Why This Report?

The Science and Mathematics Teacher Shortage

The Gathering Storm estimate is indeed compelling, though perhaps a little less so when we consider that there are approximately

Note

1

National Science Board. (2008). Science and Engineering Indicators 2008. Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation, p. 1-26 (Table 1-7).

450,000 teachers¹ in the U.S. whose main teaching field is science or mathematics. And the institutional commitments to step up teacher production are laudable and important, though again perhaps somewhat less impressive, when we consider that quadrupling the number of physics teachers produced annually by the entire University System of Georgia, for example, would increase the total from

Note

2

"Science Group Bids to Boost Physics Teachers." All Things Considered. Narr. Susanna Capelouto. NPR. Georgia Public Broadcasting, Atlanta. 16 March 2009.

3 to 12². The absence of context, especially the absence of reliable estimates of need, makes it impossible to judge the validity of dire warnings about the shortage of science and mathematics teachers and the adequacy of commitments to address it.

The Importance of State Need Assessments

For various reasons, the estimates of teacher need must be carried out at the state level. In the first place, although the shortage of science and mathematics teachers is a national problem, the severity and specific details of that problem ultimately are manifest in states and especially in districts. Some states and districts have a more acute need than others. Some states may be especially short on chemistry teachers and some on biology teachers. Some states may be net exporters of mathematics teachers even though their rural districts still have a shortage, while other states may turn to foreign countries to import teachers (whose heavily accented English often makes them difficult for many students to understand).

Second, it is ultimately the states that must address their teacher supply and demand problems because ensuring an adequate basic education is their constitutional responsibility. States must assess their need for science and mathematics teachers, and they must develop appropriate measures to respond to it. These measures include marshalling the cooperation of public institutions, which in turn require accurate estimates of need in order to allocate and justify the changes in resources and expenditures that will be involved. An adequate response to a state's shortage of science and mathematics teachers may necessitate regional cooperation among states or assistance from the federal government. Nevertheless, it is the individual states themselves that can most effectively employ the levers of governance and fiscal policy to provide incentives and to hold their public institutions of higher education and local school districts accountable for responding to the identified need for teachers.

Third, as the present project hopes to make clear through the several units that comprise the online report, the determination of teacher need and supply is not a purely mathematical calculation that can be derived in the absence of a discussion of priorities and possibilities that is singularly appropriate at the state level. The ability to determine the adequacy of a state's teacher workforce in science and mathematics rests on a number of considerations that require a state perspective:

• An assessment of the quality of teachers in the workforce
• An evaluation of the effectiveness of state licensure requirements and district placement, staff development, and promotion practices in ensuring that teachers have solid qualifications
• An assessment of the effectiveness of these and other policies in ensuring that all schools throughout the state are staffed by well-qualified teachers
• Decisions about the appropriate size of classes and other assumptions about capacity-related norms of instruction, e.g., whether teachers' workloads should include more time for curriculum planning and consultation with colleagues, whether elementary school teachers should be generalists or subject specialists, whether the remote or online delivery of high-quality instructional content might be a solution for the acute teacher shortage problem in fields like physics
• Attention to the state's economic development needs and the kind of knowledge its students will require for participation in the workforce of the future.

These are all concerns that beg for a state-level consensus among education, political, and community leaders.

Shortcomings of State Need Estimates

Many states regularly undertake a supply and demand assessment of their science and mathematics teacher workforce. Relatively few states apply the most rigorous available methods in developing their assessments, however, let alone attempt an analysis that includes attention to the more normative considerations just noted. States may have a count of classes in science and mathematics that are currently taught by teachers who are teaching out of their field. They may have surveyed school principals and district superintendents to find out whether any of them report particular difficulty in hiring science and mathematics teachers. And they may have projected a decline or increase in the need for teachers based on projections of population growth. A small number of states may have included the impact of increased high school graduation requirements in science and mathematics on their demand estimates for teachers. Very few states, however, have data that are truly reliable – especially if they depend upon independent and often flawed information from schools and districts.

Current assessments of state teacher supply are generally even less adequate than estimates of demand. Only a handful of states have synthesized enough reliable data from multiple sources to gain an accurate picture of the overall quality of their science and mathematics teachers and the comparative quality between districts. Although all states can develop summary reports about the licensure and certification status of their teachers, few states ask deeper questions about the extent to which their licensure practices and policies truly ensure the competence of their teachers in science and mathematics. Many states understand that their teacher supply in science and mathematics is critically low, but few are as thorough as

Note

3

See Critical Path Analysis of California's Science and Mathematics Teacher Preparation System. (2007, March). Sacramento, CA: California Council on Science and Technology and The Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning

California³ in undertaking a comprehensive look at their current and prospective sources of science and mathematics teachers and in analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, and possible "fixes" of every link in the pipeline. And although a number of states and districts now employ financial incentives to attract and retain teachers – especially to high-need subjects and schools – few states have systematically analyzed the impact of local and regional labor market conditions on the state's supply of science and mathematics teachers and their persistence, migration, and attrition.

Urgency of This Project

The lack of sophisticated, thorough, and reliable analysis of teacher supply and demand is not a minor shortcoming. It is a serious threat to our nation's ability to respond successfully to the situation in science and mathematics education that so many of our leaders decry. Policymakers and education leaders simply cannot solve a problem they diagnose incompletely or imprecisely. An effective response to the call for appropriately trained science and mathematics teachers depends both upon an accurate assessment of the teacher needs of states and districts and upon the willingness and capacity of the institutions responsible for recruiting, preparing, and developing teachers to meet the needs identified.

The fact of the matter, however, is that policymakers and education leaders are indeed moving forward in their efforts to address whatever they perceive as the shortage of mathematics and science teachers and with a national sense of resolve and a level of activity unseen since America's response to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik in 1957. The America COMPETES Act, for example, which was signed into law in 2007, calls for hundreds of millions of dollars for K-12 teacher preparation programs in mathematics and science as well as scholarships and stipends for students entering them. More recently, President Obama has announced a $250 million initiative specifically to improve science and mathematics instruction, including the production of 10,000 new science and mathematics teachers over the next five years. It thus becomes imperative to act now both to gain a truly accurate understanding of the problem and to develop the appropriate solutions to it. And that is precisely what the present project was intended to facilitate through the publication of this report.

The project grew out of a major initiative launched by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (A.P.L.U.), with support from the Carnegie Corporation and the National Science Foundation. Trying to take advantage of the unique historical opportunity and momentum, the initiative – called the Science and Mathematics Teacher Imperative (SMTI) supports the efforts of A.P.L.U.'s public university members to enlarge their commitment to produce K-12 science and mathematics teachers with strong qualifications. The present project was funded by the National Science Foundation as an independent part of the SMTI initiative.