| Michelle Reininger
Stanford University
Do community colleges increase the supply of teachers in areas with difficult-to-staff schools?
FINAL REPORT
Teacher shortages in difficult-to-staff schools have become a persistent issue in education. Despite a number of incentive programs aimed at increasing the supply of teachers into these schools, each year districts and schools across the country continue to struggle to adequately staff their schools. Given the increasing role of community colleges in the preparation of teachers nationwide, a careful empirical study of the effects of community college availability and attendance is useful in order to understand how important these institutions are in the preparation of teachers. In this paper, ÒThe Role of Community Colleges in Bachelor Degree Attainment and Teacher Labor SupplyÓ, I examine the role community colleges play in educating new teachers for the labor force as well as their role in postsecondary educational attainment using a national longitudinal dataset, NELS: 88/00. Specifically, I explore the importance of the availability of and attendance at a community college for obtaining a bachelor's degree and for becoming a teacher. Multivariate and multinomial logistic regressions are used to determine the relationships involving the availability of community colleges while propensity score stratification and instrumental variables are used to assess the effects of attending a community college on the outcomes of interest.
The results from the analyses regarding the availability of community colleges suggest that the having a community college nearby is associated with a decrease in four-year college attendance. Additionally, the availability of community colleges is negatively related to graduating from a four-year college and becoming a teacher. Attendance at a community college is also found to have a negative impact on earning a bachelor's degree and becoming a teacher. Since becoming a teacher requires the completion of a bachelor's degree, the negative effect of attending a community college on becoming a teacher is likely due to the negative impact of attending a community college on bachelor degree attainment and not necessarily becoming a teacher. In order to obtain a more nuanced understanding of the role of community colleges in teacher labor supply, future research will look more closely at individual community colleges with active teacher education programs.
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