Taking Aim at Teacher Shortages with Better Data

The COVID-19 pandemic placed unprecedented pressures on the U.S. public education system, making it more difficult to adequately staff public schools, even in grades and subjects that have not historically had shortages.[1] To fill teacher vacancies, schools report they have to increasingly employ individuals with little to no preparation or subject knowledge.[2]

However, even prior to the pandemic, states and local education agencies were working to disentangle and address the many factors that have made teaching a less appealing career choice than it was a few decades ago.[3] Some of the most promising efforts underway to unravel this knot include expanding meaningful career growth opportunities with associated compensation increases, and improving working conditions to minimize burnout, which includes hiring more staff to support students’ mental and physical health and reducing the scope of teachers’ work.[4]

But these efforts overlook some of the factors negatively affecting the strength of the teacher workforce that occur before individuals become teachers, during their pre-service preparation experience. These factors detract from the quantity, quality, and diversity of novice teachers in the professional pipeline, as outlined in Figure 1.

States want and need to understand how they can develop and support initial pathways into teaching that will not only prepare a diverse crop of new teachers, but also ensure that they are successful in their roles and remain in the profession. They are seeking to understand whether there are specific preparation pathways and/or teacher candidate attributes that are most likely to lead to that outcome. Unfortunately, states often struggle to understand the true condition of their prospective teacher pipelines, due to a lack of useful and reliable data sources.[5]

As states seek to address issues related to the quantity, quality, and diversity of the incoming novice PreK–12 teacher workforce, they are concerned with answering four questions:

Question 1: How does the supply of prospective teachers compare to expected demand from schools?

Question 2: Are some preparation program attributes tied to better short- or long-term teacher or student outcomes?

Question 3: Are some prospective teacher attributes tied to better short- or long-term teacher or student outcomes?

Question 4: How can we improve educator preparation in our state to bolster retention?

What data sources are available to help states and others answer these questions? The U.S. Department of Education (ED) collects data on the number of full-time teaching staff and some of their characteristics via its National Teacher and Principal Survey, Civil Rights Data Collection, and Common Core of Data.[6] But these data collections are focused on current and/or recently employed school staff, not on prospective teachers. ED’s Teacher Shortage Areas data collection outlines the subjects in which states anticipate having shortages, but not the specific number of vacancies they expect, or how many new teachers are being prepared in those areas.[7] The primary source of national data on enrolled candidates and completers of educator preparation programs comes from the Higher Education Act’s (HEA’s) Title II data collection. ED annually requires teacher preparation entities and states to collect and report data on the prospective teacher workforce and the attributes of their pre-service preparation.[8]

New America reviewed the most recent HEA Title II data collections to see if and how they could help answer these questions about the novice teacher pipeline.[9] To rate the ability of HEA Title II data to provide answers, we split each question into several sub-questions, as charted in Figure 2 below.

Question 1: How does the supply of prospective teachers compare to expected demand from schools?

1A: How many individuals received a credential allowing them to teach, especially in high-need grade and content areas?

HEA Title II data can fully answer this question.

For HEA Title II data collection, each preparation entity reports the number of completers it prepared by academic major and by subject area, and the state reports the number of completers prepared by each entity in each credentialing area (often referred to as a teacher’s “endorsement area”).

1B: How many individuals were fully licensed to teach, especially in high-need grade and content areas?

HEA Title II supplies no data on whether the credentials program completers receive are “full” licenses or temporary ones that require additional conditions be met in order to continue in the teaching profession long term.[10]

This is an important distinction, given that national teacher survey data, while dated, find that retention rates tend to be higher for fully licensed teachers than for teachers with temporary credentials.[11] Some evidence also points to fully licensed teachers being better prepared for their first year on the job, perhaps due to more pre-service field experience in schools.[12]

1C: What are the demographics of the new teacher pipeline?

Currently, HEA Title II data partially answers this question.

