Targeted Challenges, Not a Universal Crisis: How Does the Proportion of Teacher Job Postings Vary by Subject Area?
Popular accounts of teacher staffing shortages are often oversimplified. News stories warn national shortages are at “crisis levels,” but schools face a complex mix of staffing issues. Shortages exist in specific subject areas (e.g., science and mathematics), among teachers from specific backgrounds (e.g., teachers from historically marginalized racial and ethnic backgrounds), in specific schools (e.g., schools serving historically marginalized groups), and in specific locations (e.g., rural and urban schools rather than suburban schools).
Anecdotes, surveys, and retrospective administrative data all suggest these nuances. But policymakers need more current, systematic information on their local staffing problems to inform more timely and effective responses. One way to get a real-time assessment of staffing challenges is to look at district job positing. We gathered data from district websites in Washington state on a weekly basis for an entire school year to learn about teacher shortages in real-time.
We already knew staffing issues differ by subject. But these real-time results show how state policymakers could use job posting data to identify staffing challenges and craft targeted solutions, like giving incentives to special education teachers working in schools with mostly disadvantaged students.
