1998 Supply and Demand Ch. 2, Reserve Pool Write-up

2. Wisconsin Educator Demand Information

Highlights of Findings
Availability of Full-Time Positions in Wisconsin Public Schools
Educators Newly Hired by Wisconsin Public Schools
Ethnic Origin of Wisconsin Public School Educators
Employment Projections for Educators With No Experience
Attrition
Longitudinal Attrition Rates in Wisconsin Public Schools
Projected Total Number of Retirements in the Wisconsin Public Schools
Projecting the Number of Educational Personnel Needed for the Next Five Years

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Highlights of Findings

• This 1997-1998 school year starts the gradual yearly increase in the number of educators reaching retirement age. This increase will continue through 2007-2008. The employability of all newly prepared educators should show a steady improvement with those fields showing a current shortage having an excellent outlook.
  
  
• The field attrition rates for 1996-1997 showed a slight increase from previous years probably due to increased retirements, with general education just 7.5% and special education 11.8%. When the transfers within education and the out-of-state mobility is taken into account the attrition rates are even lower for all fields.
  
  
• The demand for educators is affected by numerous factors, including many outside the parameters of this study, such as growth in pupil enrollment, economic trends, and state policy decisions.
  
  
• The number of available educators at the present time continues to exceed the demand in most fields because there is not a balance between those fields of need and the surplus areas.
  
  
• The percentage of candidates who find positions in Wisconsin Public Schools is slightly higher for most fields of special education. Also high were family/consumer education, English as a second language, technology education, library/media, occupational therapy, and physical therapy.
  
  
• The percentage of those prepared who find positions in Wisconsin public schools is smallest in elementary education, English, social studies, and marketing. An additional license generally enhances an educator's employment prospects--especially in special education.
  
  
• There appears to be a much larger pool of candidates for rural and suburban areas near population centers than for the large urban districts.

Availability of Full-time Positions in Wisconsin Public Schools

The 1997-1998 database permitted the tabulation of educational positions by full-time equivalents (FTE). This information makes it possible to investigate the number of educators who find full-time versus part-time employment. The availability of full-time employment is greatest in elementary and special education. On the other hand it is relatively common to find those employed as middle or high school teachers working part-time. Middle and high school programs are not self-contained and are composed of those who teach in discreet subject fields, and small districts may offer fewer sections of some subjects compared to large districts. The 1999 edition of this study will provide an analysis showing the proportion of individuals hired on a part-time basis in each subject field and the longitudinal employment pattern of these educators.

Educators Newly Hired by Wisconsin Public Schools

A profile of all the sources on newly hired educators without experience is shown in Table 4. When the out-of-state and Wisconsin prepared teachers are combined, the percentage of teachers who were hired without experience was 75 percent at the elementary level, was 56 percent at the secondary level, and was 59 percent in special education.

The data in Table 5 shows considerable variation in the total number of educators hired each year. Considering that the growth in the public school pupil population has been very consistent, it appears that the variations in the number of newly hired teachers are often a factor more related to the economy and state policy decisions than to any large increases in pupil population. This can be seen by the large increase in 1990-1991 due to the retirement window followed by a decrease in 1991-1992. The decrease in 1993-1994 appears to be a result of school districts being uncertain about their state funding. The increase in 1994-1995 may be the result of districts having prior knowledge of their level of state support and the rebound from the cutbacks of the previous year. Data from 1995-1996 shows a decrease in the number of newly hired teachers and this decrease continued into the 1996-1997 school year. The 1997-1998 school year had a 329 FTE increase in the number of newly hired educators, reversing the trend from the previous two years.

Ethnic Origin of Wisconsin Public School Educators

The extent to which students can identify with educators of diverse ethnic origin is an important variable in their learning experience. If the number of teachers of each ethnic heritage is proportional to the number of students with similar backgrounds, appropriate role models will be present. Figure 2 shows a graphic profile of the ethnic origin of educators in Wisconsin Public Schools.

Figure 2

TOTAL TEACHERS WITH ETHNIC ORIGIN OTHER THAN WHITE

Elementary/Special Secondary/Specialty

Approximately 97 percent of educators in the Wisconsin Public Schools in the 1996-1997 school year were identified as White; approximately 87 percent of the pupils were similarly identified. The percent of Black pupils was 9.3 with only 2.38 percent of the educators so identified. Two percent of the pupils were Hispanic, while only .6 percent of the educators had a similar background. Asian pupils represented only .8 percent of the pupil population while only .26 percent of the educators had the same background. The American Indian population was .6 percent of the pupils, with only .19 percent of the educators so identified. Thirty-six teachers did not identify their ethnic heritage and were not included. The extent to which Wisconsin teacher preparation programs are preparing educators of diverse ethnic background is shown in Table 6. This table includes two years of data so that the yearly fluctuations in enrollment are reduced.