The HEA Title II data collection includes data on race/ethnicity and gender for program enrollees and, for the first time in 2019–20, for program completers. But it does not include this demographic information for those who received credentials allowing them to be the teacher of record, or for those who enter the teaching profession. So while states can see whether preparation entities are recruiting racially diverse teacher candidates and whether those candidates are successfully completing their preparation, they cannot assess whether the new teacher workforce is actually changing.[13]

Because programs are not asked to report enrollment and completion numbers for each specific cohort of teachers, it is impossible to calculate the overall candidate completion rate for a given preparation entity, let alone for any specific demographic group of its candidates.[14] This is a glaring issue with the current data collection—at best it reduces the data’s usefulness for understanding the incoming supply of teachers, and at worst, it leads to inaccurate assumptions about program outcomes.[15]

1D: How many newly credentialed teachers have had field experience or prior work experience in high-need schools?

HEA Title II supplies no data on the context of teacher candidates’ pre-service experiences in the field (sometimes called “student teaching” or “clinical experience”).[16]

Research indicates that new teachers are more successful when they are teaching in the same grade, in the same school level, or in a classroom with student demographics similar to their student teaching classroom, but field placement characteristics are not currently collected.

Question 2: Are some preparation program attributes tied to better short- or long-term outcomes?

2A: Are certain program attributes associated with certain program outcomes, including enrollment, completion, and licensure?

HEA Title II data can partially answer this question.

Program attribute data collected include the “program type” for each preparation entity, which reflects whether it is based at an institution of higher education (IHE) or not, and/or whether it is considered “alternative” or not. The three possible program types include “traditional [IHE-based],” “alternative IHE-based,” and “alternative non-IHE based.”[17]

Title II also includes data on teacher candidates’ pre-service field experiences, including the total number of teacher candidates and the number of hours each candidate engaged in a field experience, as well as the number of full-time faculty, adjunct faculty, and cooperating teachers/K–12 staff supervising these experiences.[18]

Preparation entities are also required to respond affirmatively or negatively to seven “assurances,” including whether they “respond to the identified needs of the local educational agencies or states where the program completers are likely to teach, based on past hiring and recruitment trends,” closely link preparation “with the needs of schools and the instructional decisions new teachers face in the classroom,” and whether all prospective teachers are “prepared to provide instruction to students with disabilities.”[19]

But there can be as many differences between preparation entities of the same type as between entities of different types.[20] In particular, many differences exist between entities labeled as “alternative non-IHE”—while most "serve candidates that are the teacher of record in a classroom while participating in the [preparation program],” the only required shared attribute is that they not be led by institutions of higher education.[21] Title II does not currently collect data on these various differences, although they are almost certain to impact prospective teachers’ outcomes, as well as the outcomes of their students. These include attributes about the field experience's quality, such as qualifications and effectiveness of the cooperating teacher[22] and the frequency of observation and feedback from supervising program faculty, as well as information about when program candidates are hired as a full-time teacher of record (i.e., before vs. after completing the program).

2B: Are certain program attributes associated with certain employment outcomes, including job hiring, hiring “in-field,” retention, and effectiveness?

Currently, HEA Title II collects no data on program completers’ employment outcomes, including hiring rates, attributes of schools that hire them (e.g., urban vs. rural, income level of families, etc.), retention in the near term, or performance at work.[23]

Given that subject-specific preparation appears to be associated with more effective teaching and higher student proficiency in some grades and subjects,[24] hiring data should be nuanced enough that it can be compared to credential data to show whether certain types of programs have more completers being hired “in-field” (i.e., in the same grade span and/or subject as the license endorsement area(s).[25]

Question 3: Are some prospective teacher attributes tied to better short- or long-term teacher or student outcomes?

3A: Are certain teacher attributes associated with certain program outcomes, including program enrollment, completion, and licensure?

States can use HEA Title II data to partially answer this question. They can assess differences in overall enrollment numbers by various teacher attributes, but, again, because programs are not asked to report data for a particular cohort of teachers, it is impossible to calculate completion rates and licensure rates.

