That Bruni would bemoan such a state of affairs is iron­ic, as he has used his col­umn over the years to repeat­ed­ly argue that teach­ing is too easy a pro­fes­sion to enter and too easy to keep, and ampli­fied the voice of reform­ers who want to want to make the pro­fes­sion more pre­car­i­ous. But the real­i­ty is that speak­ing of a ​“short­age” at all is a kind of ide­o­log­i­cal dodge; the word calls to mind some acci­dent of nature or the mar­ket, when what is actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing is the log­i­cal (if not nec­es­sar­i­ly intend­ed) result of edu­ca­tion reform policies.

“It’s a sad, alarm­ing state of affairs, and it proves that for all our lip ser­vice about improv­ing the edu­ca­tion of America’s chil­dren, we’ve failed to make teach­ing the draw that it should be, the hon­or that it must be,” mused Times colum­nist Frank Bruni.

Like much else in the nation­al edu­ca­tion debate, pan­ics about teacher short­ages seem to be a peren­ni­al event. In a wide­ly dis­cussed arti­cle for the New York Times ear­li­er this month, Motoko Rich called atten­tion to sharp drops in enroll­ment in teacher train­ing pro­grams in Cal­i­for­nia and doc­u­ment­ed that many dis­tricts are relax­ing licen­sure require­ments as a result, push­ing more and more peo­ple into the class­room with­out full cer­ti­fi­ca­tion or prop­er training.

“This is an old nar­ra­tive, the idea that we aren’t pro­duc­ing enough teach­ers,” says Richard Inger­soll, an edu­ca­tion­al soci­ol­o­gist at Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia who has writ­ten exten­sive­ly on the sub­ject of teacher short­ages. ​“As soon as you dis­ag­gre­gate the data, you find out claims of short­age are always over­gen­er­al­ized and exag­ger­at­ed. It’s always been a minor­i­ty of schools, and the real fac­tor is turnover in hard to staff schools. It may be true enroll­ment went down in these pro­grams nation­al­ly, but there are so many for­mer teach­ers in the reserve pool.” In oth­er words, the prob­lem isn’t that too few peo­ple enter­ing the pro­fes­sion, but rather that too many are leav­ing it.

Such high turnover rates are dis­rup­tive to school cul­ture and tend to con­cen­trate the least expe­ri­enced teach­ers in the poor­est school dis­tricts. A 2014 paper by Inger­soll and his col­leagues shows ​“45 per­cent of pub­lic school teacher turnover took place in just one quar­ter of the pop­u­la­tion of pub­lic schools. The data show that high-pover­ty, high-minor­i­ty, urban and rur­al pub­lic schools have among the high­est rates of turnover.”

“If you look at the short­age areas in terms of sub­ject or what dis­tricts are hav­ing trou­ble fill­ing jobs, it’s a short­age of peo­ple who are will­ing to teach for the salary and in the work­ing con­di­tions in cer­tain school dis­tricts,” says Lois Wein­er, an edu­ca­tion pro­fes­sor at New Jer­sey City Uni­ver­si­ty and author of The Future of Our Schools. ​“It’s not a short­age in every dis­trict. Look at the whitest, wealth­i­est dis­tricts in every state and call up the per­son­nel depart­ment, ask if they have a short­age in spe­cial ed or bilin­gual ed. They don’t — in fact, they are turn­ing can­di­dates away.”

Inger­soll says it’s no secret what kind of poli­cies will keep teach­ers in the classroom.

“The most impor­tant thing in retain­ing teach­ers, accord­ing to the data, is suf­fi­cient lee­way and auton­o­my in the class­room,” he says. ​“If low-per­form­ing schools that are sanc­tioned actu­al­ly allow teach­ers more auton­o­my dis­cre­tion and lee­way, their turnover is no high­er than high-per­form­ing schools.”

A recent sur­vey by the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers and the Badass Teach­ers Asso­ci­a­tion cit­ed by Bruni sheds some light on the state of teacher auton­o­my and job sat­is­fac­tion. Only 15% of teach­ers in the sur­vey strong­ly agreed with the state­ment ​“I am enthu­si­as­tic about my pro­fes­sion at this point in my career,” although 89% strong­ly agreed with such feel­ings at the start of their career. Sev­en­ty-three per­cent said they were ​“often stressed,” cit­ing man­dat­ed cur­ricu­lum, large class sizes and stan­dard­ized test­ing” as their top every­day stres­sors in the class­room; 71% said adop­tion of new ini­tia­tives with­out prop­er train­ing or pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment were major sources of work­place stress. Among the 30% of teach­ers who claimed to have felt bul­lied in the last year, 58% of these iden­ti­fy an admin­is­tra­tor or super­vi­sor as the culprit.

Far from grant­i­ng more auton­o­my to teach­ers, we appear to be giv­ing them less.

And such work­ing con­di­tions are tak­ing a toll. Last year, a report from New York’s Unit­ed Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers doc­u­ment­ed a ​“teacher exo­dus” from the city’s schools, with near­ly half of teach­ers leav­ing with­in the first six years of their career, either to high­er-pay­ing sub­ur­ban dis­tricts or to oth­er careers alto­geth­er. A new trend in the New York City, accord­ing to the UFT, is a sharp increase in res­ig­na­tions among mid-career teach­ers — those between six and 15 years of ser­vice. These teach­ers are resign­ing at three times the rate of 2008.

One of cor­po­rate school reform’s many ironies is that its ide­o­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tions often yield their oppo­site. In the name of ​“rais­ing stan­dards” and hold­ing edu­ca­tors account­able, teach­ers lose their pro­fes­sion­al auton­o­my and face an ever-increas­ing stream of new man­dates. This leads to high­er turnover. In order to fill the gaps, licen­sure rules are relaxed and ​“sup­ports” are pro­vid­ed for an increas­ing­ly ama­teur work­force — through pre­fab­ri­cat­ed cur­ricu­lum and assess­ments. And the cycle starts all over again. The demor­al­iza­tion of the Amer­i­can teacher is lead­ing to the deskilling of their pro­fes­sion, which leads to teacher res­ig­na­tions, which leads to more demor­al­iza­tion, ad infini­tum.