(The Center Square) – Fewer students are pursuing education careers in Oklahoma, which is leading some Oklahoma colleges to temporarily suspend their education programs.
"Oklahoma is granting more emergency certificates than we have college of education graduates," Katherine Bishop, president of Oklahoma Education Association, told The Center Square. "This does not bode well for education."
Oklahoma City University has suspended its early and elementary education programs for the current semester because of a lack of interested students and is focusing on specialists and secondary education, according to KOCO-TV.
"If you don’t have enough people in the program, how will it be sustained?" Ginger Tinney, executive director of Professional Oklahoma Educators, told The Center Square. "The negative press about education is affecting people’s decisions to enter the teaching profession. Students who truly want to pursue a degree in elementary education may have to go to another college to fulfill their career dreams."
Fewer elementary teachers will mean higher class sizes and less one-on-one time for teachers, Bishop said.
"Knowing that these are critical and foundational years of a student’s education, we need to continually partner with parents to ensure our students receive the education they need for success later on,” she said.
Other contributing factors keeping college students from majoring in education include the constant negative coverage of education, which is not a realistic view of teaching, Tinney said.
Gov. Kevin Stitt issued an executive order earlier this week that would allow state employees to serve as substitute teachers without losing their state salaries.
"With Gov. Stitt’s recent executive order to allow state employees to volunteer as substitute teachers may help ease the pressure during this difficult time," Tinney said. "State workers who volunteer to substitute through the Oklahoma Guest Educator Initiative may get a taste for the teaching profession and want to stay in the classroom. We had a colleague in our office start out as a substitute teacher and fall in love with the teaching profession, eventually becoming a certified teacher and administrator."
Even with emergency certifications, retaining teachers is still challenging.
"We must make the teaching profession more desirable by paying a competitive wage and treating our professionals with the respect they deserve," Bishop said. "Better pay is at the heart of the issue. But also, we have seen too much demonization of teachers during the pandemic. They are working harder than ever and still getting caught in the middle of a political fight over things like masks and vaccine mandates. We should be celebrating their efforts, not blaming them for things out of their control."
via Oklahoma's Center Square News