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 distincts sets of data.
Shortage in teacher endorsement areas
Statewide teacher endorsement shortage areas:
- Early childhood and elementary education
- Mathematics and middle level mathematics
- Special education and early childhood special education
- English language arts
- Science, middle level science, and the designated sciences
- Health/fitness
- English language learner and bilingual education
Shortage in CTE teacher areas
Broad area endorsements and specialty areas on CTE certificates are consolidated according to this chart (spreadsheet). This is derived directly from the chart published by the OSPI CTE office.
Statewide CTE shortage areas:
- CTE Technology education area
- CTE Business and marketing education area
- CTE Family and consumer sciences education area
- CTE Health occupations area
- CTE Agriculture education area
Shortage in educational staff associate (ESA) roles
The ESA roles are listed here in order of greatest shortage. All ESA roles appearing in the calculations are included here–no cutoff was applied. ESA roles marked with an asterisk* are those which also appear on the overall shortage list inclusive of teacher, CTE teacher, and ESA areas.
Statewide ordered list of ESA shortages:
- School speech language pathologist or audiologist
- School nurse
- School counselor
- School psychologist
- School social worker
Shortage inclusive of teacher, CTE teacher, and ESA areas
Statewide list of shortages inclusive of teacher, CTE teacher, and ESA areas:
- CTE Technology Education area
- Early Childhood and Elementary Education
- CTE Business and Marketing Education area
- CTE Family and Consumer Sciences Education area
- Mathematics and Middle Level Mathematics
- Special Education and Early Childhood Special Education
- CTE Health Occupations area
- English Language Arts
- Science, Middle Level Science, and the Designated Sciences
- CTE Agriculture Education area
- Health/Fitness
- English Language Learner and Bilingual Education
These shortage lists may be used in the following:
- Pipeline for Paraeducators Conditional Scholarship Program
- Alternative Routes Conditional Scholarship Program
- Career and Technical Education Conditional Scholarship Program
- Teacher Shortage Conditional Scholarship Program
- Educator Retooling Conditional Scholarship Program
- Student loan repayment in exchange for educator service for certain federal loans
- Teacher Endorsement and Certification Help Grant
- 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).
