Over the past year, growing media and policy has focused on Arizona’s “teacher shortage.” Contrary to popular perception, Arizona does not have a shortage of teachers – at least not by the numbers. Our state has approximately 75,000 people holding active teacher certifications, but only 61,000 are choosing to remain in the teaching profession, according to an Arizona Department of Education Teacher Retention report issued earlier this year.

That’s a startling shortage of people who are willing to teach under the current working conditions Arizona has created for teachers and school support staff. Teachers feel very little support and even less respect from most policymakers for the work they do to teach and develop students. Many feel under attack. Far too many have left. A look back at recent years might help explain what has ushered so many from the profession they love.

When the state Legislature imposed massive cuts on public schools in 2009, more than 10,000 public educators and community supporters stood strong and rallied at the Capitol in protest. Legislators defended the cuts as necessary in the wake of a staggering recession and downplayed two decades of tax cuts that had left the state unable to fund its public schools.

Following the protests – and in blatant retaliation – lawmakers passed legislation that restricted teacher contract and employment rights, curbed educators’ rights to organize, ended payroll dues deduction restricting how members may voluntarily belong to their professional association – and increased pension contribution rates, as part of a steady assault on stable retirement plans.

The attacks continued over a five-year period. The Legislature ended free full-day kindergarten, passing the cost on to cash-strapped school districts. Legislators ignored Arizona’s voter-approved mandate, Proposition 301, to fund annual inflation. These education funding cuts resulted in stagnant or even declining teacher salaries and funding for classroom supplies and materials for students vanished.

Through these cuts, teachers supported increased K-12 academic standards, believing them to be good for students. Instead of rewarding teachers for their dedication, policymakers launched an attack on local governing boards, reducing local control for teacher evaluation and undermining professional development. Under the rhetoric of “reform,” and against credible research, assessments and evaluations became methods to punish teachers and schools rather than to help teachers improve instruction and student learning. A toxic overuse of standardized test scores narrowed the definition of student learning, teacher impact, and school effectiveness.

Arizona is demanding teachers accomplish more with substantially and steadily less – in a state with one of the highest percentages of students living in poverty. Teachers became the scapegoat for Arizona’s chronic, policy-driven underinvestment in students’ success.

AEA members fought back in court and successfully defeated some of these attacks. But the message to educators was clear: Your success will come, not in partnership with, but in spite of, Arizona’s policymakers.

Arizona has lost thousands of gifted, committed educators to these conditions; yet thousands more remain in their profession – in their calling. As a teacher in the Sunnyside Unified School District, an impoverished district on the south side of Tucson, told me recently, amid tears, “I can’t afford to stay in this profession, but I have to come back because these are my kids, and they need me.” Too many others are leaving, in debt and tears.

Policymakers who want to know how to recruit and retain good teachers should look to themselves. Stop fighting public school teachers. Stop claiming they are the solution while treating them like they are the problem. Stop pretending that professional certification requirements are causing the teacher shortage; they aren’t. Stop the obsession with reforms that make winners and losers of our public schools, teachers, and students. Stop pretending to help students by harming their teachers.

Invest in teacher development and leadership, including National Board Certification. Involve teachers in writing policies that impact their profession. Provide the resources teachers have consistently identified as critical for their students’ success. Invest in better pay for new and continuing teachers. Settle the inflation lawsuit now, and develop long-term, stable funding sources for the students in our public schools.

Arizona’s public school teachers deserve respect. Our students deserve a stable and supportive learning environment, and the public deserves better than the policies to which we’ve subjected our amazing and dedicated teachers.

-Andrew F. Morrill is president of the Arizona Education Association and has been an English teacher in Marana for 17 years.