New Report on Teacher Supply and Demand

The Department issued its second annual report on teacher supply and demand. The report, available at www.highered.nysed.gov/tsd2007.htm , features 2005-06 data and identifies areas where there are teacher shortages, potential teacher surpluses and future demand for teachers. It presents data for New York State as a whole, its large cities, and 13 geographic regions. The data in the report support statewide, regional, and local planning to ensure that all students have certified and highly qualified teachers. For example, the report will be an important data source for new regional partnerships of P-12 schools and teacher preparation colleges that will address teacher shortages and other teacher quality issues. Based on requests from the field, the report was issued as early as possible this year so that colleges could align teacher education program offerings with the supply and demand data and so students could make more informed decisions about which fields to enter. Some highlights of the data include:

• In 2005-2006, 24,300 certification candidates completed college teacher preparation programs, compared to 20,800 in 2004-2005, a one-year increase of 3,500 teacher candidates.
  
  
• In 2005-2006, 5.5 percent of New York State’s classes in core academic subjects were taught by teachers who were not “highly qualified,” down from 7.9 percent in 2004-2005. However, high poverty schools still had a higher percent of core classes not taught by highly qualified teachers than low poverty schools.
  
  
• Statewide, in 2005-2006, subject areas with 10 percent or more FTE teaching assignments held by teachers without appropriate certification included the arts, bilingual education, career and technical education, English as a second language, library and school media specialist and bilingual special education.
  
  
• In 2005-2006, 17 percent of the workforce was age 55 or older (an increase over 2000-2001) and another 26 percent were age 45 to 54.