In 2018, Region III was the recipient of funding through the ACTE Opportunity Fund for the purpose of conducting research surrounding this issue. The project consisted of two components: (1) Research and (2) Data Collection. The research component included identifying best practices in dealing with teacher shortage, identifying the existing CTE teacher preparation programs within Region III and identifying other stakeholders across the country that have an interest in these efforts. The second component involved collecting data to determine the supply and demand in the field. For simplicity the project limited the CTE areas to agriculture, family and consumer science, health science, business and industrial technology. Katrina Plese was hired as the project coordinator and the University of Wisconsin-Stout (UW Stout) was contracted to complete the data collection. This document is a summary of the findings from the one year of research and data collection.
Facing these challenges, stakeholders in Career and Technical Education must continue the research to determine the best course of action. Currently the supply and demand data for CTE teachers, with the exception of agriculture, is very limited. Other data such as the total number of positions within the state, the number of programs that closed due to lack of a qualified instructor and attrition rates of CTE instructors does not exist. Through this project it was determined that some states within Region III do collect useful data, but with limited human resources, obtaining the data was difficult or not made available. It is important to note that participation was voluntary and in the end, researchers had to rely on public websites to find existing teacher preparation programs and data. Efforts to refine the process are needed.