Preservice Predictors of Teacher Candidates' Employment and Earnings Inside and Outside of Public Schools

• In Event: Teacher Recruitment, Preparation, and Workforce Diversity

Abstract

Purpose

We use a unique panel dataset on 11 cohorts of over 14,000 teacher candidates from Washington state to model the employment outcomes and earnings of teacher candidates in the years after they graduate from TEPs and receive a teaching credential, with a particular focus on candidates of color and in hard-to-staff subjects. Specifically, we draw on unique data on teacher candidates supplied by 15 teacher education programs (TEPs) in Washington state, linked to state administrative data on inservice teachers and Unemployment Insurance data maintained by the state, to answer three specific questions:

1. What preservice qualifications (e.g., course grades, credentials, and licensure test scores) predict the employment outcomes of teacher candidates?
2. What preservice qualifications predict their earnings in these positions?
3. How do these relationships vary for candidates of color and candidates with hard-to-staff teaching credentials?

Theoretical Perspectives

One potential explanation for concerns related to teacher diversity and shortages is that different college students may face different opportunity costs for becoming a teacher. In fact, a small literature that investigates the earnings of teachers who leave the labor market finds that more effective teachers and teachers with math and science credentials tend to earn more outside of public school teaching jobs (Chingos & West, 2012; Goldhaber & Player, 2005; Han, 2020).

Methods

We model the relationships between preservice qualifications and employment outcomes using a Roy model of selection into the teacher labor market.

Results and Conclusions

Preliminary descriptive analyses suggest that the average earnings of candidates employed in K–12 public schools are substantially higher than the average earnings of candidates employed outside of K–12 public schools. This contrasts with findings based on movement into and out of the teaching workforce (e.g., Chingos & West, 2012; Han, 2020), but these mean differences mask some heterogeneity across different employment categories and candidate characteristics. Specifically, due to the compression of teacher salaries relative to salaries we observe outside of education, many candidates who do not enter teachingearn more than they would have in K–12 public schools. We do not find significant differences for candidates of color relative to white candidates.

Scholarly Significance

There are considerable debates about how the compensation of public school teachers compares to compensation outside of teaching, and what this portends for the desirability of teaching as a profession. We find that individuals employed as public school teachers earn more, on average, than those employed in non-public school teaching positions. But this finding is less consistently true for the subset of STEM teacher candidates. Specifically, we observe greater variation in the earnings of STEM teacher candidates who do not become public school teachers than non-STEM teacher candidates who do not become public school teachers, and a much higher share of those STEM teacher candidates who do not become public school teachers earn more than the average public school STEM teacher. This lends credence to the idea that STEM teachers (or prospective STEM teachers) likely face greater opportunity costs to being public school teachers than teachers generally.

Authors

• Dan Goldhaber, American Institutes for Research

• John Krieg, Western Washington University

• Roddy Theobald, American Institutes for Research

• Stephanie Liddle, University of Washington