Like leaders in other states, Ohio policymakers have been working to address chronic teacher shortages. During the 2022 state budget, policymakers took a crack at bolstering the teacher pipeline by investing in Grow Your Own programs and tweaking licensure laws. In 2023, Governor DeWine unveiled a teacher apprenticeship program. And in 2024, a proposed (but not passed) bill sought to boost teacher recruitment efforts by supporting student teachers.
Despite this effort and attention, school and district leaders continue to report widespread teacher shortages. There are plenty of reasons why this issue has been difficult to address. But chief among them is that state and local leaders don’t have access to detailed and consistent data on teacher vacancies. Without this information, it’s hard to identify the regions, schools, subjects, and grade levels where shortages exist and respond accordingly.
This year’s state budget could change that. House Bill 96, which contains Governor DeWine’s budget recommendations, calls on the Department of Education and Workforce (DEW) to annually collect school district employment and vacancy data and then summarize and publish it on its website. DEW would be required to gather vacancy data not only for teachers, but also for principals, assistant principals, paraprofessionals, bus drivers, related service providers, and other providers of specialized services. As part of its reporting requirements, DEW must disaggregate the number of vacant positions by type, subject, geographic area (including rural and urban areas), positions that remain unfilled, and the methods used to fill vacant positions, including the hiring of substitutes, retirees, or alternative licensure program candidates and contracting with an educational service center or other entity.
Improved data collection would go a long way toward helping Ohio address teacher shortages. These provisions are a good first step. But as HB 96 makes its way through the General Assembly, there are a few tweaks that lawmakers should consider to ensure that state and local leaders are well-equipped to effectively tackle teacher shortages. Let’s examine three.
1. Ensure DEW collects data from all public schools.
In its current form, the bill calls for DEW to collect vacancy data from school districts. And the vast majority of Ohio students—nearly 1.5 million—attend district schools. But districts aren’t the only public schools in the state. Tens of thousands of students attend Ohio’s other public school options, including charter schools (over 117,000 students), JVSDs (more than 49,000 students), and STEM schools (just under 4,000 students). It’s important for state leaders to gather data from all of Ohio’s public schools to ensure that every student has access to a permanent and effective teacher rather than a carousel of substitutes.
2. Require DEW to disaggregate data at the district and school level.
While analyzing teacher vacancy data from Tennessee, Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform found that staffing issues are “highly localized.” That means it’s possible for teacher shortages and surpluses to exist simultaneously, and explains why some districts and schools are struggling to staff classrooms while others aren’t. Disaggregating vacancy data by geographic area, as the budget calls for, should help state and local leaders better understand shortages.
But Ohio is a big state. And although HB 96’s requirement to report data at the regional level is helpful, it won’t provide the detail necessary to pinpoint shortages. For example, if rural districts in the northwest corner of Ohio are struggling to hire math teachers, but the rest of Ohio’s rural districts are most in need of science teachers, then the data will likely point to science as the most significant shortage for rural areas. State leaders might respond by establishing grant programs or recruitment initiatives for rural science teachers. And those efforts would surely help districts in desperate need of science staff. But they would do nothing to solve the math teacher shortage in rural northwestern districts, which would get lost in the shuffle of a larger regional effort.
District-level data would ensure that every district, regardless of size or location, is on the teacher shortage radar when it needs to be. It would also empower locally elected leaders, community-based advocacy organizations, and local philanthropy to step in and help. Disaggregating down to the school level is important for similar reasons. In big districts like Columbus and Cleveland, shortages could be concentrated in specific schools or neighborhoods rather than across the entire district. Pinpointing exactly where shortages exist is the only way to effectively address them.
3. Include data on teacher supply in the department’s annually published summary.
Tracking vacancies is the best way to understand teacher demand. But to grasp the full size and scope of teacher shortages—and to craft effective policy solutions that will address them—state and local leaders need data on teacher supply, too. Federal numbers can be helpful for understanding long-term trends, but these data are published on a delay and aren’t detailed enough to account for local context. That’s why lawmakers should require DEW to include data on teacher supply when it publishes district demand and vacancy data. The department should also include an analysis of whether Ohio’s current and projected supply are enough to meet current and future demand. Supply data should include the current number of students enrolled in Ohio’s teacher preparation programs (TPPs), both traditional and alternative, disaggregated by individual program; the most recent number of graduates from TPPs, again disaggregated by program; the current number of teachers with active licenses, disaggregated by license and endorsement area; and the number of teacher candidates who passed licensure exams during the most recent academic year, disaggregated by exam.
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For the next few months, Ohio policymakers will be firmly entrenched in budget debates. And while collecting teacher vacancy data isn’t as sexy of a topic as funding or private school scholarships, it is crucial. It will be close to impossible for state and local leaders to effectively address teacher shortages without better data. DeWine’s budget proposal takes a good first step. But with just a few small tweaks, these provisions could ensure Ohio is well-equipped to finally tackle its teacher shortage problem.
