Precollege Science and Mathematics Teachers Monitoring Supply, Demand, and Quality (1990) / Chapter Skim
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3. Determining Supply: Individual and District Activities
3. Determining Supply: Individual and District Activities
Pages 60-91
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From page 60... ...
The panel attempted to answer that question, particularly for secondary school science and mathematics teachers, by looldug at three sources of evidence: (1) state and national models of teacher supply and demand; (2)
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From page 61... ...
There is a continuous flow of teachers into and out of the teaching force, as shown in Figure 3.1. This diagram can apply to the nation, a state, a school district, or to special groups of schools such as rural or inner city schools, or to special types of teachers such as science teachers, mathematics teachers, or minority teachers.
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From page 63... ...
Tables 3.1 and 3.2 show retention rates for public school teachers in the states of Illinois and New York for mathematics, science, and the total for all subjects. (As we point out later, the lack of difference in rates by subject may be due to the influences of general enrollment declines during the early 1980s.)
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From page 64... ...
In Figure 3.1 we have labeled all sources of teacher supply other than continuing teachers as "new entrants" or "reentrants." Major categories under the heading of new entrants include newly certified persons, persons with previous teaching experience and certification (i.e., reentrants people who come from the so called reserve pool of teachers) , persons hired through some alternative or emergency certification procedure, and in-migrants.
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From page 65... ...
Although this report is concerned with science and mathematics teachers, most of the literature on teacher supply does not distinguish between these teachers and other elementary and secondary school teachers. Consequently, we must look to the broader literature for evidence on incentives and teachers' responses to them.
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From page 66... ...
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From page 67... ...
It is also important to keep in mind the unit of analysis that provides the focus for particular studies of the determinants of teacher supply. For example, a number of studies report that recruitment efforts by individual school districts have been successful in expanding the quantity and quality of applicants for teaching positions.
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From page 68... ...
In addition, many beginning teachers lost their jobs as fiscally strapped school districts reduced staff in response to enrollment declines. Since the probability of obtaining a teaching position is a critical factor influencing college students' decisions about whether to train to teach, the decline in this probability was an important factor contributing to the decline in the proportion of college students preparing to teach.
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From page 69... ...
A second explanation is that the decline in the number of teaching vacancies during the l970s left many newly certified graduates without job offers in teaching. The fact that a large proportion of graduates certified to teach do not teach raises the interesting question of who enters teaching and who does not.
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From page 70... ...
For white certificants with other subject specialties, the NTE score was not an important predictor of the probability of entry. The likely explanation for this pattern concerns the opportunity cost of becoming a teacher that is, what one gives up if one decides to teach.
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From page 71... ...
The implications that one draws from the negative relationship between NTE score and the probability of entry into teaching for white college graduates trained in chemistry and mathematics depend on one's assessment of the relationship between NTE score and teaching effectiveness. If NTE score were a strong predictor of teaching effectiveness, the results would imply that the profession of teaching is losing a high proportion of the most promising potential teachers.
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From page 72... ...
Consequently, studies that examine only whether districts have applicants for teaching positions, without paying close attention to the skills of the applicants, do not provide reliable information about the influences of school district salaries, working conditions, and recruiting practices on the ability to staff the schools with skilled teachers. How Long to Stay in Teaching One element of teacher supply that has an important influence on the demand for new teachers is the length of time that teachers already in the schools stay in teaching.
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From page 73... ...
The studies also find some differences in the career paths of secondary school teachers with different subject specialties. For example, Figure 3.3, which is based on a sample of North Carolina teachers who began their careers in the late 1970s, shows that chemistry and physics teachers tended to leave teaching sooner than did secondary school teachers with other subject specialties.
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From page 74... ...
One significant research puzzle is that the studies using longitudinal data tend to find greater differences in attrition rates by subject area than do the studies comparing cross-sections of teachers for two consecutive years. The likely explanation concerns the timing of the data.
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From page 75... ...
will increase in most parts of the country in the 1990s; as a result, involuntary layoff; will be rare, and in some regions there may be a teacher shortage. Whether to Retum to Teaching Until recently, the national teacher supply and demand model used by NCES assumed that newly minted college graduates provide the only source of teacher supply available to fill new vacancies.
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From page 76... ...
were much less likely to return to teaching than teachers with subject specialties that paid lower salaries in business and industry. Thus, the limited evidence currently available suggests that the reserve pool is less likely to be a significant source of supply of chemistry, physics, and mathematics teachers in the future than it will be a source of teachers in other fields, especially elementary education.
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From page 77... ...
