Precollege Science and Mathematics Teachers Monitoring Supply, Demand, and Quality (1990) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
6. Data Needs and Research Opportunities
6. Data Needs and Research Opportunities
Pages 157-182
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 157... ...
1b understand how the supply and quality of science and mathematics teachers will respond to changes in demand, data are needed to support the construction of measures of demand, of potential supply, of quality to the extent possible, and of models of the responsiveness of supply to incentives and to changes in demand. It is the panel's view that current national data collection efforts and knowledge of the relation between incentives and supply are inadequate to support rich structural modeling of teacher demand and supply.
|
From page 158... ...
, research issues (primarily for NSF) , research facilitation suggestions, and finally a major recommendation for a series of conferences bringing together NCES and officials of school districts and state education agencies to discuss teacher supply, demand, and quality concerns.
|
From page 159... ...
* The panel recommends that provision be made in the budget for the National Center for Education Statistics to conduct the Schools and Staffing Survey on a regular cycle and that the budget include funds for follow-up surveys of teachers who leave teaching and for in-house and eMernal analysis of the survey data Data Related to Demand In general, the panel finds demand data to be relatively adequate.
|
From page 160... ...
Although SASS data from LEAs will provide changes in the number of secondary science teachers by science subject and changes in the number of mathematics teachers and computer-science teachers, the SASS local education agency form does not track student enrollments in a parallel fashion. The SASS teacher questionnaire could be used to obtain enrollment data by race/ethnicity and sex for particular science and mathematics courses by expanding the question that asks teachers sampled for the names of the courses they teach and the number of students in each course.
|
From page 161... ...
Our highest-priority data recommendations for the short run call for better data on attrition, on the hinug rate for newly certified teachers, on the supply potential of segments of the reserve pool, and on incentives that influence individuals' decisions to enter or leave teaching. The panel recommends obtaining better data or making fuller use of existing data on the following aspects of supply, which are presented in 'pipeline" order: 1.
|
From page 162... ...
It would be useful to include this information in NCES's Digest of Education Statistics. The effect of reciprocity on the mobility of the reserve pool is an issue for research.
|
From page 163... ...
by school district and the proportion of those who applied for positions and were hired. These data, which can be collected from college placement offices, provide an indicator of the extent to which school districts draw from the pool of newly certified teachers, rather than teachers from the reserve pool.
|
From page 164... ...
Data from the longitudinal studies High School and Beyond and NELS:88 provide opportunities for studying the reserve pool from this perspective. Data on teaching status one year after graduation are available from the Recent College Graduates (RCG)
|
From page 165... ...
illustrate the use of certification data to estimate the size of this component of the reserve pool.
|
From page 166... ...
Information on such school practices may be relatively easy to obtain from teachers or principals through existing survey programs, particularly the SASS school administrator and teacher questionnaires. Other sources include the teacher questionnaires for NAEP science and mathematics assessments, NELS:88, the High School and Beyond administrative and teacher survey, and the SASS follow-up survey of teachers who remain in teaching.
|
From page 167... ...
We note that NCES has implemented the following recommendation from the panel's interim report and urge them to continue this practice: 'We recommend that the Center for Education Statistics surveys of teachers regularly include measures of certification Type and sub ject fields) and that the Center obtain and disseminate available information on state certification policies and practices." However, certification data should be distinguished not only by type of certification, as the SASS teacher questionnaire now does, but also by whether certification was earned through an alternative certification
|
From page 168... ...
During the period of this study, important initiatives were undertaken by NCES to establish new surveys that better describe teacher supply and demand in the United States. Standing out among these efforts are the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS)
|
From page 169... ...
Ease of access means not only the announcement that data are available, but also good documentation for the data, and the creation of data dictionaries and computer interfaces to facilitate the use of data. Data on teacher supply, demand, and quality can be made more easily available to researchers and students by routinely providing subsets of data bases, or tapes or disks of sample or complete data sets from surveys, for use on personal computers.
|
From page 170... ...
Problems arise, however, when such data are aggregated to obtain a national perspective of the conditions of teacher supply and demand. School districts, for example, are not likely to record whether a new hire is new to teaching or simply new to the district.
|
From page 171... ...
1. The behavioral determinants of student selection of science and mathematics courses at the secondary school level, including the effects of changes in graduation requirements and of student preferences for subject areas; *
|
From page 172... ...
For the third, research is needed on the relationship between state separation rates for retirement and individual reasons for retiring, external shock variables, and incentives and disincentives for retention and retirement. Related issues are the effect of separation rates on individual school districts and on the teaching force for different fields of study.
|
From page 173... ...
Thus teacher quality is an important variable in teacher supply models, and we need to understand the responsiveness of teacher quality to incentives. Obviously, teacher quality is determined in part by the quality of teacher preparation programs; the issue is the degree to which these programs prepare teachers to be effective pedagogues in transmitting knowledge about mathematics or science.
|
From page 174... ...
It is also affected by curricular structure and processes and by teacher characteristics such as subject matter competence and ability to facilitate learning, which in turn are affected by the quality of teacher training. A frequently used measure of teacher quality is teacher qualificationscourses taken, credentials received, etc.
|
From page 175... ...
But that linkage needs to be explicit; it constitutes an important area in which substantial research efforts need to be carried on. Some aspects of research that would attempt to relate teacher characteristics, school environment variables, and home environment variables to student outcomes and to recognize the importance of variation in school outcomes are described below.
|
From page 176... ...
This research should explore variation in outcomes as well as average outcomes. Although we recognize the difficulty of conducting controlled experiments in education, we believe such experiments could be particularly useful in studying the relationship between measurable teacher qualifications and student outcomes.
|
From page 177... ...
Data Bases for Personal Computers ~ carry out a doctoral dissertation related to teacher quality or models of teacher supply and demand, access to relevant data is needed. The panel recommends that data from education agencies and studies relating to education be made available in the forte of tapes of the complete data sets, as well as user-friendly disks of data samples.
|
From page 178... ...
Districts with high socioeconomic status might do so to reward their outstanding teachers. Still other school districts finding it difficult to recruit teachers might offer such training as an incentive for hiring, as is done by the Dade County and New York City school districts.
|
From page 179... ...
The 16,000 school districts in this country operate relatively independently. The staffing problems they encounter vary widely, and the actions taken by district superintendents and personnel directors to address these problemsare both innovative and varied.
|
From page 180... ...
· The panel selected a pair of adjacent districts in Maryland for in-depth case studies because it was thought they would draw on the same labor market. In fact the large urban district recruited at numerous job fairs (occasions at which as many as 20 teacher-training institutions gather their graduates on one campus for a one- or two-day meeting)
|
From page 181... ...
The conference of personnel directors of large school districts provided a striking example of the potential benefit of such conferences. The personnel director from New York City suggested that it would be helpful to have some central organization collect and disseminate information on the number of persons enrolled in teacher training programs, by institution, as contrasted with the currently available data on education majors.
|
From page 182... ...
an annual conference of dissect personnel who are responsible for the decisions that affect teacher Apply, demand, and quality to maintain an awareness of the current~issues in teacher supply and demand; (b) periodic conferences of state personnel who prepare state and local supply and demand projections to facilitate improvement in these models; and (c)
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.