Teacher Preparation Policy
Teacher Supply and Demand Data: Michigan's Educator Workforce Data Report 2020 reports on trends in the issuance of initial teaching certificates in the state. Notably, the report provides state-level data regarding initial certificates between 2014 and 2019. It also provides the percentage and number of initial endorsements issued in 2018-2019 by subject area, including initial CTE and STEM endorsements. However, no connection is made between these data and district-level hiring statistics, and consequently, this report provides an incomplete analysis of teacher production in Michigan.
Teacher Mobility Data: Michigan published a White Paper in December 2018 entitled, Michigan Teacher Mobility by Geographic Location and Locale, which reports trends in school-to-school mobility and attrition within the state teacher workforce. A wide range of teacher mobility data are presented by locale (city, suburb, town, rural) and school type (public school academy or local education authority) and prosperity region. Three-year mobility, attrition, and stability rates are provided from 2014-2015 to 2016-2017. The Educator Workforce report also reports on statewide mobility, including the number and percentage of state public school teacher stayers, movers, and leavers between 2015 and 2017.
Publish data that connect program supply data to district-level demand data.
Teacher preparation programs graduate more candidates each year than actually earn certification, and only some of those certified are ultimately hired to teach in the state. It is certainly desirable to produce a large enough pool to provide districts a choice in hiring, but a substantial oversupply of teacher candidates in some teaching areas serves neither the profession nor the students well. Michigan is on the right track publishing data on teacher production. However, the state should strive to collect a rich set of data that can inform policy decisions, including district hiring data by certification, ethnicity and gender. These data can then be used to determine, when connected with teacher program data, teacher shortage and surplus areas.
Michigan recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis. The state also indicated that work is being done to further the Michigan's ability to better connect the data systems that govern these data components. Each data source cited in this indicator (postsecondary education, employment, and certification) is owned by different entities, and those entities are actively collaborating to streamline data collection, connection, and publication.
1B: Teacher Shortages and Surpluses
It is an inefficient use of resources for individual districts to build their own data systems for tracking teachers. States need to take the lead and provide districts with state-level data that can be used not only for the purpose of measuring teacher effectiveness, but also to gauge the supply and demand of teachers in the state.[1] Furthermore, multiple years of data are necessary to identify staffing trends.
Many preparation programs graduate people who are certified to teach but do not get jobs in the classroom. Often times, this is because these teachers pursue certifications in areas that already have a surplus of teachers (e.g., elementary education), while districts struggle to find applicants to hire in other areas (e.g., special education, science).[2] Given this misalignment between the teachers that teacher preparation programs produce and the hiring needs of school districts, the state should step in to establish a cohesive data reporting system. By creating reports that publicly delineate the number of teachers produced by each teacher preparation program (and therefore by certification area), the state will be better able to identify instances where the production of teachers does not match districts' needs.
Furthermore, the state should consider whether teacher preparation programs are supplying districts with the teachers they need when approving or re-approving programs. Teacher preparation programs exist primarily to prepare teachers for public school positions (approximately 88 percent of teachers work in public schools).[3] If teacher preparation programs produce far more teachers than the state needs in some certification areas and far too few in others, the programs are failing to meeting their state's demand. Moreover, student teaching placements (which tend to be near candidates' teacher prep programs) are highly predictive of where candidates will get their first teaching jobs, therefore also allowing states the ability to predict which open positions are likely to be filled.[4] Given that the preparation program's function is to supply the nearby area (and more generally, the state) with public school teachers, it is incumbent upon the state to make sure the program fulfills that responsibility, particularly through the collection and application of data on teacher production numbers and district demand.
Additional elements are needed to use data to assess teacher supply and demand. For example, states should include in their data systems means of tracking when teachers leave schools or districts, as well as when they re-enter new ones, and should make these data publicly available. These data can support the state's effort to build a cohesive picture of the state's teacher labor market and workforce needs.