Developing a Current Need Estimate

The following discussion offers three basic steps important for developing a thorough and reliable assessment of a state's current need for teachers. Depending upon the accuracy of the data, the first two steps can provide a credible estimate of the current unmet need for teachers and a rough indication of the relative quality of teachers in the various districts around the state. The data for the third step are inherently less reliable, but they nevertheless can provide a basis for concluding that the state's need for additional teachers may be somewhat greater than indicated in estimates based only on steps 1 and 2.

The suggestions offered here are not intended to address the technical issues of locating and synthesizing different sources of data and of building a solid teacher data system. Two independent sources provide good, detailed information on these important considerations:

• Reichardt, Robert. (2003). Using Teacher Supply and Demand Analysis in Policymaking. Aurora, CO: McREL
• Voorhees, Richard A. and Barnes, Gary T. (2003, July). Data Systems to Enhance Teacher Quality. Denver, CO: SHEEO

Three Basic Steps

1. Gather the most reliable data possible, by school and district, on the number of science and mathematics classes in specific subjects that are staffed either by teachers who lack the state-defined normative qualifications or by long-term substitutes. This includes teachers who are teaching out-of-field or on emergency credentials.

Elaboration

These data reveal a state's basic teacher shortfall by school and/or district and whether the problem is restricted to a limited number of schools and districts or is more widespread. The importance of collecting this information also points to two fundamental considerations that affect the ultimate utility and actual result of a teacher need estimate: its level of specificity and its inherent assumptions about teacher quality and teacher qualifications.

Specificity

The more specific the needs analysis can be, the more satisfactorily it will guide efforts to address any shortfall or surplus. Ideally, the need for teacher should be based on the match of teachers for their



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States should be prepared to undertake such a specific analysis because it is specified in the NCLB requirement that states report the percentage of classes taught by teachers without proper background and credentials (NCLB Section 1111(h)(1)(C))

individual teaching assignment⁵. It is minimally helpful to determine a state's need for mathematics or science teachers overall; the need should be expressed in terms of more fine-grained parameters involving subject and geography.

• School level (elementary school vs. middle school vs. high school)
  The science and mathematics curriculum differs greatly from one school level to the next, as do the academic and emotional needs of students. Thus, teachers at the various levels require different kinds of academic and pedagogical knowledge and skill to be successful. Every state recognizes these differences – especially between elementary teaching and secondary teaching – in its licensure categories. Some states go further and distinguish between middle and high school licenses. The needs analysis should at least reflect the need for teachers at the different state licensure levels.
• Specific subject (e.g., biology, physics, earth science, mathematics, statistics)
  Especially at the high school level, the content covered in the various science and mathematics disciplines is complex enough that few teachers will have strong competence in all of them even if they were a science or mathematics major in college. Thus, the need particularly for science teachers is best expressed as a need for teachers in a particular science discipline. The
  

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  See Morton, B.A., Peltola, P., Hurwitz, M.D., Orlofsky, G.F., & Strizek, G.A. (2008, August). Education and Certification Qualifications of Departmentalized Public High School-Level Teachers of Core Subjects: Evidence from the 2003–04 Schools and Staffing Survey. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics (Table 4, p. 25)
  need⁶ for biology teachers, for example, is far less severe in most states than their need for chemistry, physics, and earth sciences teachers.
• Course difficulty level (Advanced Placement, college preparatory, basic)
  Within the science and mathematics disciplines themselves, the courses offered at the secondary school level are of varying degrees of difficulty. Teachers who are comfortable teaching basic level courses may not be comfortable teaching college preparatory courses or Advanced Placement courses. Although this fact is not always recognized in state licensure distinctions, many states do require teachers to earn some sort of specific credential (often an "endorsement") that indicates their readiness to teach higher-level courses in their field. Thus, a needs analysis that addresses the coverage of courses at specific levels of difficulty provides more adequate and ultimately more helpful information than one which does not.
• Geographic level
  Although this tool is intended to facilitate the development of state-level estimates of teacher need, that need is ultimately a local phenomenon. A statewide shortage or surplus of teachers in mathematics or biology or physics doesn't reflect the specific shortage picture for various regions of the state, let alone for specific districts or schools. If a need for teachers in a particular discipline is limited to specific locations in the state, the remedy may be to address local recruitment and retention issues or to ramp up teacher preparation in programs that specifically serve the localities affected by the shortage rather than to push for a statewide effort to recruit or produce more teachers overall. Thus, it is extremely important that statewide estimates of need be disaggregated to the regional and local level.

Adequate Qualifications:

A guiding principle of this entire project is that it is ultimately impossible to separate the consideration of teacher need from the consideration of teacher quality. An assessment of the adequacy of a state's teachers requires the ability to distinguish the teachers who have qualifications accepted as adequate from those teachers who do not. Unfortunately, there is no universally accepted or empirically validated definition of an "adequately qualified" teacher.

On one level, this consideration is related to the issue of the specificity of the need analysis. We noted previously the importance of specifying the need for teachers as a function of school level (middle school vs. high school), specific subject (e.g., "physics" and "chemistry" rather than "science" or "physical science"), and level of course difficulty (e.g., general mathematics vs. geometry II vs. AP calculus). Teachers who are adequately qualified to teach courses at some school levels and levels of difficulty will not be adequately qualified to teach courses at other levels. This is an especially important issue for science teachers because teachers who are qualified, for example, to teach general science at the secondary level may not be adequately qualified to teach any individual science subject at depth appropriate for the college preparatory or Advanced Placement level.

