RD230 - State of Virginia Critical Shortage Teaching Endorsement Areas for 2009-2010 School Year


Executive Summary:
The Appropriation Act (Item 139, paragraph H.1, Chapter 781, 2009 Acts of Assembly), requires the Department of Education to report annually to the General Assembly on the critical teaching shortage areas in Virginia. In response to this requirement, data were obtained from the Supply and Demand Survey for School Personnel sent by the Department of Education to each of Virginia's school division superintendents in October 2008, to determine qualifications for teachers and administrators. Information requested on the survey was based on school data reports as of October 1, 2008. These data will be used to determine 2009-2010 critical shortage teaching endorsement areas in Virginia.

In Virginia, "critical shortage" may be defined in two ways: (1) shortages by subject matter as designated from the top 10 academic disciplines identified in an annual survey of school divisions; or, (2) a school personnel vacancy for which a school division receives three or fewer qualified candidates for a position. Determination of critical shortages in specific teaching endorsement areas and their rankings are dependent on the method of calculation used. As such, specific shortage areas identified will differ among school divisions (i.e., geographic regions) and statewide analysis of subject matter designations.

The 2009-2010 top 10 critical shortage teaching endorsement areas identified statewide were determined based on method number two as noted above and prescribed methodology for designation of teacher shortage areas outlined by the U.S. Department of Education. The top 10 critical shortage teaching endorsement areas will be reported to the Virginia Retirement System and will be used to determine candidate eligibility for the Virginia Teaching Scholarship Loan Program. Endorsement areas were ranked according to the most severe academic teaching shortage areas.

The ranking is based on an aggregation of the total number of unfilled positions (for vacancies with three or fewer applications) received in science, special education, foreign languages, career and technical education, and mathematics. A total of 31 administrative and teaching areas were taken into account to determine the top 10 critical teaching shortage area assignments.