Changes in pension portability rules, a policy recently discussed by the National Governors' Association (1988) , may have a significant influence on the rate of interstate mobility of teachers, and consequently, may influence the balance of teacher supply and demand.
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From page 78... ...
Five states require only 25 years of service for maximum benefit; 10 states require that teachers be employed 30 years and be 65 years of age to obtain maximum retirement payment; 7 states provide maximum payment for teachers 55 years of age with 25 years of service. Between 1979 and 1982, special early retirement incentives were offered by some school systems and states (Wood, 1982~.
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From page 79... ...
The panel also recommends that resources be devoted to monitoring trends in the levels of key incentives that influence teacher supply. Timely information about changes in the proportion of newly certified teachers who obtain teaching positions, the competitiveness of teacher salaries relative to opportunity cost salaries, the amount of reciprocity in certification across states, and the portability of teacher pensions may provide policy makers with early warnings about likely changes in the supply of teachers.
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From page 80... ...
As a result, the design of the models implicitly assumes that variation in these practices do not have a marked impact on the ability of individual school districts to attract skilled math and science teachers. While the variation in practices does not matter in using models to project the supply of teachers in a state or in the country, it does suggest that the models do not provide reliable information about the supply of skilled teachers available to individual school districts.
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From page 81... ...
The section emphasizes school district practices because they provided the focus for the case studies and the conference with the personnel directors. However, it is critical to keep in mind that determination of who teaches in the schools depends not only on these practices, but also on applicants' responses to these practices.
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From page 82... ...
Attrition During the School Year While most suburban districts and smaller-sized districts tend to concentrate their recruiting on finding strong applicants in late spring to fill vacancies expected for the following September, many urban districts hire teachers throughout the year to fill unanticipated vacancies resulting from teacher resignations and unexpected enrollment growth. In fact, the personnel directors from several urban districts reported that as many as half of the teachers they hire are asked to start teaching during the school year, rather than in September.
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From page 83... ...
While there was enormous variation in the way personnel directors found applicants, some patterns emerged. First, almost all personnel directors indicated there was no shortage of qualified applicants for teaching positions in science or mathematics at this time.
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From page 84... ...
Screening Applicants The strategies used to screen applicants for teaching positions, including who does the screening and how it is done, varied considerably from district to district. Our discussions with school districts indicated that recruitment of new teachers by large school systems with diverse student populations was often hindered by the fact that recruiters could not specify the school to which the applicant would be assigned.
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From page 85... ...
The central personnel office weeds out unpromising applicants and passes on to school principals a list of promising candidates. In the words of the acting superintendent, who had been personnel director for a great many years (as quoted in Shivers, 1989~: In a nutshell, our aim here is to use the central staff to do a paper screening of the candidates, to do some initial interviewing, and then to forward as quickly as possible as many reasonable candidates as possible to the building principal or the curriculum coordinator [department chair]
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From page 86... ...
Interview panels, which are put together by the personnel director and by department heads, include three to six interviewers [typically including] the appropriate district-level department chair, a secondary school principal, a buildinglevel department chair and another teacher from the department, and one or two central office administrators ....
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From page 87... ...
Timing Personnel officers in some school districts, especially well-financed, growing districts, are authorized to offer binding contracts to strong candidates before the exact number and composition of vacancies are known. Several personnel directors suggested that this practice facilitates their recruitment efforts by allowing them to recruit aggressively in colleges and universities during the spring months and to sign up promising candidates before other districts had ascertained the number and nature of their vacancies.
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From page 88... ...
Some of the differences in salary scales were responses to differences across communities in the cost of living. However, the comments of the large district personnel officers indicated that the salaries they could offer played a significant role in the ability of school districts to attract a strong applicant pool and to capture the most capable candidates from the pool.
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From page 89... ...
The reason concerns the potential change in the overall balance between teacher supply and demand. With the exception of a few fiscally constrained urban districts, most districts included in the case studies reported an adequate number of qualified candidates for each vacancy in mathematics and science.
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From page 90... ...
Conclusions The evidence on school district hiring practices has two implications for understanding teacher supply and demand. First, as the demand for new hires increases in the 1990s due to increases in both student enrollment and teacher recruitment rates, recruiting, screening, and hiring practices are likely to have a much greater impact on a school district's ability to attract skilled science and mathematics teachers than is the case in the late 1980s.
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From page 91... ...
In addition, although the teacher supply and demand models considered in the panel's interim report do not use school districts as units of analysis, many decisions are made at the district level that affect supply and demand. As our case studies and interviews with school district personnel directors have shown, school districts vary greatly in the initiative they exert to fill their demand for teachers of subjects experiencing shortages.
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