Improving Data Collection Could Be One Key to Solving the Teacher Shortage Crisis

Many states have responded to school staffing shortages with policies that lower the standards to enter teaching, with some states hiring teachers even before they finish their degree program. In a recent “School Pulse” survey by the Institute of Education Sciences, schools reported they increasingly must employ teachers with little to no preparation or subject knowledge to fill open positions. These strategies are being employed even as most states do not collect data that can pinpoint the teacher vacancies occurring. Indeed, it appears a pressing challenge to alleviating teacher shortages is having the data to know if and where one exists.

The authors of a 2022 Annenberg Institute study set out to answer this question by scouring national-and state-level data. While they discovered at least 36,000 teacher vacancies (defined as positions that are unfilled) and 163,000 positions being filled by underqualified teachers across the country, inconsistencies in state-level data made it difficult to capture the true scope of the problem. They, like many others, concluded that identifying and alleviating teacher shortages will require more consistent and accessible data on the teaching profession.

The US Department of Education (ED) defines teacher shortages as “an area of specific grade, subject matter or discipline classification, or a geographic area in which the Secretary determines that there is an inadequate supply of elementary or secondary school teachers.” This definition includes any teaching positions that, at the start of the school year, are 1) unfilled (vacant), 2) filled by teachers with irregular, provisional, temporary, or emergency certification (underqualified), or 3) filled by teachers who are certified in subject areas other than the ones they teach (out-of-field).

However, the researchers found states’ definitions of teacher shortages vary. For instance, some states only consider it a vacancy if a previously existing position is unfilled, while others also include new positions that would be created if administrators could find staff to fill them.

Beyond varying definitions of vacancies, state-level data are extremely challenging to compare due to differences in three areas: 1) the type of data they collect (e.g., states such as Alabama only provide vacancy counts for certain subject areas), 2) their data collection methods (such as teacher surveys, school-reported records, or automated data population systems), and 3) the type of organizations collecting the data (research organizations or state offices). States also collect data at different times of the year, and do not always collect data annually, which means that available data may be outdated, all of which make it difficult to compare staff shortages between states.

The lack of available (and recent) data in each state was a central limitation of the study. The only formal state-level sources were data provided by state education agencies or boards of education, either through websites or directly from state officials. Google searches were also conducted to find news reports about state teacher shortages (although most reports did not list specific numbers of shortages or vacancies). Ultimately, the researchers were not able to find “credible estimates” of vacant positions in 13 states, which educate about 30 percent of public school students nationally.

None of the available national data sources on teachers contain comprehensive information about teacher shortages, as each of them addresses a different aspect of the workforce. The researchers used the 2018 Civil Rights Data Collection, a survey of almost all public schools and districts in the nation, to gather state-level teacher certification and experience in order to determine what constituted underqualified teachers in each state. The Common Core of Data from the National Center for Education Statistics offered information on student and teacher populations. Title II data, collected under the Higher Education Act (HEA), helped researchers understand the potential annual supply of new teachers by detailing annual completion numbers for teacher certification programs in each state from the academic year before (i.e., the 2019-2020 Title II graduate counts represent the potential 2020-2021 supply pool).

Essentially, with such limitations to the existing data on teacher shortages, comparing the research across states to understand a national teacher shortage is like comparing apples to oranges. But, the study’s findings do offer a starting point for how the federal government can help streamline this data moving forward.

First, the federal government can help build capacity for states and localities to improve their data collection systems. The ED has a publicly available vision for “Supporting and Elevating the Teaching Profession” that emphasizes the importance of recruiting and retaining diverse, highly-qualified educators. ED could help states to realize this vision by disseminating a comprehensive research agenda for teacher shortages. This agenda would clarify existing teacher shortage definitions (including shortages, vacancies, unfilled, qualified, and underqualified), and list research questions that would guide states in collecting exact data on vacant and unfilled positions and underqualified teachers.

And while HEA Title II data does provide some information on teachers’ characteristics such as whether they are certified or their race and gender, it does not collect all of the information necessary to provide a full picture of teacher shortages. For instance, to what extent are these teachers fully certified, and what are the demographics of teachers entering the classroom after completing their preparation? At what rate are preparation program completers hired, and what kinds of schools are hiring them? A federal research agenda would encourage (if not require) states to investigate and collect data for a number of questions like these, and would specify the times of the year, the frequency, and the mechanisms needed to collect and measure the data. This agenda would, additionally, instruct states on where to share this data, and on ways to present and leverage it to give clearer narratives of teacher shortages. Furthermore, the agenda would direct states to federal resources, like ESSA Title IIA funds, that could support these processes.

To maximize a research agenda like this, the federal government could also change the data collection and reporting requirements for the Teacher Shortage Areas data site. Currently, the site is designed to provide an overview of states’ possible need for educators and help graduates determine their potential for student loan forgiveness and other federal financial aid based on where and in what subjects they teach. As such, it only displays whether or not teacher shortages exist based on the information states provide, categorizing the data in downloadable formats by state, academic year, county, district, geographic region, subject, discipline, and grade level. The site could be expanded to show states’ reported numbers of vacant or unfilled positions, positions filled with underqualified candidates in each state, and any other information demonstrating the magnitude of teacher shortages across the nation.

And since the Department of Education has already summarized teacher shortage areas by state and subject area based on data from 1990-2018, it could use that data to further analyze these trends, note similarities between states, outline future areas of possible shortages in each state, recommend strategies that they can implement to alleviate them, and offer advice on evaluating the efficacy of these strategies.

A consistent and comparable set of teacher shortage data across the nation would be most useful and efficient for national, state, and local education stakeholders. In the absence of that, states can work with their local education agencies to begin to collect and publicly report better annual data on the teacher workforce at the preparation program-, licensure pathway- and district-level. This could entail partnering with other organizations to survey schools about teacher shortages, as Illinois does, or utilizing the data reporting requirements in ESEA section 1111(g)(1)(B) on “out-of-field” teachers to identify positions filled with underqualified teachers. States could also require districts to publicly report their teacher shortage data, as Florida does with its “Equitable Access to Quality Educators” metric. At a minimum, metrics reported annually should include: 1) number of open teaching positions being actively hired for and total number of applicants; 2) number and proportion of vacant teaching positions, relative to all teaching positions; and 3) number and proportion of teaching positions filled by an out-of-field or not fully-licensed teacher. All of these metrics should include specific details about the subject and grade level(s) of the position, as well as relevant information about applicants and or under-qualified teachers.

States should publish these data in an organized way on their education websites, along with relevant definitions and other contextual information that would help researchers and policymakers to understand the scope and severity of teacher shortages.

Revising data collection procedures on any level can be a challenging undertaking. But researchers’ unsuccessful attempts to assess the full magnitude of our nation’s teacher shortages make it clear that improvements in data reporting must be made to help ensure our students have the teachers they need to successfully lead their learning.

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