The Impact of STEM Teacher Scholarship on Local Teacher Shortage and Student Outcomes

• In Event: Strategic Staffing and Incentives

Abstract

Broad consensus exists on the need to train, place, and retain high-quality teachers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects throughout the nation’s public schools, particularly in high-need districts (President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, 2010). Yet, we need to know more about the STEM teacher workforce in these districts and how to ensure equal access to quality teachers.

One of the longest-running STEM teacher scholarships for the past 20 years is the Robert Noyce scholarship program funded by the National Science Foundation. The Noyce program aims to alleviate the chronic staffing problems among STEM teachers in high-need school districts. Through both sponsoring interdisciplinary teachers training programs and sponsoring individual students in STEM majors to become teachers in disadvantaged settings, the program aims to increase the flow of high-quality STEM teachers into the high-need districts where their talents are needed the most. We investigate the estimated impact of proximity to the Noyce program on the overall STEM teacher workforce in high-need districts and their student outcomes. Our main research question is what is the estimated impact of proximity to the Noyce program on the STEM teacher workforce in high-need school districts?

Utilizing several national datasets such as the Schools and Staffing Surveys (SASS), the National Teachers and Principal Survey (NPTS), NSF award data, and geographic data on both public-school districts and postsecondary institutions, we explore whether the Noyce program influenced the STEM teacher labor supply in high-need districts. We will employ difference-in-difference models to estimate an Intent-to-Treat (ITT) effect of the impact of the Noyce program on relevant STEM workforce outcomes. We find that Noyce-nearby school districts experienced lower school vacancy rates and lower likelihood of having trouble filling these vacancies in math, physics, and biology. Additionally, we find that Noyce-nearby schools tend to have a higher share of teachers with college STEM majors. This evidence suggests that Noyce scholarship has increase both the number and quality of STEM teachers in these high-needs schools.

Authors

• Li Feng, Texas State University

• Michael Hansen, The Brookings Institution

• David Devraj Kumar, Florida Atlantic University