The Strategic Data Project (SDP) Announces Partnership with New York State Department of Education (NYSED) to Analyze the State’s Educator Workforce
SDP will partner with NYSED to answer the most pressing questions about the state’s educator workforce, assessing how educator preparation programs are serving the state and diagnosing patterns of inequity by geography and student characteristics.
September 20, 2024—The Strategic Data Project (SDP) at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University is proud to announce a new partnership with the New York State Education Department (NYSED) to address the ongoing educator workforce challenges in the state. This collaboration will focus on a comprehensive analysis of the state's education vacancy challenge and provide actionable insights to inform solutions for teacher recruitment and retention.
States across the country are grappling with teacher vacancies, which recent data suggest are on the rise, particularly for specialized subject areas (special education, mathematics, science, languages) and in rural schools and schools with high shares of low-income students and students of color. In New York, state leaders predict a shortfall of 180,000 teachers in the next decade, stemming from rapidly declining enrollment in teacher education programs and a third of the teaching workforce nearing retirement.
NYSED is expanding its statewide longitudinal data system (SLDS), integrating data from P-12, higher education, and the teacher workforce for the first time. Previously, NYSED has collected data about teacher certification, assignments, evaluations, and shortages, but this information has long been stored in separate databases—and not linked to student data from educator preparation programs. SDP plans to help the state expand its efforts to connect these data and generate useful insights.
“With improved interoperability comes opportunity—and the need to design, generate, and analyze new reports based on the linked datasets. To that end, we are excited about our partnership with the Strategic Data Project to bring new insights about the educator workforce in New York to the forefront of the conversation,” said Allison Armour-Garb, NYSED Senior Advisor for Policy Research & Development.
With generous support from the Gates Foundation, SDP will generate research for NYSED examining the supply of qualified individuals coming through educator preparation programs and how that supply maps onto teacher workforce needs; provide an analytic toolkit for NYSED to reproduce the analyses; and train two members of NYSED as SDP Fellows, who will provide sustained capacity to analyze the educator workforce pipeline in New York. This work will expand on SDP’s previous diagnostic reports for states and districts on human capital.
SDP’s analyses will address teacher demand—which geographies face teacher vacancies, and in which subject areas—and identify which students are most likely to have novice teachers and how the teacher workforce must shift to match the demographic diversity of current and future students. The analyses will also spotlight teacher supply, identifying characteristics of the current and potential educator workforce in the state, where exits occur along the teacher training pipeline, and how the state’s varying preparation program pathways (traditional, transitional, and residency) are fulfilling teacher workforce needs.
“This partnership will provide state leaders with robust insights to understand the New York State teacher workforce in the present moment and to strengthen it for the future through data-driven teacher recruitment and retention strategies,” said SDP Senior Director Miriam Greenberg. “This project and the resulting reports demonstrate the concrete value of linking longitudinal data in order to generate new, pressing answers for decision makers.”
About the Strategic Data Project
Harvard's Strategic Data Project (SDP) works with education agencies to find and train data leaders to uncover trends, measure solutions, and effectively communicate evidence to stakeholders. SDP’s network of system leaders, fellows, and faculty come together to share how to best use data to make a difference in the lives of students. SDP Fellows are driving data-informed change in over 215 school systems and organizations. Learn more at sdp.harvard.edu.
About the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University
The Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, seeks to transform education through quality research and evidence. CEPR and its partners believe all students will learn and thrive when education leaders make decisions using facts and findings, rather than untested assumptions. Learn more at cepr.harvard.edu.