The methodology of Estimating Employment Rate
How to calculate the employment rate:
The estimated employment rate is the ratio of new hires to newly certified individuals.
- Who are the newly certified individuals?
Newly certified individuals are the denominator of the employment rate. If we calculate the employment rate in 2003-4, for example, newly certified individuals are those people who received their first certificate in a particular subject in the past 12 months (from September 1, 2002 to August 31, 2003 in this example). In this case, newly certified individuals only include those who were not working within the PA education system in the past two years (school years 2001-2 or 2002-3 in this example). - What are the new hires?
New hires are those newly certified individuals (defined above) who were hired in the PA education system, regardless of whether their assignments matched with their certificate in question. The four employment rates displayed on this website represent four time frames for hiring. These rates are: - Hired Before Employment Rate
This rate includes newly certified individuals who were hired before they had a qualified certificate, or individuals who previously earned a different certificate and worked in the PA education system prior to the past two school years but not during the past two school years. - Hired First Year Employment Rate
Included in this rate are only those newly certified individuals who were hired in the PA education system in the school year immediately after they had obtained their certificate in question. - Hired After Employment Rate
This rate includes newly certified individuals who were hired in the PA education system at least one school year after they obtained their certificate. - Hired Ever Employment Rate
This rate represents the life-time employment rate up to the 2006-7 school year for individuals who received a particular certificate in a given year. The numerator of this rate is the sum of those individuals included in the numerator of the hired before, hired first year, and hired after employment rates.
For example, the employment rate for 2003-4 for a given certificate is calculated as follows:
Suppose 120 people received their first certificate in a given subject between September 1, 2002 and August 31, 2003. Some of these individuals have never received a certificate prior to this time, and others may already have earned a certificate in a different subject.
Among the 120 people, suppose 20 of them worked in the PA education system in the 2001-2 or 2002-3 school years. These 20 people would then be excluded from the employment rate calculation. The denominator for all four employment rate timeframes, or the "newly certified individuals", would then be 100.
Among these 100 individuals, suppose 5 people worked in the PA education system in any school year prior to 2001-2. Therefore the "Hired Before Employment Rate" = 5/100, or 5%.
Among these 100, suppose also that 25 individuals were hired in the PA education system in the 2003-4 school year. Thus, the "Hired First Year Employment Rate" = 25/100, or 25%.
Among the same 100 people, suppose 5 were hired in the PA education system in 2004-5 and 5 others were hired in 2006-7. Then, the "Hired After Employment Rate" = (5+5)/100, or 10%.
Finally, since a total of (5+25+10) = 40 individuals were hired out of the original 100 newly certified individuals, the "Hired Ever Employment Rate" = 40/100, or 40%.
How to find where the people got trained:
Detailed analysis of the extent to which newly trained teachers in Pennsylvania obtain classroom teaching positions is hampered by PDE's uneven collection of data from local education agencies that employ certified teachers, and uneven collection of data from Pennsylvania's approved teacher preparation programs who train and endorse to PDE prospective teachers. Thus, determining the education school from which a newly certified teacher graduated was not straightforward using the state data. Assumptions were made to estimate the number of certificates issued to graduates of education schools.
The data used in the estimations was from the Praxis data set. During Praxis tests, individuals are asked to identify the educational institution that they felt prepared them the most for the material on that particular test. Because an individual may take many Praxis exams and may list different institutions on different exams, we assigned the institution listed on an individual's earliest Praxis exam as the estimation of the teacher preparation institution from which they graduated. In cases where there was no Praxis data from which to base the estimation for an individual, the institution reported on his or her Form 338 C was considered to be the teacher preparation institution. A sensitivity analysis of four possible algorithms for determining an individual's teacher preparation institution was performed and the results did not vary significantly among the four options. This algorithm was chosen, then, based on its intuitiveness.