Consumer Demand

A shortage of teachers to staff primary and secondary schools is a common occurrence internationally. The fact of, or potential for, teacher shortages is a major consideration in any nation's aspirations of attaining, or maintaining, an educational system of high quality. To study and understand the nature of teacher shortages, it is first necessary to have a model, or conceptual framework. Therefore, a model was developed for conceptualizing teacher shortages in terms of quantity (i.e., gross numbers of teachers) and quality (i.e., qualifications of teachers). By using the Public School Teacher Question from the Schools and Staffing Survey (1991) as the data source, recent key findings about the type and scope of teacher shortages in the United States were reviewed. Data analysis showed that although there was a sufficient number of individuals available to fill all but 0.5 percent of all teachin