Spring 2024 BU Wheelock Ed Policy Speaker Series: Li Feng (Texas State University)

 The Impact of STEM Teacher Scholarship on Local Teacher Shortage and Student Outcomes

Broad consensus exists on the need to train, place, and retain high-quality teachers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects throughout the nation’s public schools, particularly in high-need districts (President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, 2010). Yet, we need to know more about the STEM teacher workforce in these districts and how to ensure equal access to quality teachers.

One of the longest-running STEM teacher scholarship for the past 20 years is the Robert Noyce scholarship program funded by the National Science Foundation. The Noyce program aims to alleviate the chronic staffing problems among STEM teachers in high-need school districts. Through both sponsoring interdisciplinary teachers training programs and sponsoring individual students in STEM majors to become teachers in disadvantaged settings, the program aims to increase the flow of high-quality STEM teachers into the high-need districts where their talents are needed the most. We investigate the estimated impact of proximity to the Noyce program on the overall STEM teacher workforce in high-need districts and their student outcomes. Our main research question is what is the estimated impact of proximity to the Noyce program on the STEM teacher workforce in high-need school districts?

More About Li Feng:

Li Feng is a Professor of Economics at Texas State University’s Department of Finance and Economics. During 2016-2017, she served as a Visiting Scholar in the Center for Education Policy Analysis at Stanford University and a Visiting Fellow in the Brown Center on Education Policy Program at the Brookings Institution.

Feng’s research interests include the economics of education, labor economics, and health economics. Specifically, her work examines education policy issues related to teachers such as the relationship between teacher quality (value-added) and student outcomes, the nexus of school accountability and teacher labor market, the connection between classroom characteristics and teacher mobility, and the role of Collective Bargaining Agreements in the distribution of teachers across schools.