The number that gets quoted most often about teacher shortages is incomplete. According to the Learning Policy Institute’s July 2025 update, 411,549 teaching positions across the country are either empty or filled by someone who lacks full certification for the assignment. But only 45,582 of those are genuinely vacant. The remaining 365,967 positions are occupied by adults working under emergency credentials, placed out-of-field, or still completing their preparation. The shortage mostly shows up as under-qualification, not necessarily absence.
That distinction matters enormously for how district leaders plan. A vacant seat is visible. An under-qualified teacher in front of 25 students may not be, until the IEP audit, the parent complaint, or the state review arrives.
How Deep Does the Shortage Actually Run?
The Learning Policy Institute estimates that more than 6 million students nationally are affected by teacher shortages. The NCES School Pulse Panel, which surveyed 1,392 public K-12 schools in August 2024, found that 74% of public schools had difficulty filling at least one vacancy with a fully certified teacher. The average school carried six open teaching positions and filled only 79% of them with certified staff before the first day of class.
The subject-level data tells a sharper story. Social studies vacancies were filled by certified teachers 89% of the time. General elementary, 88%. Special education: 77%. ESL and bilingual education: 75%. Foreign languages: 71%. The roles that require the most specialized preparation are precisely the ones where certification gaps are widest.
Forty-five states reported special education shortages in 2024-25. Forty-one reported science shortages. Forty reported mathematics shortages. All three have been federally designated shortage areas every single year since 1990, when the Department of Education began collecting the data. The pandemic did not create this problem, but it did widen a 35-year-old crack.
The equity dimension further compounds these challenges. Schools where more than 75% of students are students of color filled only 72% of vacancies with certified teachers, compared to 83% in schools where students of color make up less than 25% of enrollment. High-poverty neighborhood schools also landed at 72%. The highest-concentration schools are four times as likely to employ an uncertified teacher as their lower-poverty counterparts.
Why Attrition Is the Real Driver — and Why Retirement Isn’t the Culprit
Nine out of ten teaching vacancies each year exist because someone left, not because a new position was created. And two-thirds of that attrition is not retirement.
The federal Teacher Follow-up Survey shows that 8% of public-school teachers left the profession in the 2021-22 school year and another 8% changed schools. The departure rate was statistically unchanged from 2012-13. The aggregate attrition rate did not spike through the pandemic, but what did change is where the vacancies concentrate and how thin the pipeline has become to replace anyone who leaves.
Among teachers who did leave, the top reasons were retirement (17%), personal or family reasons (15%), and pursuing non-K-12 work (14%). Nine percent cited wanting higher pay. Of former teachers surveyed, 66% said work-life balance was better in their new job, and 60% said they had more autonomy. Those are not problems solved by posting a job listing earlier in the spring.
The Pipeline Has Lost a Third of Its Enrollment in a Decade
Teacher preparation program enrollment fell from 611,296 in 2012-13 to 407,556 in 2022-23, according to American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE)’s October 2025 data update drawing on IPEDS through fall 2023 and Title II state reports through 2022-23. Program completers dropped from 163,851 to 112,913 over the same period. Education bachelor’s degrees declined 17% between 2003-04 and 2022-23, from 109,622 to 90,710. Education master’s degrees fell from 162,632 to 143,669.
Alternative certification routes have grown dramatically in enrollment, rising from 43,099 to 124,428 (an increase of roughly 189%), but completers barely moved, from 15,550 to 16,899. The programs are attracting interest, but they are not producing proportionally more teachers. And research indicates that programs without student teaching before classroom responsibility produce teachers who are significantly more likely to leave.
As Ashley Donaldson, Division Vice President at Supplemental Health Care, explained on the SHC Insights Series, The Education Staffing Squeeze: “Colleges are having to close down their preparation programs because of declining enrollment. And all of those things come together to make a perfect storm of there just are not enough staff to provide the services.”
The wage picture reinforces why fewer people are choosing the profession. The Economic Policy Institute’s 2024 analysis found that teachers now earn a 26.9% wage penalty compared to similarly educated and experienced workers in other fields — the worst gap in three decades of measurement. Even accounting for benefits, the total compensation penalty remains 17.1%. In 20 states, the penalty exceeds 25%. Colorado’s gap reaches 38.5%.
Specialized Roles Face a Compounding Problem
The shortage is not evenly distributed across job types. The roles that require the most clinical preparation, such as special education teachers, speech-language pathologists (SLPs), school nurses, and school psychologists, all face simultaneous pressure from rising student need and a compensation structure that cannot compete with healthcare employers.
Special education now serves 7.9 million students, or 15.9% of public-school enrollment, up 22.8% since 2010-11 . There are 15.85 children with disabilities per special education teacher nationally. Seventy-five percent of schools with classroom aide positions reported vacancies to fill. And 68% of IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) students now spend 80% or more of their day in a regular classroom, which means specialized staffing demand has moved out of separate rooms and into every classroom in the building.
For SLPs, 79% of school-based practitioners report that there are more openings than people to fill them, according to the ASHA 2024 School Survey In South Atlantic states, that figure reaches 92%. The median school SLP caseload is 50 students; the same practitioners say 40 is manageable. They are carrying 25% more than they consider sustainable. Indiana’s state median caseload is 78. New York’s is 32. A student’s access to speech therapy depends enormously on which side of a state line they were born on.
