Bleak budgets aside, it’s practically boom time for some types of teachers in the Washington region.
Dozens of positions are open throughout the region for teachers certified in “critical need” fields such as special education, math and the sciences, even as hiring freezes stem expansion.
The continuing hiring demonstrates the dearth of educators teaching certain subjects, despite a lousy economy and despite concerns over deep school cuts to come.
In Arlington County, job postings call for special education teachers, as well as teachers for gifted students. Alexandria schools, too, are looking for special educators and 29 teachers overall for positions from English as a second language to elementary math.
In D.C. Public Schools, where teachers affected by October’s firings have questioned why the city is still hiring, spokeswoman Jennifer Calloway said, “We have high-need vacancies completely unrelated to [the layoffs] — mostly special education, math and science.”
Fired teachers are considered for the jobs, she said, “but if they don’t have the specifications that we need, we can’t hire them.”
Fairfax County likely will face a similar hiring issue, said Kevin North, the district’s assistant superintendent for human resources.
“We could end up with a surplus of foreign language teachers, for example,” North said, referring to possible cuts to be made this spring, affecting next fall’s classrooms. “But we might not have enough math teachers — and they’re not interchangeable.”
Teacher qualifications became more important after the 2001 passage of the federal No Child Left Behind law, when schools became required to prove their teachers were certified in their subject areas. In prior years, uniform consequences did not exist for, say, placing a French teacher in a biology classroom, or an eighth-grade teacher with first-graders.
Montgomery County lists a need for several types of therapists, as well as special education teachers and an interpreter for hearing impaired students, but does not list how many of each category are needed.
Come this summer, D.C. and Prince George’s County schools will face added hiring challenges because of their long-standing relationships with organizations like Teach for America and the D.C. Teacher Fellows, which provide instructors who have not come from traditional schools of education. How many of them will be hired will be determined over the summer, but in past years, about 200 TFA teachers and 100 fellows have entered the systems.
