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| Teacher Shortage? Where are the data? | Login/Join |
Minor Deity |
I was reading yet another article on "teacher shortage" (no lack of these over the years), and I tried to search for data that will let me systematically "see" where the shortages are, and I found that I cannot find such data. Instead, I found this: https://www.nctq.org/publicati...pply-and-Demand-Data ... which tells me most states are woefully inadequate at gathering/reporting teacher supply/demand data. So ... since we have teachers and statisticians and economist who do research on education here, I figure I'd ask: Any one here happens to know of any good database that would let me look up projections and hard data on "teacher shortage"? (Preferably nationwide, state-by-state or even district-by-district.)
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| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity  |
Presumably this is about K-12 teachers, which I know very little about. You might try the American Federation of Teachers, or maybe the American Federation of Teachers?
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| "I've got morons on my team." Mitt Romney Minor Deity  |
I don't do K-12. But I would ask, what would constitute evidence of a "shortage?" Shortage means excess demand, but that's not the easiest thing to measure. In most markets, shortages are short-lived signals followed by a price increases sufficient to balance supply and demand again. So what you see is an upward movement in price. But you can see upward movements in price for many reasons, not just "no supply today." In the teacher market, salaries don't immediately adjust, so we won't see spikes in teacher salaries. We might see upward pressure, so some "evidence" would be found in examining different movements in teacher salaries across the nation. Of course, there are a few bazillion reasons for teacher salaries to move in any particular jurisdiction, so you have a difficult empirical problem in controlling for other factors and isolating the cause. You might look to see changes in class size, because that could be a response to "not enough teachers in our town/county/district at the going salary scale." You might see changes in the ratio of substitutes to full-time teachers. And the list goes on. | |||
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Minor Deity |
One bit of evidence I see regularly is billboards along Oklahoma interstates advertising starting teacher salaries in affluent parts of Texas like Fort Worth that are roughly twice the starting salaries in even prosperous districts in Oklahoma. The shamefully low salaries here reflect P*D's point that teacher salaries are only as related to supply and demand as state and local governments' funds and whims will allow. The billboards and the Texas salaries reflect, I presume, that those governments in Texas are more willing to let supply and demand do its work.
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| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity |
That's also probably misleading since I'm guessing cost of living (esp housing) is a good bit higher in Fort Worth TX than in many locations in OK?
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| Unrepentant Dork Gadfly  |
No clue where you’d find data, but anecdotally my social media feeds are full of US K-12 teachers letting folks know they have multiple positions open in their schools. One person I know has eight unfilled positions right now and teachers have already reported back to work (students come next week I believe).
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| "I've got morons on my team." Mitt Romney Minor Deity |
Another piece of evidence would be annual turnover rates. If they're rising, holding on to teachers is becoming more difficult and you're likely to see the quality of the returning staff go down ... the most mobile (better qualified/talented) are the ones most likely to leave for better options. | |||
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
The K-12 schools I went to in the Bootheel of Missouri got teachers from nearby Arkansas. They came to Missouri for better money. The school most graduated from was widely called "an accredited day care center". I had to learn to speak and write when I got to a university.
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| Pinta & the Santa Maria Has Achieved Nirvana  |
You can go to the BLS data site and download by year. It's keyed by SOC code, which is hierarchical. K-12 is in the 25-2xxx series 25-2000 = Preschool, Primary, Secondary and Special Education teachers If you want to remove groups from this omnibus total, just dig down through the SOC codes until you find the one(s) that define the groups you're interested in. In the dataset, SOC codes are labeled as "occ_code." The entire coding schema was reworked, so if you want to go before 2018 you'll have to find a crosswalk (they're around) to map the old coding to the new. None of this is easy, but you'll probably get what you need in terms of employment numbers. That said, it seems like the question you're really asking is something like "has the ratio of students / teachers changed"? or "how many unfilled teaching positions exist"?. I'm not sure how to get at that data easily. | |||
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| Minor Deity |
It depends on where you are. It wasn't as cheap to live here as I'd expected, but it obviously varies and college towns tend to be more expensive. I had a graduate student who had taught for six years in this college town and still made less than $30,000. That's woefully inadequate. The fact that Texas needs to advertise, begging people to move there to teach, is probably the most pertinent part of that story. They're choosing to advertise here because the salaries are so low and the working conditions are so bad, so Oklahoma teachers look like low-hanging fruit.
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Beatification Candidate |
Source Big Al
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| Minor Deity |
Shiro, P*D, Nina, Dol, CHAS, Mary Anna, Big Al, thanks! I appreciate your thoughts and suggestions.
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well-temperedforum.groupee.net The Well-Tempered Forum Off Key Teacher Shortage? Where are the data?