Teacher Shortage

But with about 5,500 teachers eligible to retire, those 937 can't even begin to address the state's need.

Moreover, McNair says the state estimates that 50 percent of new teachers will leave the profession within five years. Another 3,000 teachers have between 20 and 24 years of experience, meaning they, too, will soon be eligible to retire.

The problem gets worse in rural parts of the state and in harder-to-fill subject areas such as math, science, foreign languages and special education.

Of the 2006 education majors, there were 54 in special education, 42 in math, 20 in biology, eight in chemistry, two in physics and about 14 foreign language education majors. Although the state offers loan forgiveness and other incentives, it's still coming up short. Last year, fewer than 1,000 people became teachers through alternate routes."

For the past several months the CL has allowed online comments, which I find as interesting as the articles.  Here's a gem from the above article:

"After having taught for 30 years in Jackson Public and Hinds County Schools the problems I see are number 1 - the family life of children is not much because parents are both working and the kids fend for themselves, and their is not much family relationships. The parents are not showing responsbility for their child's education. The teachers are responsible for teaching home values and everything that child learns plus the academics. Children need love from the teacher as well as the parent. Teachers are afraid of being sued by parents. I applaud all teachers for what they do each day in the classroom."