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Dive Overview:
- of Florida Department of Education and Florida Education Association There's been conflict over statewide teacher vacancy data for the 2024-25 school year, with the Department of Education reporting last week that vacancies are down 13.3% compared to the previous school year.
- As state education officials touted the numbers, teachers unions said days earlier that the state still had 5,007 teaching vacancies this school year, up from January levels but down from numbers reported in August 2023.
- Despite the differences, “these two data sets show similar trajectories,” says Chad Aldeman, a researcher who analyzes teacher workforce data. In fact, the FEA data shows that Florida Education vacancies fell by 27.6% Between the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, the number of vacancies will decrease from 6,920 to 5,007.
Dive Insights:
In a statement, the ministry vaguely countered that other sources had “tried to inflated the number of teacher vacancies using inaccurate data.”
When FEA shared the vacancy data, the teachers union noted the state has “not made significant progress in addressing the critical teacher shortage.”
“Everyone should remember that currently around 5,000 classrooms lack professionally trained teachers, potentially affecting more than 100,000 students,” FEA president Andrew Spar said in a statement.
Florida's story reflects the broader challenges facing school districts and states trying to accurately gauge and measure teacher shortages.
Over the years, federal lawmakers have introduced various bills aimed at more uniform data collection. Teacher supply and demandThis is especially true among state education agencies.
Measuring and collecting data on teacher shortages is “messy” and varies widely by state and locality, said Aldeman, who worked for the U.S. Department of Education under the Obama administration and is a former policy director at Georgetown University's Edunomics Institute.
He added that tracking teacher vacancies is likely not the best data point for gauging teacher shortages because it depends so much on when the data is collected. Because schools do most of their hiring in July and August, vacancies can only be compared to the same time in the summer the previous year, he said. “That means you can't simply compare one particular month to another particular month.”
Additionally, vacancy data can be unreliable because it only measures how many teachers districts say they want to hire, not how many they can realistically hire, Aldeman said.
For example, he said, as a result of negotiations with unions, some school districts may agree to recruit and post jobs for certain positions, such as school nurses or counselors, but “it's a vague plan with no realistic hope of actually filling those vacancies and it just ends up being a vague goal when you try to quantify it.”
The Florida Education Association said it collected the statewide data by analyzing school district websites that post vacancy rates twice a year, while the Florida Department of Education said it received the vacancy data directly from school districts.
“Florida has raised teacher pay, supported teachers in the classroom, and created new pathways for qualified people to enter the teaching profession,” Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. said in a statement. “Opponents use the same tactics every year to try to disparage the success of Florida education, but once again, the numbers speak for themselves.”
Meanwhile, citing its own teacher vacancy data, the union said it was concerned that “classrooms are overcrowded and teachers are struggling to find more desks and chairs”.
Aldeman said overall, the national teacher shortage appears to have eased in recent years since the COVID-19 pandemic began, likely because federal pandemic relief funds have been sent directly to schools, allowing districts to hire more teachers, he said.
One indicator is a decrease in public schools feeling understaffed between the 2023-24 and 2022-23 school years, 45% versus 53%, according to a survey released in October. National Center for Education Statistics.