EARTH SCIENCE TEACHER SUPPLY AND DEMAND: FROM A DATA MINING PROJECT TO A DYSTOPIAN FUTURE

It has been widely reported that there is a crisis in education, with fewer students selecting teacher preparation, and more mid- or late-career teachers opting out. But these are reports rarely report details, such as grade level, content areas, and geographic locations. Understanding the supply and demand for Earth science teachers is complicated. This study utilizes a categorical analysis of existing public databases generate details on these issues, specific to secondary science. State education agencies (SEA) report data on the supply of new teachers at all levels, also reporting teacher shortage areas, as demand, with a subset listing specific science domains. A final indication of demand can be seen in job listings for teachers in online sources. Analysis of these data show that the supply new science teachers has continued to drop since the first year of analysis (2013) in all areas, with fewer than 600 new teachers of Earth science having been licensed annually in the last several years. This supply is the result of the efforts of a handful of programs within a subset of states. Nearly all states report a demand for science teachers, with few SEAs disaggregating the demand for Earth science teachers and others simply listing "science" as a need area. A recent snapshot of job listings from Education Week shows 1662 openings nationwide for science teachers, with 152 specific to Earth or environmental science teachers.

Despite the performance expectations for Earth & space science in grades 9-12 in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the capacity of teachers to aid students is diminishing. It is clear that there is an imbalance of Earth science teacher supply and demand, and little policy aimed at rectifying this. There is a record of schools pressing less-qualified teachers into teaching Earth science, attempting curricular innovations without sufficient teacher professional learning (e.g. California's "three-course" model), or potentially dropping Earth science altogether. None of these prospects supports the future geoscience profession well, with fewer students having the opportunity to include Earth science as a part of their science identities. It is in the interest of geoscience societies to take leadership in increasing the supply of new teachers of Earth science, and supporting current teachers.