The University of Wisconsin-Madison was named the No. 1 School of Education (SoE) in the nation for the third year in a row in April. An additional 12 graduate programs in the school were also ranked in the top 15 by U.S. News. And yet, in the last two decades, awarded education degrees have been on a steady decline.
Dr. Thomas Owenby, associate dean for Teacher Education, told The Daily Cardinal teacher burnout is a “complex phenomenon” the university may be in a position to have an impact on. He said the university is asking themselves how they can provide “high-quality preparation, [support] access and [incentivize] people to stay in the state of Wisconsin.”
While nationally there are fewer students graduating with education degrees, UW-Madison is seeing a trend up. Owenby said it’s “hard to know” why students are enrolling here and why they are doing it now, but he attributes it to the variety of certifications the School of Education offers.
“With each of those programs, there's depth and strength. That's part of the reason why we have our teacher education center — to look at ways that we can collaborate across those programs,” Owenby told the Cardinal. “It's going against some of the structural constraints within the institution where you have these silos of programs and departments and schools and colleges, and a way to cut across that and create this space for horizontal collaboration.”
Alongside falling numbers of education graduates, teacher burnout is one of the major concerns currently facing education.
Brian Zimdars teaches business and marketing at Middleton High School and told the Cardinal teachers are trying to figure out the human connection behind AI and what skills they want students to use when interacting with it.
“When speaking with English teachers, the creative side or arts [it’s] definitely is harder for them because there's so many tools out there that can write an essay now or create different graphics. Teachers here have done a really nice job of implementing ‘when can AI be appropriate?’” Zimdars said. “You [the student] don't want to just have an AI created for you and should be authentic to who you are.”
Entering his seventh year teaching, Zimdars said teacher burnout is dependent on circumstances. He told the Cardinal it’s “tricky” for teachers to know what other career opportunities are available for them.
“We've also seen people who have worked in more of the corporate setting. They're like, ‘nope, I'm burned out from that, and I wanna be around students and provide that energy,’” Zimdars said. “It really does depend on your situation [and] what fills you up. Fortunately for me, being [around your] own students and giving back fills me up.”
Although the education landscape is constantly changing, UW-Madison’s Elementary Education enrollment reached an all-time high this current academic year, according to Elementary Education Program Manager Kathi Koppa. In a statement to The Daily Cardinal, Koppa said they predict that trend will continue for a few years.
The Early Career Teaching Institute was created for Wisconsin alumni one-to-five years out of the program, Owenby said. Teachers are invited back to receive high-quality professional development to be in a “space of celebration, community and reflection,” compensating them for their time to “elevate the professionalism of being a teacher,” Owenby said.
In 2023, the Madison Metropolitan School District had 140 vacant teaching positions, according to In Business Madison. With UW-Madison’s high-ranking School of Ed and financial assistance launched in 2020, they saw a growth in overall number of students by 10%.
One big attraction for the School of Ed is the Teacher Pledge — an agreement to pay the equivalent of in-state tuition and fees in exchange for pledging to work at a Wisconsin PK-12 school for three to four school years after graduation. This assistance opened the door for more students to leave school with lower debt or financial troubles.
UW-Madison designed the pledge as a research study on how to build teacher retention in the state of Wisconsin and address the shortage in “qualified and credentialed teachers,” according to Owenby. UW-Madison is looking at the trend of teacher retention and the teacher shortage, specifically in the state of Wisconsin, and what may be an effective way to combat it.
“If it proved to be effective, based on those findings [from Teacher Pledge data], then ideally it would be a policy intervention that the state would consider taking on, from a funding perspective, to administer across the state to all education preparation programs in public and private colleges and universities,” Owenby said.
Zimdars said districts are working towards assessing teacher retention by “general need days” and recognizing the work that teachers are doing.
“Professional development days are really centered around what, not just the school is going for, but within each teacher's content area, that the time is being used to get better and improve their practice,” Zimdars said.
About 60% of undergraduate teacher education students and about 90% of graduate students take the Teacher Pledge. As an out-of-state student, UW-Madison junior Amelia Dalton considered the Pledge, but ultimately it wasn’t enough to keep her in the program.
Not being from Wisconsin made it hard to commit to living there, and Dalton told the Cardinal it wasn’t where she saw her life post-graduation. Now enrolled in Consumer Behavior and Marketplace Studies in the School of Human Ecology (SoHE), she feels a stronger sense of job security.
“The teachers are so underpaid nowadays that it just seemed hard to justify paying the out-of-state tuition for an outcome that wouldn't help me financially,” Dalton said.
To address student retention, Owenby said the School of Ed has started another initiative called Retain Wisconsin this year.
According to Owenby, the pilot project works with the Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative in the Wisconsin Center for Educational Research. Owenby said it is partnering with 11 local districts in Wisconsin to understand their data of why teachers are staying or leaving.
“We know there's certain things we can do as a teacher education program and as a university,” Owenby said. “But there's obviously a role to play for district partners, state funders and policymakers to try to create an atmosphere in a work environment in which teachers want to remain in teaching.”
When UW-Madison looks at student enrollment numbers, they examine all those considering attending the university and those considering going into teaching.
“For those who are admitted and choose to attend — in most of our teacher certification programs for undergrad, at least — they're folks often doing general education requirements and things of that nature before they start the professional sequence of those teaching and educational courses,” Owenby said.
When she switched majors, Dalton said she knew she “wasn’t throwing it away forever,” because she did “love the idea of being a teacher.”
“If I end up getting a job in marketing or advertising post-grad, I know that down the line I can go back to school and get a master's in education and be a teacher somewhere,” Dalton said. “Whether that's at a middle school, high school or even eventually becoming a professor and teaching something related to marketing.”
While there is not one answer to why the education majors are increasingly choosing UW-Madison, Owenby praised the staff who are behind the success.
“I think for us, on an institutional basis, it's been more a question of how [we can] continue to engage productively with our district partners in terms of high-quality field placements and strong partnerships with them,” Owenby said. “Their role as school-based teacher [plays] a central, pivotal role in high-quality teacher preparation.”
