Finding and Keeping Math and Science Teachers - what's the real problem?

Last December, the Professional Educator Standards Board (PESB) produced a legislatively-mandated report called "Ensuring an Adequate Supply of Well-Qualified Math & Science Teachers." This report provided a state snapshot of math and science teachers that included information and data about the current math and science teaching force, higher education's capacity to prepare math and science teachers, the various ways and programs that seek to recruit individuals to become teachers in these areas and a list of recommendations for addressing math and science teacher shortages categorized by cost groupings.

The PESB's report draws an important distinction between the recruitment issue --needing more teachers in math and science -- and the retention issue - ensuring the math and science teachers stay in teaching. Recently, researchers Richard Ingersoll and David Perda from the University of Pennsylvania studied this very issue. They claim recruitment of math and science teachers isn't the issue at all, but retaining them is. According to their research colleges and universities produce two and a half times more math and science teachers than is required to fill actual shortages. Some critics say their research is based on an over-inflated number of potential math and science teachers that shouldn't count because they aren't likely to go into teaching, such as teacher-leavers that can return to teaching and people who earned education degrees, but have never taught.

Ingersoll suggests national and state efforts to expand the teacher pipeline to recruit more math and science teachers is misdirected and that the real focus should be retention. They suggest improving working conditions, supporting new teachers, offering better pay, curbing student discipline problems, showing more effective leadership as some ways retention can be addressed. Ingersoll and Perda's research will be published soon.

In our own state, a recent study by Ana Elfers and Marge Plecki at the University of Washington showed that during the period from 2001-02 to 2005-06, eleven percent of graduates from Washington's teacher preparation programs received endorsements in math and/or science (1,656 of 15,020). Sixty percent of those graduates were employed in the first year following their certification - substantially higher than the employment rate of 46% for all graduates during the same time period.

However, statistics predict that 25% of those 1,656 math and science teachers will leave Washington classrooms within five years. Ingersoll might very well be right -- we are continually filling a leaky bucket.