![A mosaic of different photos. From left to right: elementary school student in classroom raising hand, center bottom is an elementary school student wearing a UW sweatshirt, center top a group of elementary school students pose for a picture at the W on campus, right is a teacher standing over an elementary school student who is doing work on a computer.](/sites/default/files/2022-08/uwtnews-featureime-SOEbachelordegree.jpg)
Teachers For the Community
A new bachelor’s degree in education will help address a teacher shortage and increase the number of BIPOC educators in the classroom.
Is There a Teacher Shortage?
There is no uniform standard states and districts use to track which educator positions go unfilled, which can lead to different conclusions about whether teacher shortages exist at the national, state or regional levels.
But there are two areas of relative shortages that the new undergraduate degree from the UW Tacoma School of Education could help address.
Data collected by the Washington State Professional Educator Standards Board for 2021 suggests that, "across Washington State, there continues to be an extreme shortage of educators who reflect the diverse demographics of P-12 students." For example, a PESB graph reports that in 2020-21, Tacoma Public Schools served a student population that was 64% students of color with a teacher workforce that was 20% of color.
![Graph from Washington State Professional Educator Standards Board depicting demographic teacher shortage by school district.](https://www.tacoma.uw.edu/sites/default/files/2022-08/uwtnews-soe-newundergraddegree-storyimage01.jpg)
And, according to an analysis published by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, Washington ranks high nationally in the rate of underqualified teachers employed per 10,000 students.
![Choropleth map of United States showing rates, per 10,000 students, of underqualified educator hires by state.](https://www.tacoma.uw.edu/sites/default/files/2022-08/uwtnews-soe-newsundergraddegree-storyimage02.jpg)