Teacher Shortage Officially Over

According to a New York Times story that surveys the educational landscape, the teacher shortage that has plagued public schools seemingly forever is over. Not only is there no teacher shortage, in most places there is an overabundance of qualified teachers looking for work.

The federal Bureau if Labor Statistics says that since last fall, school systems, state education agencies, technical schools and colleges have shed about 125,000 jobs. For most schools, there are always a few jobs that are the most difficult to fill, usually in the sciences and math. Contributing to the crowding in the field is the fact that many teachers who had planned to retire or change careers have stayed on because of the recession's economic uncertainty.

But the nationwide demand for teachers in 60 out of 61 subjects has declined from a year earlier, according to an annual report issued this week by the American Association for Employment in Education. Only one subject ?? math ?? was listed as having an extreme shortage of teachers. In recent years, more than a dozen subjects had extreme shortages and high school teachers were particularly in demand.

A startling statistic from a Texas school district illustrates the current situation. In an Austin suburb the Round Rock school district had more than 5,000 applications for 322 teacher openings this year. The district also had its pool of subs almost double to 1,200, about 2 1/2 times as many as it needs even on a particularly bad day during flu season according to a district spokesman.

Just a few years ago, ''we were recruiting really, really hard just to get people to take a look at us and take a look at our profession,'' said John Black, deputy superintendent of the Augusta, Kan., school district, who has been deluged with applications for a midyear elementary school opening. ''Now we have these great applicants wanting to teach, and we don't have jobs to offer them.''

And the pipeline is still full; there are so many applicants for student teaching opportunities that some districts have raised their standards; others have stopped accepting applications altogether. Professionals in the industry are suggesting that current students who are working towards a teaching career consider specializing in some of the traditionally more difficult areas to fill, such as math or special education.