America’s schools are facing a huge shortage of qualified teachers. There’s no clear data on how many teacher shortages we have nationally, but it’s massive.

The Nevada State Education Association estimated that roughly 3,000 teaching jobs remain unfilled across the state. Illinois reported in January >2,040 teacher openings were either empty or filled with a “less than qualified” hire. And in the Houston area, the largest five school districts are all reporting 200-1,000 open teaching positions.

To combat this, counties and states are trying different approaches. Rural school districts in Texas are switching to four-day weeks this fall due to lack of staff. Florida is asking veterans with no teaching background to enter classrooms. Arizona is allowing college students to step in and instruct children.

And who loses in all this? Obviously the kids, who won’t benefit from experienced and skilled teachers.

Teaching is hard. And under immense scrutiny these days. Few other professions have so many people who seem to think they know how to do the job better than those who’ve studied and gained hands on experience. Because teaching isn’t just about subject knowledge, but how to help others learn, how to build curriculum, how to adapt learning styles, how to engage different students, and a huge amount of empathy.

But it’s not just the kids who will suffer.

To compete in the economy of tomorrow, we need educated citizens. Education has long been one of the things that attracts people to the US. And yet again we are failing our kids and ourselves.

It’s time we learn to invest more in ourselves and our communities to build better for tomorrow. Starting with investing more in our teachers and our schools.