Rethinking the Response to the Teacher Shortage: Prioritizing Cognitive Skills to Improve Learning

By Betsy Hill and Roger Stark

President Biden has recently announced initiatives to address the nationwide teacher shortage—an issue that long predates the pandemic but has grown worse because of it. There is no doubt the country needs more teachers who are better trained and more representative of the communities they serve. Yet simply hiring more teachers will not automatically fix students’ learning gaps. To truly improve learning outcomes, we must align policy and practice with what the science reveals about how students learn.

Cognitive skills form the foundation of learning. These are the mental processes that determine whether information enters the brain, whether it is understood, whether it is retained, and whether it can be used effectively later. Cognitive skills encompass the stages of processing that support learning and thinking: reception, perception, memory, direction, and higher-order thinking. In short, they are the mechanisms by which learners take in, make sense of, organize, manipulate, store, retrieve, and apply information.

Research shows clearly that cognitive skills account for roughly 50 percent of the variability in student achievement. Consider two students who attend the same schools for years: if one consistently earns As and the other Ds, about half of the difference in their outcomes is explained by differences in their cognitive capacities. Recent studies, including work supported by the National Science Foundation, have reinforced earlier findings about the predictive power of cognitive skills—particularly in mathematics.

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is also a significant contributor to student success. Factors like motivation, engagement, help-seeking behavior, and self-awareness account for an estimated 20 to 25 percent of the variation in student outcomes. While not as large as the effect of cognitive skills, SEL remains an essential element of a comprehensive approach to improving learning.

Despite this evidence, our public education spending is often misaligned with the factors that most influence learning. Roughly 75 percent of public education funds—about $550 billion annually—are directed toward areas that collectively explain less than a third of student outcomes. Meanwhile, less than 5 percent of those resources are invested in improving cognitive skills, the factor proven to drive half of learning success. This mismatch between investment and impact undermines efforts to raise achievement at scale.

Public debate about the teacher shortage often frames education in terms of instruction alone. One commentator put it bluntly: education is teaching, and without a teacher you cannot teach. That view correctly recognizes the importance of teachers, but it risks overlooking the learner. Teaching and learning are distinct processes. Teachers are vital facilitators, but they cannot guarantee learning if students lack the underlying cognitive capacities to benefit from instruction.

Too many discussions treat instruction as the sole remedy and teachers as the only tool. This “hammer-and-nail” mindset—where instruction is the solution for every educational problem—helps explain why nearly 70 percent of students consistently perform below grade level in many systems. The persistent shortcomings suggest we need a broader, evidence-aligned strategy that attends to the learner’s cognitive readiness as well as to classroom instruction.

Think of learning like hitting a baseball. You would not send a batter to the plate without a bat and expect them to succeed against fast pitching. In this analogy, the bat represents cognitive capacity. For the top 30 percent of students whose cognitive strengths match classroom demands, standard instruction may be sufficient. For the majority who learn differently, school can feel like facing 100-mile-per-hour pitches without a bat—teaching and curriculum are coming fast, but the learner lacks the foundational tools to connect with the material.

It is time to broaden how we serve learners. Addressing the teacher shortage is necessary, but not sufficient. Teachers need to understand how all students learn so they can design instruction that optimizes each learner’s strengths and compensates for weaknesses. Equally important is ensuring that every student receives comprehensive, integrated cognitive training to build the mental capacities required for learning. Combining stronger teaching with direct cognitive development offers the best path to sustainable improvement in learning outcomes.

The military concept of a “force multiplier” is useful here: a factor that allows the same resources to achieve much greater effects. Cognitive assessment and training act as a force multiplier in education. When students enter the classroom with stronger cognitive skills, teachers become exponentially more effective. Rather than relying solely on more teachers to solve learning problems, we should invest in amplifying the impact of the existing and expanded teaching workforce by strengthening student readiness to learn.

In short, yes—expand the teaching force. But do so alongside a concerted effort to assess and develop cognitive capacity in all learners. Evidence-based cognitive assessment and training, integrated with classroom practice and social-emotional supports, are essential to closing achievement gaps and improving outcomes for all students.

For readers seeking the research basis for the predictive value of cognitive skills on student outcomes, consider the literature on educational equity viewed through a cognitive lens and the body of studies linking cognitive development to academic performance.

About the authors

Betsy Hill is President of BrainWare Learning Company, which focuses on building learning capacity through practical applications of neuroscience. An experienced educator, she has studied the intersection of neuroscience and education and served as chair of the board of trustees at Chicago State University. She also teaches strategic thinking in the MBA program at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management and holds a Master of Arts in Teaching and an MBA from Northwestern University.

Roger Stark is Co-founder and CEO of BrainWare Learning Company. For more than a decade, he has advocated bringing comprehensive cognitive skills training and assessment within reach for learners everywhere. He led development of BrainWare SAFARI, an extensively researched, integrated cognitive literacy training tool delivered online, built from decades of clinical collaboration and practical experience.

This article originally appeared in The Learning Counsel, a research institute and news media hub focused on the shift in education toward digital curriculum and the broader context of educational change.