Hiring Heats Up in K-12 Teaching Specialties

Job openings for K-12 teachers who particularize in circumscribed takeing up and STEM fields be increasing.

Big changes in command, driven by changing curriculum standards, demographics and diagnoses of kids with special needs, atomic number 18 creating opportunities for gradeuates with the right skill sets. Josh Fernandez is one novel teacher who has capitalized on these changes. In 2008, Fernandez, a communications grad of East Carolina University, began working as a paraprofessional at Maryland's Gaithersburg High prepare, helping a ill student with his day-to-day activities.

 

Realizing that he'd found his calling, Fernandez pursued a master's in special education part time at the Johns Hopkins University schooltime of discipline. After graduating in June 2012, he was immediately hired by his high school to teach special ed.

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Around the country, many districts are adding staff in response to the burgeoning snatch of students diagnosed with special needs; the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects hires impart bring out 17 percentage between 2010 and 2020.

The increasing prevalence of autism (affecting 1 in 88 children in 2008 versus 1 in one hundred fifty in 2000, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and attention deficit hyperactivity indisposition (9 percent of 5- to 17-year-olds in the CDC's modernst survey, up two points since the late '90s) hand over contributed to the sudden surge.

Special ed is such a " slender need area at all levels," says Jeffrey Martinez, director of the plane section of recruitment and staffing for Montgomery County Public Schools, where Fernandez teaches, that the district offers to pick up a substantial portion of the cost for tuition, books and fees for employees pursuing a master's at Johns Hopkins who agree to work in the school system for two years.

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Demographic shifts are fueling hiring in another(prenominal) hot area: English as a sanction language. According to the Pew Research Center, a record 23.9 percent of children in pre-K through 12th grade were Hispanic in 2011.

This trend will only continue: By 2050, Hispanics will represent 38 percent of all school-age children. Jeff Edmundson, director of master's detail programs in the department of education studies at the University of Oregon, says having a "bilingual endorsement," too, is better yet – meaning the teacher is as well as proficient in the language of the students being taught.

Meanwhile, the U.S. effort to tab globally competitive is creating an urgent push to get scientists and mathematicians into the classroom. In 2012, President Barack Obama challenged schools to "recruit 100,000 math and experience teachers within the next 10 years" to help bring student performance up to snuff.

While the challenge of finding drug-addicted teachers has "been going on forever," it is even greater in a flash, says Steve Head, director of education portfolios and career services at the University of Wisconsin—Madison School of Education.

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That's because new Common Core standards, adopted by almost all states and the District of Columbia, establish more relentless uniform national learning goals for students in math, and a bite movement is afoot to boost intelligence standards. The College Board is also overhauling the way Advanced Placement science is taught.

Job candidates must now be "able to teach at the level that our students are going to be assessed at," explains Laurie deBettencourt, associate dean of educator prep programs at Hopkins' School of Education. Several school districts deBettencourt works with have teamed up with universities to provide financial incentives to students with backgrounds in math and science who agree to get their master's and certification to teach K-12.

Anecdotally, the incentives seem to be working, she says. Many grads who before would have moved into other careers or higher education positions are opting instead to teach in grade school or high school.

This study is excerpted from the U.S. News Best Graduate Schools 2014 guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.

Materials taken from US News