And while states do report teacher licensure assessment pass rates for program completers as part of Title II data collection, they do not report demographic or other teacher attribute information associated with these pass rates. Moreover, some preparation programs define “completers” as candidates who have passed the licensure test, leading to 100 percent pass rates that provide little information about obstacles candidates may face in becoming a teacher. Programs should report this type of outcome data for all enrolled candidates, not just for program completers.

3B: Are certain new teacher attributes associated with certain employment outcomes, including job hiring, hiring “in-field,” retention, and effectiveness?

Again, HEA Title II collects no data on employment outcomes and cannot answer questions about how candidates fare in the workforce.

Question 4: How can we improve educator preparation in our state to bolster retention?

4A: Which programs consistently struggle to produce strong outcomes?

HEA Title II data can partially answer this question. One of the most valuable insights the data currently provide is about which preparation entities produce the largest quantity of credentialed teachers overall, and in which credential area(s).

HEA Title II requires states to determine whether any preparation entity should be labeled as “low-performing” or “at-risk” of being low-performing, as a check on ensuring that prospective teachers are receiving adequate preparation so that their future students will receive adequate instruction. HEA Title II asks each state to describe its process for classifying preparation entities as low-performing and also to list and describe any efforts to improve the quality of the current and future teaching force, including providing technical assistance to preparation entities.[26] However, because of the lack of candidate outcome data on licensure and employment outcomes described in the previous sections, it is difficult for states to meaningfully identify and assist programs that are inadequately serving aspiring teachers and their future students.

4B: Are there common features of strong programs that policymakers and preparation programs can learn from?

As with question 4A, the current data collection can partially answer this question, primarily with regards to the quantity of teachers who were successfully credentialed in a given academic year.

But states cannot answer more critical questions. For example, are there common features of preparation programs that produce substantial numbers of candidates of color who successfully pass required licensure tests on the first attempt and become fully credentialed? Are there common features of programs that produce completers who perform well and are retained in high-need schools? Data that answer these types of question can illustrate trends in strong performance that preparation entities can learn from, and they can assist state program authorizers in making well-informed decisions when new programs request permission to operate.

State leaders want and need to better understand how to ensure sufficient quantity, quality, and breadth of diversity in the new teacher pipeline to help every student meet their full potential. The vast majority of educator preparation entities truly want to produce a strong supply of new teachers, but cannot fully do so without meaningful data that can provide insights into their offerings, influence their ongoing decision making for improvement, and allow them to determine their ongoing progress.[27] Better data can also bolster learning and inform choices on the part of hiring districts and prospective teachers.

With schools experiencing more widespread difficulties in hiring well-qualified teachers, there has never been a more critical time for Congress to leverage the potential of the HEA Title II data collection process to collect and share information that is valuable to all of these stakeholders. Here are three recommendations for federal policymakers to help ensure we have the data needed to meet this challenge:

Recommendation 1: Modernize federally mandated HEA Title II data collection and reporting requirements to promote learning and improvement.

Congress should ensure that state education leaders have the information necessary to answer key questions about their teacher pipelines.[28] States must be able to assess candidates’ ability to meet full licensure requirements in the subject area they were prepared in, such as with first-time and best-attempt pass rates on licensure assessments, type and endorsement area of credential attained, and whether the candidate became the teacher of record before completing full licensure requirements. Policymakers should require programs to assign candidates to a cohort upon enrollment so they can track and report completion and licensure data for each of those specific cohorts.[29]

States also need to know program completers’ employment outcomes, such as hiring rates, hiring school characteristics, and retention rates after one, three, and five years in the profession. All data collected should be disaggregated by candidate attributes (e.g., race, gender, age, Pell recipiency, linguistic status, and setting of clinical placement), and by program attributes likely to be related to candidate success (e.g., clinical experience quality, the existence and type of partners, and proportion of candidates who become teachers of record prior to completing the program). Ideally, similar data would be collected on school leadership preparation programs as well.

