OPINION

Why won't NYS reveal job market for teachers? Venugopal

Of the teacher candidates certified in 2011-12, only 28 percent had found jobs in New York public schools more than a year later.

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
svenugop@lohud.com

In an unprecedented move last year, the state Education Department released employment data for teacher candidates who were certified in 2011-12.

The numbers were shocking. Only 28 percent had found jobs in New York public schools more than a year later.

By October 2013, only 4,289 of 15,102 candidates who had been certified in 2011-12 were employed in the state's public schools. That number included jobs at charter schools, the only public schools that don't require certification.

What about candidates who were certified in 2012-13? Did the job market get better for graduates from teacher prep programs? Or is there still an oversupply of teaching candidates in New York?

TOUGH: Job market for NY teacher candidates

That data, which was to be made public by June 2015, was never updated by the Education Department. When I contacted the Education Department last week, seeking updated employment data, I got no straight answers. Not only that, but the briefly available breakdowns by school for 2012-13 and 2013-14 had gone dark. First I was told they would get back to me. Then the state stopped responding.

Last year, I found the dismal employment numbers after a tip from a reader. Buffalo-area resident Ed Kulpa’s daughter had graduated with a degree in elementary education from Daemen College in 2006, and passed her state certification tests the following year.

But after eight years — during which she earned a master’s degree and worked as a substitute — she was unable to find a permanent teaching job. In 2013, her certification expired after a two-year extension.

She eventually abandoned her search and began working in medical billing last year while shouldering $55,000 in student loan debt.

Experts have long said that colleges that offer teacher prep programs do a poor job of forecasting hiring needs or of adequately informing students of their employment prospects.

Last year, when I spoke to Ken Wagner, then senior deputy commissioner for the state Education Department, he said providing students with projections on their future employment was “truth in advertising.” He said colleges were graduating too many candidates for elementary education and not enough in areas like English language learning, special education and high school math and physics

Ken Wagner

So in January 2015, for the first time, the state made public the employment records of individual teacher-prep programs for “greater transparency.” The breakdown of employment rates by school was available for years 2012-13 and 2013-14.

CHART: Teacher employment rate by school

That initiative seems to have stalled with the departures of two education reform advocates, former Commissioner John King, who is now U.S. education secretary, and Wagner, who is now the Rhode Island education chief.

Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, said that the blackout on employment data is a disservice to the people of New York, one of the biggest over-suppliers of teacher candidates.

“For Ken Wagner and John King, the quality of teacher preparation in the state was a very high priority. I have no idea if it remains a high priority under the new administration,” said Walsh. “I do know that the report that King and Wagner released last year was extremely instructive and it permitted people to make better decisions.”

Susan Walsh / AP
Education Secretary John King

A reader who wrote to me recently would surely agree. This person changed careers and was certified to teach in 2009 after studying at Pace. She said she applied for about 100 jobs and got only three interviews.

"What a nightmare!" she wrote. " And I am so angry and frustrated with Pace for not being up front about the market. I eventually went back to my original career (law). The statistics that you provided in your article really enlightened me.”

Walsh said that while teacher prep programs (often referred to as cash cows) see no need to cap their number of applicants, a lack of data nationally leads to bad policy decisions. After all, states like California and North Dakota are facing teacher shortages.

Talking about North Dakota, soon after my story last year, I heard from Benjamin L. Schafer, the superintendent of Nesson Public School District #2, a rural school district in Ray, North Dakota. He said there was such a teacher shortage in North Dakota that some districts were offering teachers homes at subsidized prices.

“Any chance you could help us bridge the gap and get some of those teachers to move to the country?" he wrote. "North Dakota is a great place with warm people.”

So: “Go west, young man, woman?”

This raises one simple question: When data exists that can save thousands of people from spending money on a hard-to-market degree or from looking in the wrong places for employment, why not make it public?

This is one education reform measure that current Education Commissioner Mary Ellen Elia should get behind. It also would be a good use of the U.S. Department of Education's time to make the teacher employment data from each state public.

After days of phone calls and emails with the state, I reached out to Judith Johnson, who represents the Lower Hudson Valley on the state Board of Regents, to see if she could find out what happened to the employment data. She was told by a senior official that the Education Department was dealing with “less than adequate staffing resources.”

What a lame excuse.

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is an engagement editor and member of the Editorial Board for The Journal News/lohud.com, part of the USA Today Network.

Twitter: @SwapnaVenugopal