Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said on Wednesday the largest and most urgent problem facing the state is a dire shortage of teachers, calling it a “potential catastrophe” that requires immediate attention.
Horne also cited significant workforce development concerns both in the public and private sector that are being addressed through the Arizona Education Economic Commission that he established in 2023. In addition, he outlined 16 initiatives to public schools increase academic outcomes.
“Currently, we have 60,000 teachers in our classrooms – 8,000 of them are leaving each year. Our educator preparation programs produce 1,900 per year that actually show up in our classrooms – 2,815 teachers also return to the classrooms. That is a net loss of about 2,300 per year. If that trend were to continue, it would eventually lead to zero teachers,” Horne explained while speaking to the House Education Committee on March 12.
Horne said he supports legislative efforts to raise teacher salaries as well as a bill he proposed to strengthen state law to require more district and charter administrative support for teacher discipline. Horne noted that those two issues were cited in a recent survey of teachers as the top two reasons for leaving the profession.
Workforce development shared the spotlight as Horne explained the development of the Arizona Education Economic Commission.
“We entered into an agreement with the leaders of the major companies in our state: we will provide the skilled workers. In return, the businesses will either teach our career technical education teachers what skills to teach or will provide people to teach those skills,” said Horne.
“We started with a core group of 20 industry leaders, including TSMC, Banner Health, Raytheon, U-Haul international and Lucid Motors," he added. "Also participating are all of our state’s career and technical education districts. With the enthusiastic support of all of Arizona’s major industries, this Department of Education is going to solve Arizona’s shortage of sufficiently skilled workers.”
Other initiatives Horne highlighted include a growing number of school improvement teams, leadership training, paperwork reduction, school safety and using data to improve academic outcomes.