Some educator preparation entities have raised concerns about the additional burden that could result from changing HEA Title II data collection requirements in this way. Hence, it is important that modernizing the data collection also entail the removal of current data requirements that do not offer valuable insights to stakeholders.[30] ED has also taken recent steps to minimize the time involved to report data by automating many of its Title II data collection processes. For example, ED now pre-populates the reporting form with the prior year’s responses for questions with answers unlikely to vary significantly from the prior year. Additionally, ED automatically fills in answers to many questions in the state form using the relevant data submitted by preparation entities. But it is also critical that states develop more automated systems for sharing data between educator preparation entities and PreK-12 schools, as outlined in the next recommendation.

Recommendation 2: Continue to invest in quality statewide longitudinal data systems and faster data turnaround times.

Beginning in 2005, the federal government has provided grant funding to all but one state to create longitudinal data systems (SLDS) that formally connect data across two or more of the four core agencies overseeing learning and workforce development in the state: early learning, K–12, postsecondary, and workforce.[31] According to a 2021 Education Commission of the States analysis, at least 18 states have a SLDS that can follow students from early learning settings all the way into the workforce, and several of these states use their system to better understand the quantity, quality, and diversity of individuals in their prospective teacher pipelines.[32] But 16 states do not include any postsecondary data in their SLDS, and 12 do not incorporate any data from their K–12 schools.

Ideally, all states would have data systems that could follow students from K–12 into postsecondary and workforce systems in order to help answer more questions they and local employers have about the educator and other industry pipeline, and also to minimize the work that preparation programs must do to report data on candidate outcomes.[33] To maximize the value of these data in understanding and addressing teacher shortages, states would incorporate a consistently-defined set of metrics, and their reporting would be timely. Congress can support these efforts by providing more substantial funding for SLDS as well as definitions that would align data reporting with HEA Title II requirements.[34]

Recommendation 3: Encourage greater coherence across the various state policies affecting the teacher workforce.

While educator preparation is important, data-driven shifts to programs will not be sufficient to attract, develop, and retain the quantity, quality, and diversity of educator talent needed to ensure that all students can succeed. Because state policies that impact the educator pipeline are overseen by various agencies and departments across PreK-12, post-secondary, and workforce, the resulting policy landscape can inadvertently become incoherent, or even contradictory. For example, a state may invest significant resources in recruiting a more diverse teacher workforce without a complementary focus on ensuring support and career growth opportunities to those teachers once they have entered the profession.[35]

When teacher policies are disjointed, it becomes more difficult to recruit and retain educators, which then translates into poorer outcomes for students. To encourage greater coherence, we recommend that Title II of HEA also include a new competitive “Educator Pipeline Innovation'' grant that works to ensure alignment among any state educator policy that is linked to postsecondary education and training—this includes areas as disparate as preparation program approval, initial educator certification and licensure renewal, ongoing professional learning, and career growth opportunities. Such a grant program would more intentionally connect the efforts to support improvements in educator quality, diversity, and access in Title II of HEA with those in Title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, resulting in synergies that can create impact far beyond what either law can do on its own.

The author is grateful to those who provided input in the development of this brief, including Charles Barone and Nicholas Munyan-Penney of Education Reform Now, Roby Chatterji of Center for American Progress, Eric Duncan and Reid Setzer of the Education Trust, Nicole Fuller of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, Roxanne Garza of UnidosUS, Dilan Pedraza of Teach Plus, and Hannah Putnam and Abigail Swisher of National Council on Teacher Quality. This brief also benefited from the invaluable contributions of many New America colleagues: research support from Jazmyne Owens, editorial insights from Elena Silva and Sabrina Detlef, and design and communication support from Julie Brosnan, Fabio Murgia, and Riker Pasterkiewicz. This work is possible thanks to the generous support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Joyce Foundation. The views expressed in this report are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of these foundations.

[1] Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools struggled to fill teacher vacancies in certain grades and subjects, including secondary mathematics and science, special education, and bilingual education. Thomas S. Dee and Dan Goldhaber, Understanding and Addressing Teacher Shortages in the United States, Policy Proposal 2017-05 (Washington, DC: The Hamilton Project, Brookings, April 2017), https://www.brookings.edu/research/understanding-and-addressing-teacher-shortages-in-the-united-states/.