Source: Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Data from the 1996-1997 Staff and Teacher Personnel Report.

Employment Projections for Educators With No Experience

This report provides newly prepared teachers and those with no previous experience an estimate of their probability of employment in Wisconsin public schools by relating the current level of preparation in each subject field to the number of newly hired teachers in the state. The data in Table 7 presents the analysis for the 1997-1998 school year. Because this information is so important in describing the demand for educators in Wisconsin, a detailed explanation of the procedures used to generate the various columns of data follows.

First, the number of Wisconsin prepared teachers who earned their eligibility for new licenses the previous year (column 1) is divided into the number of newly hired Wisconsin-prepared teachers hired during the current year (column 2) in that licensing field. The result is the employment projection (column 3) of teachers who are securing their first positions in that licensing field. Many of the newly hired teachers were prepared several years prior to their first employment and are also included in this projection. Since some teachers in that same licensing field are also eligible for licenses in other teaching fields, the second calculation takes into account all the teachers who have secured employment in some other field in which they may have had an additional license. This number is shown in column 4, and the resulting percentage increase in the employment is indicated in column 5. The total of all those employed who earned that license, including those teaching in the field and individuals who secured a position in some alternative field, is shown in column 6. The employment projections (column 7) of teachers holding multiple licenses is obtained by dividing all the newly hired teachers who had a license in a specific field, even if they were teaching in an alternative area (column 6), by the number of teachers who were eligible for licenses in that field the previous year (column 1). The findings of this employment analysis have generally remained relatively constant during the past half-dozen years.

For example, a teacher eligible for a license in both elementary education and learning disabilities and who secured a position as a third-grade teacher is represented in the EL (K-8) row and is one of the 1,709 individuals indicated in column 1. This person has an employment projection in elementary education of 26 percent as indicated in column 3. This person also is counted in the learning disabilities licensing area in column 4, which indicates that 19 teachers holding a learning disabilities license secured positions in some other field. Thus, the higher employment projection of 38 percent shown in column 7 of the learning disabilities licensing field is more representative of this individual's employment outlook. Column 5 of the EL (K-8) row indicates only 4 percent of elementary education teachers had an additional license that contributed to their employment prospects. Table 7 represents one way to present the demand for educators. The actual projection of teacher needs is so complex that a single formula can lead to errors unless related variables are considered to clarify this information. Important factors to consider in the interpretation of the table include:

1. Nonpublic school and out-of-state employment opportunities are not included in these tabulations. Past data have indicated that the percentage of teachers prepared in Wisconsin who will leave to teach in other states is about the same as the percentage of those prepared in other states who come to Wisconsin to teach (Table 4). Approximately 5 percent will find positions in nonpublic schools, mainly at the elementary level (see 1990 study).
   
   
2. Many teachers, such as those in early childhood education, early childhood-exceptional educational needs, and speech and language pathology are employed by agencies that are not represented in public school data.
   
   
3. The area of reading is omitted because licensure in this field requires that the teachers also have a license in some other teaching field. A number of persons entering this field are experienced teachers transferring within a school district and would not be identified as new hires in this analysis. Thus, the need for teachers in this field can be more accurately projected by other analyses such as emergency licenses (Chapter 3) and the district survey reported in the 1997 edition of this report. The same rationale was followed for other support staff, such as school counselors, library/media specialists, and administrators. Driver education was deleted because the number of newly hired teachers was too small to draw meaningful conclusions.
   
   
4. Special education has a large number of teachers employed on emergency licenses (for example, emotional disturbance and learning disabilities). A number of these teachers have experience and consequently do not show up in the category of new hires without experience due to the limitations of the database used. However, these teachers cannot be included with the new hires without experience since this year's database did not permit the separation of these teachers, with the result that the projections in Table 7 are suppressed in these two fields. The number of emergency licenses in general education is relatively small and does not represent full-time teaching to the extent that it does in special education, so a correction for this factor is not warranted for most other fields.
   
