When Those Who Can Teach Don't: The Role of Strikes in Increasing Teacher Labor Supply

Abstract

Across the United States, the number of college students completing teacher education programs as a share of total graduates has declined at both the state and national levels over the past fifteen years, falling from 255,106 (18% of four-year college graduates) in 2005 by nearly half to 159,937 (8%) in 2018. This dramatic decrease has exacerbated the shortage of qualified teachers in American schools and prompted a variety of reforms aimed at attracting new teachers. This paper examines the impact of one potential contextual factor that could encourage college students to pursue a teaching career: the increased attention drawn to teacher salary raises brought on by large-scale education strikes (taking place in disproportionately large districts or involving multiple districts across the state). By using data from the Department of Education’s Title II Reports to compare strike and non-strike states, I find that large-scale teacher strikes have a modest, positive relationship to the share of college graduates earning teacher education degrees three-to-six years later.