If you want to understand the teacher shortages disrupting schools across the country this winter, check out an episode of the new sitcom Abbott Elementary, which follows teachers at a fictional school in South Philadelphia. Like most successful comedies, the show is rooted in truth — including two chronic problems with the teacher job market that are fueling this year’s staffing challenges.

First, teacher shortages are nothing new — especially for schools that serve low-income communities, which have always had the fewest effective educators and the highest turnover. One character in the show is a substitute covering for a teacher who quit midyear, which was already a common occurrence in these schools before the pandemic. And many districts have long struggled to find teachers in key subjects like math and science, or to hire enough Black and brown teachers to close the diversity gap that research shows is so harmful to students.

But Abbott Elementary mines most of its humor from a second truth: the gap between how we talk about teachers and how we treat them. Watching its characters beg for supplies on TikTok or struggle with malfunctioning bathrooms shows that however much we revere teachers, their job seems tailor-made to drive away the newest generation of workers during the “Great Reshuffle.” Starting salaries for teachers are 25 percent lower than those in many other white-collar professions. Teachers have few opportunities to earn promotions without leaving the classroom. And many work in aging buildings without basic amenities you’d find in any office. This value proposition was never acceptable, but especially not in the current economy. It’s a big reason why even before the pandemic, more than 40 percent of teachers left the profession within their first five years, while thousands of people who earned teaching licenses never entered the classroom to begin with.

Leaders inside and outside education have let these issues fester for decades. Now, amid the added challenges of the pandemic, the bill for that inaction has finally come due. While the exact details vary from district to district, the themes my organization is hearing from the hundreds of school systems we work with are alarmingly consistent. Schools can’t find enough substitutes to cover absences. Many teachers are thinking of quitting; some are actually resigning. And fewer people are applying to fill the vacancies. There’s justified concern that beyond any shortages this year, not enough people want to be teachers next year and beyond.

Read the full article about making teaching sought-after by Victoria Van Cleef at The 74.