[2] For detailed statistics, see: “2022–23 School Year Staffing Dashboard,” 2022 School Pulse Panel, Institute of Education Sciences, September 27, 2022, https://ies.ed.gov/schoolsurvey/spp/.

[3] For more on the factors detracting from the attractiveness of teaching as a profession, see: Elevating the Education Professions: Solving Educator Shortages by Making Public Education an Attractive and Competitive Career Path (Washington, DC: National Education Association, October 2022), https://www.nea.org/sites/default/files/2022-09/solving-educator-shortage-report-final-9-30-22.pdf; AFT Teacher and School Staff Shortage Task Force, Here Today, Gone Tomorrow? What America Must Do to Attract and Retain the Educators and School Staff Our Students Need (Washington, DC: American Federation of Teachers, July 2022), 13–15, https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/media/2022/taskforcereport0722.pdf; Investing in Teacher Leadership: A Better Way to Make Job-Embedded Professional Learning a Reality in Every School (Scottsdale, AZ: National Institute for Excellence in Teaching, June 5, 2019), https://www.niet.org/assets/ResearchAndPolicyResources/0a76e4966a/investing-in-teacher-leadership.pdf.

[4] Hannah Putnam, “What Teachers Really Want: It Isn’t Just Higher Salaries,” Teacher Quality Bulletin, National Council on Teacher Quality, April 28, 2022, https://www.nctq.org/blog/What-teachers-really-want:-It-isnt-just-higher-salaries; Jenny Muñiz, “States Consider Financial Incentives to Mitigate Teacher Shortages—But Will They Work?” EdCentral (blog), New America, October 3, 2018, https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/states-consider-financial-incentives-to-mitigate-teacher-shortagesbut-will-they-work/.

[5] Tuan D. Nguyen, Chanh B. Lam, and Paul Bruno. “Is There a National Teacher Shortage? A Systematic Examination of Reports of Teacher Shortages in the United States,” Annenberg Institute at Brown University EdWorkingPaper no. 22-631 (August 2022): 21–27, https://doi.org/10.26300/76eq-hj32.

[6] U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, “National Teacher and Principal Survey,” https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/ntps/; U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, “Civil Rights Data Collection,” https://ocrdata.ed.gov/; “State Nonfiscal Reports,” Common Core of Data, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/pub_snf_report.asp.

[7] “Reports,” Teacher Shortage Areas, U.S. Department of Education, https://tsa.ed.gov/#/reports.

[8] Title II of HEA, which focuses on enhancing the quality of PreK-12 educator preparation, was created to serve as a crucial point of connection between our higher education and PreK–12 systems, offering an essential feedback loop between the needs of students and schools, and how educators are prepared by postsecondary entities to meet those needs. Title II requires educator preparation programs to collect and report on certain metrics every year and for the U.S. Secretary of Education to make these data publicly available. U.S. Department of Education, “National Teacher Preparation Data,” Title II Higher Education Act Reports, https://title2.ed.gov/Public/Home.aspx.

[9] New America analyzed HEA Title II data from 2018–19 and 2019–20 school years. Initial analysis began with 2018–19 data, as 2019–20 data was not publicly available until December of 2021.

[10] States do report information about their alternative pathways into the teaching profession and a separate list of institution-of-higher-education-based preparation entities that lead to alternative entry pathways, but they do not report data on the number of candidates enrolled, completed, and/or credentialed via each route.

[11] Analysis based on 2007-08 National Center on Education Statistics’ Schools and Staffing Survey data. The authors also found that significant on-the-job mentorship can raise retention rates among teachers with temporary credentials. Christopher Redding and Thomas M. Smith, “Easy in, Easy out: Are Alternatively Certified Teachers Turning Over at Increased Rates?” American Educational Research Journal 53, no. 4 (July 2016): 1086–1125, https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831216653206.

[12] Donald Boyd et al., “How Changes in Entry Requirements Alter the Teacher Workforce and Affect Student Achievement,” Education Finance and Policy 1, no. 2 (March 2006): 176–216, https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp.2006.1.2.176.

