Florida’s 2024-25 Teacher Shortage Areas: Some good news, but a lot of bad news.

I have some good news: Somehow, the State of Florida has solved its shortage of teachers certified in Reading and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). 

On January 17, the State Board of Education adopted (on the consent agenda – there was no discussion) the 2024-25 High Demand Teachers Needs Areas report. There are lots of numbers in the report, but among them are the number of anticipated vacancies in each certification area for the 2024-25 school year and the number of teachers in each area produced by the state’s approved teacher preparation programs during the 2021-22 academic year, which is the most recent year for which data are available.

The Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) anticipates that there will be 366 openings for teachers certified in Reading during the 2024-25 school year, but during the 2021-22 academic year 1,686 individuals completed teacher preparation programs for Reading teachers. As recently as last year, the High Demands Teachers Needs Areas report showed a shortage of Reading teachers. 

Similarly, the FLDOE expects 837 openings for ESOL teachers in 2024-25 and 1,816 completed teacher preparation programs in 2021-22. For is the case for Reading, there was an apparent shortage of ESOL teachers as recently as last year. 

Reading and ESOL join Music as being certification areas in which there are apparent surpluses of teachers.

Now to the bad news: The situation in every other certification area shown in the graph below is dire. The graph shows the number of 2021-22 teacher preparation program completers in each certification area as a percentage of the anticipated 2024-25 vacancies. As usual, the situation in math and science is awful. The FLDOE anticipates 570 openings for Math teachers in 2024-25; only 83 completed teacher preparation programs in 2021-22. For Physical Sciences (including chemistry and physics), there were seven program completers in 2021-22; the FLDOE anticipates 115 vacancies in 2024-25. The FLDOE forecasts 57 vacancies for Earth/Space Science teachers in 2024-25, but not a single one completed a teacher preparation program in 2021-22. 

And here is one that has nothing to do with math and science but is inexplicable in the State of Florida: Only one Spanish teacher completed a teacher preparation program in 2021-22. Yet the FLDOE anticipates 79 openings for Spanish teachers in 2024-25.

One note about the graph: The apparent surpluses in Reading and ESOL are so huge that I had to cut their bars off so that readers would have a chance to see the tiny little bars for science and Spanish. I set the maximum value on the y-axis (2021-22 teacher preparation program completers as a percentage of 2024-25 vacancies) to be 200%, while the values for Reading and ESOL are 461% and 217%, respectively.