   
5. To understand the employment prospects it is necessary to take into account the reserve pool and the declining number of positions in various fields. The field of early childhood-EEN has been over supplied with teachers for several years. This explains, in part, why 15 percent of the newly hired teachers were employed in other fields, largely in general elementary education programs. The severely disabled area is included in the CD field because the database does not differentiate between these two licensing areas.
   
   

The accuracy of these employability percentages is based on the stability of the pupil population, consistent levels of teacher preparation, variables influencing attrition, retirement levels, and state policy decisions. Fluctuations in these factors will impact on employability. Table 7 provides a comparison of employment opportunities in the different areas of education. It is important to note that the data in this table represents newly hired, inexperienced teachers who received their preparation prior to August 31, 1997, and were employed during the 1997-1998 school year. Table 9 is a three-year average of the data in Table 7 which smoothes out the yearly fluctuations in the employability of newly hired teachers, and thus is, to an extent, a more accurate projection of the employment prospects in Wisconsin Public Schools. The data in this table demonstrates large differences in the demand for teachers in the various licensing categories. In recent years, from as few as 15 percent to as many as 80 percent of educators prepared in Wisconsin have secured positions in Wisconsin's Public Schools at some time during their life. The percentage varies considerably for different fields.

Attrition

Teacher attrition is one variable that is traditionally included in predicting the demand for teachers. There are many complex factors to consider when computing attrition statistics. The following are a few of the concerns that can influence the accuracy of this procedure.

• Attrition statistics that consider combined categories of teachers (e.g. all secondary teachers) will be lower than rates for individual categories (e.g. mathematics or science teachers alone) since transfers between fields will not be taken into account. Similarly, data on an individual school district will reflect correspondingly higher attrition rates since any teacher leaving the district to be employed in any other state district will count in the attrition figure. Also, state attrition figures do not take into account the movement of teachers to other states and thus are inflated to a small extent.
  
  
• The calculation of an attrition statistic involves using the head count of teachers in two successive years of personnel data. Caution must be taken not to use this same head count in the projection of personnel needs since projections are more accurate if based on a full-time equivalent (FTE) statistic. For example, not using an FTE statistic would inflate the need of teachers in early childhood programs since many are employed only half-time.
  
  
• Major state policy decisions, such as a retirement window or a change in state school funding, can have a short-term impact on any attrition statistic.
  
  
• A factor that can inflate the attrition statistics occurs when economic factors cause school districts to reduce their staffs. If the resulting attrition figure is then applied during this period of decreasing staffing, the result is an inflated projection which may not accurately reflect the current employment outlook. Economic impact would also affect the pupil-teacher ratio if districts reacting to fiscal pressures release teachers.
  
  

Longitudinal Attrition Rates in Wisconsin Public Schools

The data on teacher attrition from 1986-1987 through 1996-1997 in general and special education are presented in Table 8.1. Various factors influencing the attrition rate are reflected in these data. In 1989-1990 there was a rise in the rate due to a retirement window. This was followed by a decrease in 1990-1991 when the number retiring was sharply reduced. Higher attrition in some years may reflect teacher layoffs due to tighter fiscal restraints. The rates for 1994-1995 showed a sharp increase which may be due to difficulties in validating certain data in the DPI 1994-1995 School Staff and Teacher Report. Data from the past few years have indicated that the state attrition rate for general education has been stabilizing around 6 percent with the special education area being 11 percent. Since previous years did not take into account the high transfer rate of special education teachers to general education the rate for these years appears inflated compared to the state exit rates. The 1996-1997 state exit attrition rate for elementary education was 5.3 percent, secondary education was 5.9 percent, and special education was 6.2 percent. The high rate of transfer of special education teachers to general education fields is a variable in the higher special education field attrition rate. Table 8.2 also provides information on the mobility of teachers between fields within the State of Wisconsin.

A complete analysis of the attrition in each subject field at five-year intervals to project the effect of retirement of future educator needs is presented in Tables 9.1 through 9.31. This analysis was conducted by merging the 1996-1997 data base with the 1997-1998 personnel data to identify six variables related to the projection of retirement levels by individual subject field. The six variables include: the total number of educators in 1997-1998, the number who left during that year, the attrition for different age cohorts, the total number for the previous year, the percent of new educators, and the number of new educators. The data is presented in Figure 3 which graphically shows the four oldest age categories of educators in various subject fields. The total number of educators for each of the subject fields represented in Figure 3 can be found in Table 9.