An additional complication in the effort to assess the quality of science and mathematics teachers on a course-by-course basis, however, is that science and mathematics may be taught differently in different districts and thus it may be difficult to identify the teacher expertise required uniformly across districts. If a district offers integrated science, for example, does adequate coverage require multiple science teachers with differing areas of expertise (who could co-teach such an integrated series of classes) or one teacher who is a science generalist?

Teacher Licensure

Not only is there no universally accepted or empirically validated definition of an "adequately qualified" teacher, but it is also a challenge to find the readily accessible data points in a survey of a state's science and mathematics teacher corps that would validly and reliably signal the adequacy or inadequacy of individual teachers' qualifications. State licensure is the logical candidate – indeed, by design – to meet both of these challenges. This would imply that states should consider a class as being taught by an "adequately qualified" teacher if he or she

1. Is fully licensed or certified, or has been issued a temporary credential based on active pursuit of a full license through enrollment in a formal teacher preparation program or other recognized coursework (e.g., a required state history course for recent teacher transfers in with a license from another state)
2. Is not teaching "out-of-field" – i.e., has the demonstrated subject knowledge required by licensure or endorsement in the field to be teaching the class
3. Is not a temporary substitute.

To be sure, state licensure is a blunt instrument, and it cannot ultimately ensure that every teacher who meets the criteria for licensure and for teaching a particular subject will be successful in teaching it. This is especially true for a complex field like science, in which individual science subjects are taught in a variety of curricular approaches. Basic licensure establishes a floor for teacher qualifications, and not all adequately qualified teachers are equally well-qualified or capable. Moreover, some individuals who lack all of the state-specified qualifications to teach a particular class may in fact be quite well-qualified for the task.

The Teacher Quality and Licensure section of this project discuss these issues in greater detail.

Close Elaboration

2. Gather data, by school, on the years of experience of the science and mathematics faculty

Elaboration

Years of experience is a proxy measure for teaching competence that is valuable more as a bellwether of disparities in the quality of faculty between schools or districts than as any absolute measure of teacher quality. A significant body of



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See, for example, Hanushek, E.A., Kain, J.F., O’Brien, D.M., & Rivkin, S. G. (2005, February). The Market for Teacher Quality. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research; and Clotfelter, C.T., Ladd, H. F., and Vigdor, J.L. (2007). How and Why Do Teacher Credentials Matter for Student Achievement? Washington, DC: Urban Institute

research⁷ indicates that teachers’ skill and effectiveness tend to increase most significantly up to their fourth, fifth year, or sixth year of teaching and then improve much more marginally. In view of that research, the U.S. Department of Education requires states to indicate the relative experience of teachers in high-minority/high-poverty vs. low-poverty/low-minority schools as an indication of the comparative equity in teacher quality in those schools (NCLB Section 1111(b)(8)(C)).

Thus, it would be informative to group teachers, for example, into those with 0-2, 3-5, 6-10, and 11+ years of prior full-time teaching experience. The main point is to find some similarly segmented distribution that captures the percentage of experienced vs. inexperienced teachers in a way that could be indicative of their relative teaching proficiency. If the science or mathematics teaching staff of a school or district is significantly composed of teachers in their first few years of teaching, that may be an indication of high teacher attrition and diminished teacher quality – particularly in comparison with schools or districts with more experienced science and mathematics teachers.

Close Elaboration

3. To the extent possible, supplement the basic data on teacher need called for in steps 1 and 2 by collecting the following additional data:
   1. The number of classes that had to be cancelled or could not be offered because adequately qualified teachers were not available to teach them
   2. The degree to which hiring science or mathematics teachers was comparatively difficult – even if successful – in the various schools and districts and whether these difficulties are common statewide or limited to specific schools and districts. A shallow candidate pool can compromise teacher quality because it puts pressure on schools and districts to hire teachers whose qualifications might be less than ideal.

Elaboration

If an estimate of need is based only on the inability to hire adequately qualified teachers for classes actually offered, it fails to account for classes that may have had to be cancelled because no qualified teacher could be found or for classes that were not even offered because a principal or superintendent believed no teacher would be found. This is not an uncommon occurrence in rural schools, in particular, where the problem is further compounded by the fact that many schools are too small to hire an adequately qualified teacher for every subject (especially in the sciences). Collecting data on cancelled classes is difficult, however, because it may not be reported reliably or may be confounded by fiscal considerations. Not to try to collect it, however, is almost certain to ensure an underestimate of the number of teachers actually needed.

Regarding the difficulty of hiring teachers, states and districts have attempted to determine this in various ways. It often involves a survey of appropriate school or district administrative staff. Some surveys use a Likert scale and ask the person interviewed how difficult it was to hire teachers for specific courses – an inevitably subjective estimation that is likely to differ significantly from one individual to the next. Responses to such a survey can then be compared as to relative hiring difficulties between different subjects or between different schools and districts. Other surveys ask school principals or district administrators at some point after the start of the school year how many unfilled or vacant positions they have in science and mathematics.

The least problematic method is to use district administrative records (if these are available and reliable) to determine how many candidates applied for positions in specific subjects – thus indicating how large the pool was in mathematics or science relative to other subjects or how large it was for some districts or schools in comparison with others. While such a comparison of the number of applicants indicates nothing about the comparative qualifications of the candidates, schools and districts with relatively few applicants are certainly at disadvantage in ensuring the uniform high quality of their teacher workforce. And the closer the ratio of applicants to positions in science and mathematics is to 1:1, the more it indicates a potential shortage problem – especially if the ratio is significantly smaller in science and mathematics than in other fields.

Close Elaboration