Like most states, North Carolina faces teacher shortages that are worse in certain subjects and certain schools. And like many states, the Tarheel State prefers to frame this teacher shortage as a pervasive general shortage of teachers, advancing an array of largely ineffective policy solutions that fail to address the root causes of some subject and school-specific shortages.

One non-solution the state wrestled over recently was lowering the scores needed to pass licensing tests for teachers coming from out of state (read more here). Thankfully, that initiative went down with the Governor's veto. Now the state is in hot water with teachers and administrators over a new rule that will force retired teachers to go off schools' payrolls for six months before they are eligible to get rehired. The six-month rule is technically not new, but in the past retirees took advantage of a loophole in the rule that allowed retirees to return immediately as part-timers or substitutes.

Not only do such systems encourage persons to double-dip, retiring as soon as they are able instead of when they actually would like to stop working, but these rehired retirees don't have to pay into the retirement system.

North Carolina might consider gearing up its forsaken alternate route programs to address its teacher shortages. According to the National Center for Alternative Certification, the Tarheel State only certified 271 alternate route teachers in 2003-04.