Instructional Quality Assessment Tool (Tekkumru-Kisa et al., 2020)
Category: Teacher and Leader Development
Recent survey evidence documents pandemic-era challenges in filling teacher vacancies and hiring from too-small applicant pools. However, direct evidence quantifying changes in teacher supply since the onset of the pandemic is scarce. Using longitudinal teacher job application data from a large southeastern school district, we examine trends in local teacher supply from 2015 to 2023. We find substantial declines in the number of applications per job posting beginning in 2021, with application rates 52% to 75% lower than pre-pandemic projections. These declines are pervasive across both hard-to-staff and easier-to-staff subjects, as well as across higher- and lower-poverty schools. We also document that the new teacher applicant pool was 23% to 31% smaller than pre-pandemic projections during this period. These findings advance our understanding of current teacher staffing challenges and underscore the need for research in additional contexts to establish the broader prevalence of these declines.
Keywords
Teacher supply; teacher job applications; teacher hiring challenges; teacher labor markets; COVID-19 pandemic
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/5wn1-cn60