School nurses face a structural wage gap that no recruiting campaign can close. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that registered nurses in educational services earn a median annual wage of $74,360, compared to $97,260 in hospitals — a gap of $22,900, or 23.5%. Many school nurses work a 10-month schedule, which can bring actual annual earnings closer to $61,000. School psychologists are staffed at less than half the recommended level nationally: the actual ratio is 1:1,127 students against the National Association of School Psychologists’ recommended 1:500. In the worst-served states, ratios approach 1:5,000.
What District Leaders and Healthcare Partners Should Do Differently
The research at this point is clear that districts cannot recruit their way out of a retention problem. Attrition drives 90% of annual hiring demand. Every teacher who leaves a large district costs between $24,930 and $29,762 to replace, adjusted to 2024 dollars from earlier district studies.. Retention is the lever that shrinks the problem itself.
For district leaders, that means several concrete shifts in how workforce planning gets done:
- Budget for retention the way you budget for recruiting. Induction and mentoring programs show modest but real effects on teacher persistence. The presence of any induction program showed benefit, but the program comprehensiveness did not predict larger effects, which is useful news for districts with limited budgets. Leadership quality, teacher autonomy, and workload relief also show strong observational support.
- Treat specialized roles as a separate workforce category. Special education, SLPs, and school nurses compete against healthcare employers, not other school districts. The compensation gap is structural. Where direct salary increases are off the table, flexibility, workload relief, and administrative support become the differentiators. An SLP who spends 6 hours per week on documentation instead of the 22.6 hours spent in direct intervention is more of an administrative design opportunity than a staffing problem.
- Use teletherapy where the evidence supports it — and say so where it doesn’t. A 2025 meta-analysis across 8 databases found that telepractice for school-age SLP intervention produced moderate to high effects, with equal or larger effect sizes than in-person delivery for children roughly age 4 and up. Language assessment via telehealth shows no significant differences in standard scores compared to face-to-face delivery. The evidence is genuinely strong for school-age speech work. It is weak for early childhood and essentially absent for school psychology assessment. Districts that adopt teletherapy should match the modality to the evidence base, and budget for the on-site facilitator that the research says is required.
- Consider a managed services approach if vendor complexity is consuming leadership time. When school leaders and program administrators are spending time balancing logistics and communication among multiple staffing support vendors, it’s time to rethink the process. A managed services program (MSP) consolidates vendor relationships, standardizes compliance tracking, and provides a single point of contact. This frees us up leaders to focus on the instructional and compliance work that only they can do.
- Plan for enrollment-driven revenue loss now. NCES projects 2.7 million fewer students between fall 2022 and fall 2031. Most state funding formulas are enrollment-driven, which converts that decline directly into revenue loss. Buildings, pensions, and minimum specialist coverage do not scale down proportionally. Districts that are still staffing at pandemic-era levels without a flexible plan for the revenue cliff ahead will face harder choices later.
SHC Can Help You Build a Plan That Fits Your District
Supplemental Health Care’s dedicated schools division, SHC Education, was built specifically for these workforce challenges. The team includes former SLPs, special education teachers, and physical therapists who recruit for the roles they once held. SHC offers contract staffing, direct recruiting, teletherapy through a HIPAA and FERPA-compliant platform, traveler placement, and managed services programs that consolidate vendor relationships into a single partnership.
If your district is managing multiple staffing vendors, starting a school year short-staffed in specialized roles, or trying to figure out how to serve more students with fewer resources, reach out to the SHC Education team at www.shceducation.com. There is no obligation to start the conversation, and the team is built to meet you where your district actually in.
For the full discussion of workforce challenges, budget pressures, and practical strategies, listen to the SHC Insights Series: The Education Staffing Squeeze, featuring host Alex Acton and guest Ashley Donaldson, Division Vice President at Supplemental Education. Available on YouTube and your preferred podcast platform.
FAQs
How many teaching positions are vacant or under-qualified nationally?
According to the Learning Policy Institute’s July 2025 update, 411,549 positions are either empty or filled by someone not fully certified. Only 45,582 are genuinely vacant; 365,967 are held by teachers working under emergency credentials, out-of-field, or still in preparation programs. The shortage shows up mostly as under-qualification, not absence.
Why is special education so hard to staff compared to other teaching roles?
Special education now serves 7.9 million students — 15.9% of public school enrollment, up 22.8% since 2010-11. Only 77% of special education vacancies are filled by fully certified teachers, and 75% of schools with classroom aide positions report open vacancies. Federal law mandates these services regardless of staffing difficulty, leaving districts with no flexibility to delay.
What is driving teacher attrition if the overall departure rate hasn’t spiked?
The federal attrition rate has been flat since 2012-13 at around 8% annually. The problem is concentration and a shrinking pipeline. Teacher preparation enrollment fell from 611,296 in 2012-13 to 407,556 in 2022-23. With fewer new teachers entering, even a stable departure rate produces growing vacancies in high-need subjects and high-poverty schools.
Does teletherapy actually work for school-based speech-language services?
For school-age children roughly 4 and older, the evidence is strong. A 2025 meta-analysis across 8 databases found telepractice produced equal or larger effect sizes than in-person SLP intervention. Language assessment via telehealth shows no significant score differences versus face-to-face. Evidence is weak for early childhood and essentially absent for school psychology assessment.
What is a managed services program and how does it help school districts?
A managed services program (MSP) consolidates multiple staffing vendors under one contract and one point of contact. For districts managing 20 or more agencies, an MSP standardizes compliance tracking, credential verification, rate management, and invoicing — reducing administrative burden on special education directors and freeing leadership time for instructional and compliance priorities.
search content