STEM teacher workforce in high-need schools resilient despite shrinking supply and increasing demand

The teacher workforce in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) has been a perpetual weak spot in public schools’ teaching rosters. Prior reports show the pipeline of new STEM teachers into the profession is weak while demand for instruction in STEM fields continues to grow. This paper seeks to document whether and how the STEM teacher workforce in high-need settings has been impacted by these pressures. It analyzes successive waves of nationally representative teacher survey data to explore demographics and qualifications among the secondary STEM teacher workforce in high-need settings has fared over time. Results show the STEM teacher workforce in high-need schools is consistently less likely to be experienced, less likely to hold any degree in a STEM field, less likely to hold a master’s degree, and less likely to be fully certified than STEM teachers in more advantaged settings. Yet, surprisingly, the observed qualifications gaps across high- versus low-need settings are either stable or slightly narrowing over time. Certain STEM fields—namely, physical sciences and computer science—rely on a less qualified workforce than those in math or biology, with low levels of teacher qualifications observed across both high- and low-need settings. Though even when considering field-specific alignment between teachers’ background qualifications and their teaching assignments, the qualifications gap between high- and low-need settings has been slowly shrinking in three of four STEM fields analyzed here. In addition to high-need schools, small schools (based on enrollment size) rely more heavily on underqualified STEM teachers.