Project Focus, Objectives & Limitiations

Focus and Objectives

The focus of this project is the supply and demand of secondary school science and mathematics teachers. This is because it is the science and mathematics teacher shortage at the secondary level that is of particular concern nationwide. Indeed, there appears not to be a national shortage of elementary school teachers at the present time. And although there may indeed be a serious scarcity of elementary teachers who are sufficiently well-qualified to teach science and mathematics effectively at a level that meets our highest expectations and standards, this is an issue lying beyond the scope of this project.

The project had several objectives:

1. Undertake a thorough analysis of the technical issues surrounding state-level supply and demand assessments for middle and high school science and mathematics teachers
2. Identify the extent to which the current research base can inform efforts to improve these supply and demand estimates
3. Develop guidelines, grounded in the research insofar as possible, to help state officials, education leaders, and other stakeholders appraise the adequacy of their current need estimates of science and mathematics teachers and develop estimates that are more thorough and reliable.

From the beginning, the third objective was considered to be the central contribution of the project. It was – and still is – hoped that the prospect of having more reliable assessments of states' needs for science and mathematics teachers would provide encouragement to state officials and education leaders not only to undertake such assessments but to use them as the basis for developing statewide efforts to address the needs identified. Consistent, however, with the purpose ("exploratory research") for which the grant for the project was given, the project report is as much a summary of findings of the author's exploration as it is a practical guide. Indeed, an appreciation of the challenges and opportunities confronting the effort to develop reliable teacher supply and demand assessments is critical for understanding the justification of the guidelines and recommendations that are offered.

Limitations

There are limitations, however, to what any effort to improve estimates and projections of teacher supply and demand can accomplish. Forecasting supply and demand in any labor field can never be an exact science. For one thing, it involves predictions about the future, and even the near term involves uncertainties that only increase the farther into the future we project. For another, analyses that may reliably identify or predict overall trends at a national or state level often fail to capture local realities (e.g., a uniquely local shortage of teachers in a certain subject) that may be statistically anomalous in the larger picture.

Likewise, determinations of teacher demand and of the adequacy of the teacher supply are inherently imprecise because they involve a number of the value-laden or other contingent considerations we noted earlier:

1. The acceptability of the quality of the teachers currently in the classroom or available to be hired
2. The courses needed in the school curriculum to achieve desired educational outcomes
3. The appropriate class size and other features that define state or district norms of teaching practice
4. The labor market for teachers, which can fluctuate due both to exogenous factors (e.g., increases or decreases in salaries in other professions) and to the deliberate manipulation of teacher compensation or opportunity costs (e.g., easing entry into the profession).

Finally, although, in the abstract, greater reliability is always preferable, the effort to increase the accuracy of supply and demand estimates by making improvements in a state's teacher data or by devoting more resources to ensuring statistical rigor may run up against limits of cost-effectiveness. The priority of such improvements and the extent of the resources that can be committed to them are decisions that state officials will have to make