[13] The current teacher workforce far from mirrors the PreK–12 student population’s cultural, racial, and linguistic backgrounds, but many states and districts are focused on changing that because of the positive impact it could have on student engagement and outcomes. New Mexico is one state looking to create a system of ongoing data collection, evaluation, and analysis to support the continuous improvement of teacher preparation programs, particularly as it relates to diversifying the workforce. For more on this topic, see: Raven Deramus-Byers, “Grow Your Own and Teacher Diversity in State Legislative Sessions: What We Can Learn from Successfully Passed Bills,” EdCentral (blog), New America, July 12, 2021, https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/grow-your-own-teacher-diversity-state-legislative-sessions/; While men are also underrepresented in the teaching profession, research has not identified an associated negative impact on outcomes for male students. See: Jan N. Hughes, Wen Luo, Oi-Man Kwok, and Linda K. Loyd; Jantine L. Split, Helma M. Y. Koomen, and Suzanne Jak, “Are Boys Better Off with Male and Girls with Female Teachers? A Multilevel Investigation of Measurement Invariance and Gender Match in Teacher-Student Relationship Quality,” Journal of School Psychology, 50, no. 3 (June 2012): 363–78, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2011.12.002.

[14] Jacqueline King and Jessica Yin, The Alternative Teacher Certification Sector Outside Higher Education (Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, June 7, 2022), https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-alternative-teacher-certification-sector-outside-higher-education/.

[15] DeRamus-Byers, “Grow Your Own”; King and Yin, Alternative Teacher Certification.

[16] While the HEA Title II data collection requires programs to respond to seven “assurances,” including whether prospective general education teachers are prepared to “provide instruction to limited English proficient students,” “provide instruction to students from low-income families” and “effectively teach in urban and rural schools, as applicable,” these are general in nature, not specifically related to clinical experience. See U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, HEA Title II Institutional and Program Report Card on the Quality of Teacher Preparation, (2020), 7, https://title2.ed.gov/Public/TA/Reporting_IPRC_2020.pdf.

[17] U.S. Department of Education, HEA Title II Institutional and Program Report Card, 1.

[18] U.S. Department of Education, HEA Title II Institutional and Program Report Card, 13.

[19] U.S. Department of Education, HEA Title II Institutional and Program Report Card, 17.

[20] Donald Boyd et al., “How Changes in Entry Requirements Alter the Teacher Workforce and Affect Student Achievement,” Education Finance and Policy 1, no. 2 (March 2006): 176–216, https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp.2006.1.2.176.

[21] Historically, the term “alternative” teacher preparation has been used to refer to programs where candidates are not pursuing a bachelor’s degree in education as part of their preparation route (as they typically already hold a bachelor’s degree in another content area) and/or where candidates serve as the teacher of record in a classroom while participating in the route. While the HEA Title II preparation program reporting form suggests the latter definition, there is no consistent definition of “alternative”; each state determines which preparation entities are labeled this way. See U.S. Department of Education, HEA Title II Institutional and Program Report Card, 11; Office of Postsecondary Education, “Preparing and Credentialing the Nation’s Teachers: The Secretary’s 11th Report on the Teacher Workforce,” (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, October 2021), 1, https://title2.ed.gov/Public/Title_II_Secretary's_Report_508.pdf.

[22] Matthew Ronfeldt, Stacey L. Brockman, and Shanyce L. Campbell, “Does Cooperating Teachers’ Instructional Effectiveness Improve Preservice Teachers’ Future Performance?” Educational Researcher 47, no. 7 (June 2018): 405–418, https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X18782906; Kevin C. Bastian, Kristina M. Patterson, and Dale Carpenter, “Placed for Success: Which Teachers Benefit from High-Quality Student Teaching Placements?” Politics of Education Association 36, no. 7 (August 2020): 1583–1611, https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904820951126.

[23] New America analysis of HEA Title II data.

