Staffed Up is a monthly series examining school staffing best practices and solutions for teacher recruitment and retention. Catch up on previous installments here.
Between 2023 and 2024, the public debate over whether there was a widespread, nationwide teacher shortage appeared to simmer down a bit.
The topic, however, remains complicated and nuanced, as researchers have found staffing challenges to vary widely and to often look quite different depending on the school, district and state. Although some data this year suggests a common theme persists, a sizable number of public school leaders still report feeling understaffed.
In October 2024, for instance, half of public school leaders reported feeling that their schools are understaffed, according to survey data from the National Center for Education Statistics. That’s an increase from 45% the previous year.
Meanwhile, schools could no longer pay their employees using the one-time federal pandemic recovery funds following the Sept. 30 deadline for districts to obligate spending for American Rescue Plan allocations under the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief program. For some districts, the loss of that historic federal assistance on top of declining student enrollment created a fiscal cliff and forced some schools to cut staffing roles and lay off teachers to balance their budgets this year.
As schools continue to navigate staffing shortages — big and small — K-12 Dive reflected on the trends and solutions that emerged in 2024 as education leaders sought to address this persistent issue.
Special education shortages aren’t going away
Finding enough special education teachers continues to be a challenge for schools, and it appeared to show signs of worsening this year.
Some 34% of schools nationwide reported that they felt understaffed in special education roles, which was the highest understaffed category compared to other K-12 positions, NCES found.
As educators, researchers, advocates and parents call out the negative effects of special educator shortages, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights announced in October that it is investigating how the federal government has addressed the challenges in recent years. The eight-member bipartisan commission plans to publish an Annual Statutory Enforcement Report on the issue in the latter half of 2025.
During a briefing held by the commission in November, speakers discussed how special educator shortages are harming the academic growth and due process rights of students with disabilities. Then, in a separate December listening session, speakers also told USCCR of the hardships these shortages are putting students and schools through, including the misidentification of disabilities and noncompliance with federal special education rules.
Teacher diversity gaps are still concerning
While teacher diversity slowly grew between 2014 and 2022, the overall share of working-age adults with degrees from historically disadvantaged racial groups is beginning to outpace that of the teacher workforce, according to data released in December by the National Council on Teacher Quality.
That trend is causing concern among researchers that people of color are increasingly opting out of pursuing a career in education.
Other research released this year from nonprofit TNTP found that a representation gap between students and teachers of color nationwide remained fairly wide — above 30 percentage points — between the 2018-19 and 2022-23 school years.
Researchers have said they hope these data points can help inform school leaders as they develop strategies to hire and retain more teachers of color.
This year also began to see pushback on efforts that aim to increase teacher diversity in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to strike down race-conscious admissions practices in higher education. For instance, a federal lawsuit filed in October claimed an Illinois scholarship program’s efforts to improve diversity among teachers discriminates against nonminorities.
Registered apprenticeships gain steam
While teacher and principal apprenticeship programs can differ depending on the school district and state, more schools continue to test out the model in their own recruitment programs.
Comprehensive data is still lacking on the effectiveness of registered teacher and principal apprenticeship programs. The models allow schools to tap into federal dollars from the U.S. Department of Labor to mentor and train new teachers and principals in the classroom while they earn their credentials.
Registered teacher apprenticeship programs first launched in 2021 and were followed by a similar model for school principals approved in 2023.
Certain apprenticeship programs have shown early signs of success this year, from hiring special educators in Missouri to finding enough qualified principals to fill vacancies in Texas' Ector County Independent School District.
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