To understand how states are experiencing teacher shortages around the country, the Learning Policy Institute reviewed teacher workforce reports and state agency documents covering the 2020–21 or 2021–22 school years. These state-specific data sources are used to estimate the number of teachers not fully certified for their teaching assignments as well as count the number of unfilled teaching positions reported by each state. State laws typically specify that teachers who are not fully certified can be hired or assigned only if a fully certified teacher is not available. Therefore, both data points provide a strong indicator of the severity of shortages, but not all states report these data.
Based on data from the states with published information, 47 states plus the District of Columbia had an estimated 286,290 teachers who were not fully certified for their teaching assignments. The 21 states with published data on vacancies had 27,844 unfilled teacher positions. (See Table 1.) These estimates indicate that, at a minimum, 314,134 positions were either unfilled or filled by teachers not fully certified for their assignments, representing about 1 in 10 of all teaching positions nationally.
Additionally, these data are broken out by state. Table 2 (see PDF) captures the estimated minimum number of teachers not fully certified for their teaching assignments and the number of unfilled positions in each of the states with published data for the 2020–21 or 2021–22 school years (the most recent year of data available). Importantly, states vary in how they certify their teachers and report on their certification status. A further description of the data can be found in the PDF.
Research for this resource was supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Core operating support for LPI is provided by the Heising-Simons Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Raikes Foundation, Sandler Foundation, and MacKenzie Scott. The ideas voiced here are those of the authors and not those of our funders.