[24] Se Woong Lee, “Pulling Back the Curtain: Revealing the Cumulative Importance of High-Performing, Highly-Qualified Teachers on Students’ Educational Outcome,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 40, no. 3 (April 2018): 359–381.https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0162373718769379

[25] “Out-of-field” refers to when teachers are assigned to teach subjects or grade levels in which they have not been certified by the state as having adequate training and/or qualifications. Rafaela Porsch and Robert Whannell, “Out-of-Field Teaching Affecting Students and Learning: What Is Known and Unknown,” in Examining the Phenomenon of “Teaching Out-of-Field”: International Perspectives on Teaching as a Non-Specialist, ed. Linda Hobbes and Günter Törner, (Singapore: Springer, 2019), 179–191, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3366-8_7.

[26] U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, HEA Title II State Report Card on the Quality of Teacher Preparation and State Initial Teacher Assessment and Credentialing, 2020, 8-14, https://title2.ed.gov/Public/TA/Reporting_SRC_2020.pdf.

[27] Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, “The Six Core Principles of Improvement,” carnegiefoundation.org/our-ideas/six-core-principles-improvement.

[28] New America’s Education Policy program has worked in collaboration with Center for American Progress, Education Reform Now, The Education Trust, National Center for Learning Disabilities, National Council on Teacher Quality, TeachPlus, and UnidosUS to develop a full set of recommended metrics to collect and report.

[29] North Carolina’s educator preparation dashboard currently reports data this way. See “Admissions” in “EPP Enrollment: Admissions, Completions, and Total Enrollment (2015–present),” North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, https://bi.nc.gov/t/DPI-EducatorRecruitmentandSupport/views/EnrollmentAdmissionsandCompletions/Enrollment?%3Aembed=y&%3AisGuestRedirectFromVizportal=y.

[30] For example, see Section 205(a)(1)(F) and (G) in Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, HR 4137, 110th Cong., 2nd sess., August 14, 2008, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-765/pdf/COMPS-765.pdf.

[31] Definition of SLDS from: Carlos Jamieson, Claus von Zastrow, and Zeke Perez Jr., “50-State Comparison: Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems,” Education Commission of the States, December 14, 2021, https://www.ecs.org/state-longitudinal-data-systems. Every state, except for New Mexico, has received at least one federal SLDS grant. “Grantee States,” Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems Grant Program, Institute of Education Sciences’ National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/slds/stateinfo.asp.

[32] Jamieson, von Zastrow, and Perez Jr., "50-State Comparison," https://www.ecs.org/state-longitudinal-data-systems. A handful of states use their comprehensive SLDS to address questions about the attributes and outcomes of their pipelines into teaching (e.g., Illinois and Tennessee). However, many more states publish data on teacher supply than on teacher vacancies. See: Patricia Saenz-Armstrong, “State Reporting of Teacher Supply and Demand Data,” National Council on Teacher Quality (December 2021), https://www.nctq.org/publications/State-of-the-States-2021:-State-Reporting-of-Teacher-Supply-and-Demand-Data#shortagesandsurpluses

[33] While the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics provides data on education workforce job openings, hires, and separations through its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, it includes a broad set of occupations beyond PreK–12 teachers. See: “Educational Services: NAICS 61,” Industry at a Glance Data Tool, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag61.htm.

[34] In FY21, Congress appropriated $33.5 million for SLDS. See “Budget News,” U.S. Department of Education, https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget20/20action.xlsx; States currently have six months to submit HEA Title II data to ED. “National Teacher Preparation Data,” Title II Higher Education Act Reports; Even prior to COVID-19, the publication timing of HEA Title II data has been inconsistent. For example, the 5th and 6th annual reports were published three years apart: “Publications: The Secretary’s Reports,”, HEA Title II, U.S. Department of Education https://title2.ed.gov/Public/SecReport.aspx.

[35] Audra Watson, Travis Bristol, Terrenda White, and José Luis Vilson, “Recruiting and Retaining Educators of Color,” Albert Shanker Institute (blog), July 14, 2015, https://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/recruiting-and-retaining-educators-color