The greatest impact of increased retirement will occur as we approach the school year 2006-2007 when the cohort of teachers whose current ages range 47-52 (Table 10 ) represent the largest age segment of the teaching population. This cohort of teachers in has the highest number of potential retirees in the current teaching force. The higher attrition in the field of special education and the relatively younger ages of those teachers suggests that there will not be a concern about increased retirement in the foreseeable future in special education. The interpretation of these data by individual subject field is included in Chapter 5 of this report.

Projected Total Number of Retirements in the Wisconsin Public Schools.

The data in Table 10 shows the total number of educators by birth year, their attrition by birth year, and the number of new hires by corresponding birth year. These data were obtained by merging the 1996-1997 data file with the 1997-1998 file, providing the basis in Table 11 to project the number of educators retiring in each age cohort for the next twelve years. The birth year 1925 included all the educators at this age and older (8). The analysis in Table 11 did not include educators whose birth year preceded 1925 since their numbers (4) would have little impact.

The procedure followed in Table 11 permits a projection of the increasing number of currently employed educators who will be reaching retirement age until the school year 2011-2012. The majority of educators tend to start retiring about age 55 and the retirement of others continues through their seventies. The rationale for using the birth year 1942 as the first year in the cohort of the projection is that the number of newly hired educators drops below the number of the retirees at this age point. Table 11.1 shows the birth year of those educators from 1958 through 1924 who are employed for the 1997-1998 school year. Those who are likely to retire after the 1997-1998 school year are represented by the group designated in the lower half of Table 11.1, first section. The next group, representing the educators likely to retire after the 1998-1999 school year, is shown in the lower half of Table 11.1, middle section. It is the same group of educators that were employed in the 1997-1998 school year, but the age is moved back one year so it represents the potential retirees in the year 1998-1999. This process is continued through Table 11.5, which will project the number of retirees until the school year 2011-2012 by the yearly aging of the current teaching force and correcting for newly hired educators in the for the next fourteen years.

The statistical procedures followed in Table 11 included both the attrition by birth year and the rounded number of new hires by birth year (the new hires were rounded to smooth out chance variations in the yearly number of new hires by birth year). The rounding process involved adding the numbers of new hires in a given year with those one year above and below, with the average being the rounded figure. The attrition statistics were not rounded since there appeared to be a definite pattern of retirements related to specific birth years. The 1997-1998 projection was determined by multiplying the attrition of each birth year times the individual birth years from 1942 through 1925 and totaling these products (1256 educators shown at the bottom of column 4 in Table 11.1 ). The procedure for each subsequent year was to determine the returning cohort by subtracting the projected number of retirees, aging this cohort by one year by dropping the figure one row in the table, multiplying these staff by the corresponding birth year attrition, and then adding to this product the corresponding new hires for that birth year. An example from Table 11.1 for the 1998-1999 school year, using as a model the 1942 birth year, would be to take the total staff for the 1997-1998 school year (1777, column 3) born in 1942 and subtracting the projected retirees (174, column 4) to obtain the returning staff in 1998-1999 (2002, column 5). The projected retirees for the 1998-1999 school year who were born in 1942 are found by adding to the returning

Figure 3 Graphic Presentation of the Percentages of Educators over the Age of 45 by Subject Field in Four Age Cohorts

staff the rounded new hires (30, column 6) for that birth year followed by multiplying this sum (3032, column 7) by the attrition for this birth year (9.8 percent, column 8), with the resulting product of 199 (column 9)projected retirees for that birth year. The total retirees are found by adding the projected retirees in each of the advanced birth years from 1943 through 1925 for a total projected number of 1408 (bottom figure in column 9, Table 11.1). Table 12 uses the data from Table 11 to show the increasing/decreasing number of educators who could retire due to the aging of the current teaching population. The data in Table 12 includes the projected number of total educators in each year of the analysis, the number at age 55 plus, the change from the previous year, the percentage of change, and the total number of educators projected to retire. Figure 4 is the visual graphic of the data in Table 12.

The data in this report confirm that there will be a gradual increase in the number of educators eligible to retire. This higher level of retirements will continue for a period of 12 years, with declining levels starting after a period of about 13 years. The cohort of educators in the 2007-2008 school year declines in number for the first time since the 1996-1997 year. The data in Table 10 indicates that this decline will continue for several years. The birth years of 1952 through 1958 (Table 10) show a sharp decline in the number of total staff which accounts for the declining number of retirees starting in the school year 2009-2010, and a trend which will continue for a period of several years. This decline lags behind the reduction in the cohort of educators at the ages of 55 plus because the reduction occurs first at the younger ages in the retirement cohort where the attrition rate is lower compared to the higher attrition seen at the older age levels (see Figure 4).

