I’m curious how this is going in your area. I have definitely heard of public school teachers taking a big pay cut to teach in a private (whether secular or religious) school, because they didn’t have to deal with the administrative issues that public-school teachers did.
Conversely, there is a Catholic high school in my area that hired a principal who turned out to be the worst thing that could possibly have happened to the place, and teachers and students have been leaving right and left. I’m talking about a 1/3 drop in enrollment within a year! The diocese finally had enough on her to get her fired. (And no, she was not a nun, and I don’t even think she’s Catholic.)
Private schools don’t require the same certifications as public school so have a broader market of teachers to pull from. Those teachers won’t get paid as much but can’t get jobs as teachers in public school either. The situation varies locally, when there’s a shortage in the public schools in an area there’s likely a shortage in private schools in the same area.
I recall a discussion with a former teacher at one of the grade schools I went to. Several Canadian provinces have government-run Catholic School Boards and School Boards -i.e. “not Catholic”. (Because when Canada was established in 1867 the biggest distinction was religion - which kept pristine Englishmen away from the influences of Irish and French). This one school they decided to take private, and remove from the Catholic School Board, as it had originally long before been a school owned by the priestly order. The teacher mentioned that many of the teachers refused to even appear at the same events as the principal who orchestrated the split - the problem being that the teachers’ pension plan was with the school board, so to stay working where they had been for their whole career, teachers would have to stop being a member of their Separate School Board pension plan. Stopping early reduced their pension and removed the opportunity to retire earlier with full pension. For anyone who’d been there more than a few years, their only realistic option was to transfer to another school in the school biard.
I didn’t ask about the private school’s pension options, but I imagine it was merely the equivalent of a 401K.
So for the OP, that’s another issue. In some areas of the USA, teacher pensions are probably not significant - in other areas, just like in Canada, it’s probably part of the package that would attract teachers, and smaller institutions probably can’t afford one.
I think it’s going to depend greatly on the specifics of the area and the schools . For example, in my diocese, the starting salary for a Catholic elementary school teacher is as low as $35K - public school teachers start at $61K. Years spent in the public school teacher’s pension system don’t transfer to the Catholic school pension. My two kids had 14 years in Catholic schools each (including separate high schools ) and in all that time, while I saw numerous teachers leave the Catholic schools for a job in public school, I never saw the reverse. In the teachers I’ve known personally , I have also only seen teachers go from Catholic school to public school with the exception of one situation - it’s not uncommon for a person to retire from a public school and then get a job at a Catholic school.
This is probably going to vary a lot with the school and the district - I imagine that the independent Catholic school that Lady Gaga attended ($58K for tuition starting in kindergarten) pays better than the average diocesan Catholic school and probably doesn’t have any teachers leaving for jobs in public schools.
Another issue I saw - plenty of my fellow students at university were going to teachers college if they were taking arts. The public school boards in Ontario tended to not take Catholic teachers (how they knew, I don’t know) while the (catholic) Separate School boards hired mostly Catholics. One thing required was a letter of recommendation from your parish priest, which was awkward because few were regular church attendees. Then there was the usual BS that you tend to see in the USA with high school students - these people would volunteer not out of zeal, but to get the brownie points on their recommendation letters - by helping with local parish’s Boy Scouts or Youth Program or such.
I do know one non-Catholic teacher who was let go at the end of the year once the school board found a Catholic music teacher. Meanwhile, some Catholic teachers lived in fear of being let go for not following the moral teachings of their church - living together without benefit of matrimony, using birth control (since the prescription information might come to light), not to mention being gay, having an abortion, or even being vocal about the church teachings. I’m not sure how likely they would be to get a job with the Public system… It’s not a great system. I gather it depended on the zeal of the local church operatives and school board administration. There were a few non-Catholics teaching when I was in the school system, but given the circumstances, I don’t see why a non-Catholic would take the job given a choice.
This would go doubly for any private school (Catholic, Evangelical, or whatever) no matter the pay, as they could be more strict on behaviour. The only advantage would be if it was a prestigious expensive private school that paid well. Or, as Epstein found out early in his career, was lax about credentials.
That story, from June, said there were 250 openings at 75 schools. A story later in the summer set the number at 200. Catholic school teachers here are required to have the same certification by the state as public school teachers.
I believe that’s the case pretty much everywhere in Canada, too. The provinces have minimum standards for teachers if a school wants to be accredited (which means, if they want to be a school.)
I knew one fellow who was hired to teach a trade midway through the school year, when it emerged that the previous teacher did not have even a high school education (Let’s hear it for not checking credentials!). He was allowed to teach based on his Bachelor degree with the understanding he would work toward a teachers’ certificate over the next two years during summer breaks.
In NYS, certification is only required for those teaching in public schools. and teachers at private schools that provide public placements for students with disabilities. A private school may require that its teachers be certified and certainly some do, but it’s not a state requirement and many private schools do not.
And there are different kinds of certification, too. A state might, for instance, have a state-recognized certification that only applies in non-public schools. And I know that Ohio has a type of certification that applies only to a single district, and if you change jobs to a different district, you (and the districts) have to go through some paperwork to change it. Subject matter requirements might also differ, and some private schools might teach some subjects (theology comes to mind) that aren’t even in the public schools.
Overall, I’d say that all schools right now are having difficulty hiring enough teachers, but they’re not all having the same difficulties. It’s largely a different set of people looking for work in different sorts of schools: Some are more selective in their hiring, but pay more. Some offer different benefits. Some offer lower pay, but make up for it with a more desirable work environment, and so on.
As the others pointed out, it’s common for states to allow non-certified teachers at private schools. That doesn’t mean they’re hiring unqualified teachers, they’ll be looking for degrees and experience in the subject matter as well as teaching experience.
Indeed. My wife taught at a parochial (ELCA Lutheran) elementary school in Illinois for nearly 20 years. She has a bachelor’s degree in education, from a university in Florida; she moved back home to Illinois after getting her degree, and got the teaching position at the Lutheran school shortly after. She never took the exams to receive an Illinois teaching certification, and the school where she taught never required it.
One of the things my friends back in the day in teacher college pointed out - While you need a degree (usually bachelor’s) to get into teacher college, once you have that teacher certificate, you can teach anything, whether you know the subject or not. (Of course, smart school administrators - wat dat? - would probably make sure the teachers know the subject matter). When I was in high school, our chemistry teacher was fired for gross incompetence in the second or third week. He would do nothing but cover the board with notes while talking to the board, like a university lecturer. A student told him he didn’t know how to teach, and he actually sent the student to the office and said “tell them what you said”. He did, they inspected, and we got a new teacher within a week. Our new chemistry teacher fresh out of college had an English degree, but at that point the school was in the position where beggars could not be choosers. She freely admitted she was only staying a few lessons ahead by reading the textbook, but still managed to do a passable job - far better than the former guy.
That story is quite bizarre, shot through with twists and turns of political motives. It’s not clear but I think that this move would only affect public schools since it’s a matter of certification.
I met someone who did the same thing. She had been certified in some other state, didn’t bother to go through the added paperwork and expense to get certified again.
IIRC, by getting a degree in teaching in Florida, my wife had automatically met the qualifications for a teaching certificate in Florida, but had no interest in remaining in that state, nor in teaching there.
Well sure. I was responding to the notion that private schools can hire anyone to teach but public school teachers require some certification (which is presumably backed by some education to be a teacher).
Florida is trying to make it so they can hire public school teachers with no education to be a teacher. No education and no certification (beyond a short primer).