Educator shortage

Educator shortage is a critical issue; it impacts almost every aspect of the education system in Washington. Spanning diverse content areas, geographic regions, and educator roles, shortage is complex and cannot be summed up with a single set of data points.

For the lists on this page, the overall shortage definition includes educators with a limited certificate in a certain content area plus educators assigned out-of-endorsement in that same content area. Detailed information regarding calculations for these data sets is found in the technical definition for quantitative shortage.

To better understand shortage across educator roles and regions, specific maps display distinct sets of data.

Regional shortage areas

State shortage areas

This is the list of shortage areas statewide in descending order by the amount of shortage FTE. (as of December 2022)
All General education CTE ESA

1. 1. Special Education (inclusive of Early Childhood Special Education)
   2. Elementary Education (inclusive of early childhood education)
   3. CTE – Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics
   4. CTE – Health Science
   5. Mathematics (inclusive of middle level math)
   6. CTE – Arts, A/V Technology and Communication
   7. English Language Arts
   8. CTE – Information Technology
   9. Health/Fitness
   10. Science (inclusive of middle level science and designated sciences)
   11. CTE – Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources
   12. Social Studies
   13. School counselor
   14. CTE – Hospitality and Tourism
   15. CTE – Business Management and Administration
   16. CTE – Manufacturing
   17. School nurse
   18. CTE – Finance
   19. CTE – Marketing
   20. Designated Arts: Visual Arts
   21. Computer Science
   22. CTE – Human Services
   23. School speech language pathologist and audiologist

These shortage lists may be used in the following:

1. 1. • Alternative Routes Block Grant
      • Educator workforce programs
        • Educator retooling conditional scholarship program
        • Pipeline for paraeducators conditional scholarship program
        • Teacher shortage conditional scholarship program
        • Alternative routes conditional scholarship program
        • Career and Technical Education Conditional Scholarship Program
      • Student loan repayment in exchange for educator service for certain federal loans
      • Educator preparation program approval and review

PESB recognizes that local shortages exist that may not be captured within the quantitative definition. PESB allows local designation of shortage according to the process used for defining qualitative shortage (document).

View 2019 shortage areas (document).

View 2020 shortage areas (document).

View 2022 shortage areas (document).