Figure 4

Projected Number of Educators to Retire from the School Year 1997-1998 through 2011-2012

The different tables have two data bases (since different statistics require different analyses). The FTE statistic is more accurate in understanding the number of educators in each field, and the head count is more appropriate to use in determining attrition statistics. There are no significant differences in the two data bases in that the population of educators analyzed in this study were of an age where few were employed less than full-time. The head count for the cohort of educators over 54 was only 3.0 percent larger and the 60-and-over cohort was only 3.5 percent larger. The high proportion of older educators who are employed on a full-time basis is in contrast to the large number of newly hired secondary teachers who receive only part-time positions.

The DPI data base used in this analysis was relatively complete. All districts reported data for the 1997-1998 school year. A small error factor was that a total of 145 of the teachers that stayed, 169 that left, and 80 that were new had either two different birth years on the records or no birth year reported. These educators could not be included in the analysis.

Projecting the Number of Newly Prepared Education Personnel Needed for the Next Five Years

Attrition statistics have been used in the past projection of the future need for educators in Wisconsin and have resulted in inaccurate projections. This has occurred because of policy decisions relating to a retirement window and changes in fiscal policies relating to the funding of school districts. The projection used in this report will follow the new-hires model.

The new-hires model is similar to the analysis shown in Table 7 except that the numbers in the tables are averaged over a three-year period to reduce the effect of yearly fluctuations in the data (Table 13 ). The advantage of this approach is that many of the error factors that can influence the outcome of the traditional design occur to a lesser extent in this model. The procedure followed in this model is to merge the total state database for the given year and the previous year and identify all the newly-hired inexperienced teachers for the given year. There are many advantages to this methodology that make it worthy of consideration. There is no need to find the attrition for each subject field since this is a variable in the figure that represents the number of new hires. Also, any enrollment fluctuations, economic factors, or state policy decisions are reflected in the new-hires statistic. The averaging over three years reduces the effect of any one-year surge or decline. Any identifiable and predictable changes in these variables can be incorporated in the new projection to increase the accuracy of this methodology. The projections used in this report will not require modifications in the methodology because there is no evidence that there has been a change in the pupil-teacher ratio, state fiscal policies have stabilized, and the enrollment increase has averaged only 0.2 percent over the past several years.

The number of additional personnel that will be needed for Wisconsin's Public Schools in future years largely depends on enrollment projections. Past reports have carefully analyzed several variables (birth rate statistics, private school enrollment, and changes in the state's public school enrollment) to measure their impact on future educator needs. These analyses are not included in this 1998 report since past studies have shown these variables to be relatively stable and thus have not influenced the projections.

The National Center for Educational Statistics (1998) provides a state assessment of the projected public school enrollment through the year 2008; during this period a slight decline in the Wisconsin K-12 public school enrollment is anticipated. A figure showing these data is included in the 1997 edition of this report and is not included in this 1998 edition since the projection remains the same. It should be noted that Wisconsin has the largest decline in enrollment in the northern and western areas of the state while most southeastern districts are showing an increase in pupil enrollment.

The data that most accurately projects the number of new teachers that need to be trained each year is seen in Column 8 of Table 13. This number represents the average number of new inexperienced Wisconsin prepared teachers hired by Wisconsin Public Schools in their teaching field over the past three years. A proportion of newly prepared teachers choose not to enter teaching, leave the state for employment, are geographically restricted , or accept employment in non-public schools or as substitute teachers. To account for these factors the state must prepare more teachers than the minimal number shown in Column 8 of Table 13. This adjustment can be made by dividing the number of newly prepared teachers by 50 percent, which will increase the numbers to account for these factors. This percentage is based on the professional judgment of the researcher to determine a realistic projection of the number of teachers that should be prepared to meet the needs of the state. The effect of this procedure results in the preparation of two teachers for each position that has been traditionally filled by new inexperienced teachers. Such factors as the cost of teacher preparation, the loss of professional status of educators as the result of the surplus of qualified teachers, and the needs of school administrators for an adequate pool of candidates were taken into consideration in making this professional judgment.

For questions about this information, contact Paul Trilling (608) 266-0933

Last updated on 12/6/2010 1:29:17 PM