson said. “She was venturing to say that, you know, we could probably see even stronger results for students’ academic performance if teachers were compensated appropriately.”
Education advocates have long said teacher pay concerns have helped create the shortage. According to the Oklahoma Education Association, the state’s national ranking for teacher pay is currently 34th nationally, with an average salary of $54,762 in the 2020-2021 school year — a $666 increase from 2019-2020. The national average is $65,293 according to OEA, more than $10,000 above Oklahoma’s average. (Some Republican legislative leaders, however, note differences in how compensation is reported and differences in overall cost of living.)
“We’ve got to get right there up to speed with other states where people are making an adequate salary in order for those individuals — these degree professionals and people working toward degrees — to not have to work two jobs, to be able to pay their bills, to be able to, you know, take care of their families,” Johnson said. “And again, very appreciative of the work that’s happened by legislators in the past where we have seen an increase.”
After a Dec. 4 Commissioners of the Land Office meeting, Stitt said he has been in office for two legislative teacher pay raises, but that he is still open to discuss the possibility for additional compensation during this year’s legislative session.
“From the big picture from the governor, I’m trying to promote education,” Stitt said. “I’m trying to make sure that, culturally, we are appreciating our teachers. We are competitively paying them. That’s really important: We have to pay competitive salaries with what other states around us (pay).”
During Monday’s Senate Education Committee leader press conference, Pugh said he has prioritized receiving teacher feedback to help address the critical needs of the state’s educators and school districts.
“When I hear from teachers, one of the things that I hear from a lot is your leadership matters, and we don’t talk enough about principals and site leaders and the culture that they create inside a particular school site or in a building,” Pugh said. “Now those are hard things for us to legislate, so that’s why I’ve asked schools, ‘What are things we can do to help teachers by just getting out of their way?’ Or, ‘What are things we can do by removing burdens on teachers,’ so that when they show up ready to teach second graders how to read, that’s all they’re focused on. They don’t have to worry about all the other stuff that the state’s piling on, or all these federal mandates that come down from a heavy-handed Department of Education.”
As lawmakers consider ideas like cell phone bans or “innovation grant” programs, Johnson said school districts leaders need to be listening to their teachers.
“We are visiting with our teachers and our leaders about ways to make sure that we are addressing the needs that our teachers raise to us and making sure that those teachers absolutely don’t ever want to leave the profession (…) and that we are giving them the supports that they need to want to stay in the profession,” Johnson said. “Just setting up conditions in the building where people are happy about their workplace, they’re seen, they’re heard, they’re loved, they’re appreciated and they’re valued.”
