Filling Teacher Vacancies

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

The prestige of and interest in the teaching profession have steadily declined over the past decade, raising concerns about potential teacher shortages. Compounding these chronic patterns, the COVID-19 pandemic ignited worries over large-scale, pervasive shortages.  However, recent work has uncovered that these teacher shortages are not monolithic and most commonly occur in hard-to-staff schools and high-needs subject areas. Therefore, districts and states are responding in kind to address these more nuanced areas of shortage.  That said, many questions remain about the stability of these shortages over time and how districts and states are bolstering their preparation pipelines. 

The first paper uses administrative data from Illinois to examine the stability of teacher shortages, or lack thereof, over time. Preliminary findings suggest that most vacancy variation is transitory and that there is predictive value of teacher shortages between adjacent school years.  However, this predictive value decreases when examined over a three-year time span.  These findings imply that static targeting criteria may both miss newly struggling schools and continue to direct resources toward schools whose shortages have resolved.  

Given the shortage trends described above, it is important to understand how applicants are responding to job postings.  The second paper investigates applicant choice across 19 U.S. school districts.  Most saliently, this paper indicates that although schools serving higher proportions of historically disadvantaged students receive fewer applications for teaching jobs overall, this disparity is driven almost entirely by sorting across districts rather than within districts. 

The third paper extends the conversation about candidates who may fill teaching vacancies and examines the relationship between student-teaching placement and perceptions of preparedness, certification attainment, and entry into the teaching workforce. Using administrative data from Michigan, this paper finds that student teaching placements are predominantly in more advantaged schools and are associated with teachers’ early pipeline outcomes. 

Finally, the fourth paper examines a state’s response to when a teaching vacancy does not get filled through traditional means.  Specifically, this paper examines the relationship between temporary licensure and student outcomes in Maryland. Preliminary results suggest that temporary licensed teachers are associated with lower student test scores and higher rates of exclusionary discipline.  Further, results indicate that these temporary licensed teachers turn over at greater rates than their traditionally licensed counterparts.

Policy Area

• Education

Chair

• Olivia Chi, Boston University

Discussants

• Melanie Rucinski, Harvard Graduate School of Education

• Wesley Morris, University of Memphis

Organizer

• Alexander Institute for Innovation and Moran, University of Maryland

Individual Presentations

• Groundhog Day or Musical Chairs? The Persistence of School Staff Vacancies - Presenting Author: Andrew Mitchell Camp, Brown University

• What Do Educator Job Applications Reveal About Preferences for Schools? - Non-Presenting Co-Author: Dan Goldhaber, American Institutes for Research; Presenting Author: Constance A. Lindsay, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• From Student Teaching to the Workforce: Placement Contexts, Mentoring, and Early Pipeline Outcomes - Presenting Author: Jiwon Baek, Florida State University

• Does training matter? The relationship between temporary teaching licenses and student outcomes in Maryland - Presenting Author: Alexander Institute for Innovation and Moran, University of Maryland