for providing valuable feedback on this work at various points along the way. Any errors are our own. In addition, all opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of our institutions or funders, nor do they necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

In this paper we use data from Michigan and Washington on COVID case rates at the county level linked to information on the instructional modality offered by local public school districts during the 2020/2021 school year to assess the relationship between modality and COVID spread. We focus primarily on COVID case rates, but also provide estimates for hospitalizations (in Washington only) and deaths. District and month fixed effects models that exploit within‐district (over time) variation in instructional modality and account for time‐invariant district factors show that, in both states, in‐person/hybrid schooling relative to remote instruction can lead to increases in COVID spread in communities with moderate to high levels of preexisting COVID cases. Event study estimates show sharp increases in Michigan case rates after a district opens for in‐person or hybrid schooling, but these largely fade out over two months.

Using unique data from California on teacher job vacancies, we investigate staffing challenges across the urbanicity spectrum, focusing on the extent to which the characteristics of rural school systems explain the differences in staffing challenges as measured by vacancy rates and emergency credentialed teachers, relative to other urbanicities. We find that rural districts have significantly and substantially higher staffing challenges than districts from different urbanicity classifications (urban, suburban, and towns). Some of these differences are explained by district-level attributes, such as the proportion of students in poverty in the district. The geography of rural districts itself also explains the high levels of staffing challenge as rural districts are more likely to be located on a state border and far from teacher education programs, both of which are strongly associated with staffing challenge measures. Even after controlling for a rich set of observable covariates, there is evidence that rural districts are still somewhat more likely to face staffing challenges, suggesting that there are unobserved aspects of being rural associated with the desirability of employment that are not readily captured by quantitative data.

Improving the quality of the teacher workforce is high on the nation’s education policy agenda, but school systems continue to face difficulties in staffing STEM and special education classrooms with qualified teachers. This article documents the mismatch between the supply and demand of STEM and special education teachers in Washington State, where almost 4,000 more STEM and special education teachers have left the profession than have been produced by in-state teacher training institutions over the past 25 years. There are a number of potential solutions to this problem, including differential pay systems, reduced barriers to entry, and incentives for teacher training institutions.

Due to data limitations, very little is known about patterns of cross-state teacher mobility. It is an important issue because barriers to cross-state mobility create labor market frictions that could lead both current and prospective teachers to opt out of the teaching profession. In this article, we match state-level administrative data sets from Oregon and Washington and present evidence on patterns of in-service teacher mobility between these two states. We find levels of cross-state mobility that are drastically lower than levels of within-state mobility, even when accounting for proximity to the border. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that there are significant penalties to cross-state mobility that may be attributable to state-specific licensure regulations, seniority rules, and pension structures.