Tracking K-12 and Higher Education Job Postings Through Web-Scraped Longitudinal Data
Abstract
1. Summary
2. Data Description
3. Materials and Methods
3.1. Data Acquisition and Scraping (With Manual Scrape Explanation)
- K-12 Scraping: K-12 scraping was divided by platform (Frontline Education, TedK12, Springer School, and small rural district-specific portals) [22,23,24]. A subset of districts required manual scraping because their websites had unique designs or dynamic content that could not be consistently automated.
3.2. Data Cleaning and Standardization
- Removal of duplicate postings.
- Standardization of institution and district names.
- Normalization of date fields to YYYY-MM-DD format.
- Verification of posting URLs.
- Categorization of job postings using keyword-based classification.
- Cleaned datasets were exported as CSV files for subsequent analysis and dashboard deployment.
- Normalization of date fields to YYYY-MM-DD when absolute dates are available; relative dates (e.g., “3 days ago” or “more than 30 days ago”) are converted into categorical ranges and tagged with the scrape date, enabling longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses even when exact posting dates are unavailable (see repository link in Section 5).
3.3. Analysis and Visualization
- Counts of job postings by institution/district and job type.
- Monthly and yearly posting trends.
- Summary statistics including mean, median, and range of job postings per institution or district.
3.4. Dashboard Development
3.5. Reproducibility
3.6. Limitations
4. Ethical Considerations/Permissions
4.1. Data Sources
4.2. Ethical Compliance
5. Data Availability
- Wy_Ed_Jobs.rmd—RMarkdown file for scraping, cleaning, and consolidating both K-12 and higher education job postings.
- Wy_Ed_Jobs—Shiny application folder containing app.R (or server.R/ui.R), www/tree.jpg, and data folders for current and summary longitudinal datasets.
- Archived_HE_Data/ and Archived_K12_Data/—CSV archives of past data snapshots to support reproducibility.
- Job scraping links—Links to job scraping sites as mentioned
- otherjobs.xlsx—manually collected K-12 job postings.
Author Contributions
Funding
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
References
- Nguyen, T.D. Linking school organizational characteristics and teacher retention: Evidence from repeated cross-sectional national data. Teach. Teach. Educ. 2021, 97, 103220. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
- Richards, J. Teacher Stress and Coping Strategies: A National Snapshot. Educ. Forum West Lafayette Ind. 2012, 76, 299–316. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
- Ryan, S.V.; Pendergast, L.L.; Schwing, S.; von der Embse, N.P.; Saeki, E.; Segool, N. Leaving the teaching profession: The role of teacher stress and educational accountability policies on turnover intent. Teach. Teach. Educ. 2017, 66, 1–11. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
- Madigan, D.J.; Kim, L.E. Towards an understanding of teacher attrition: A meta-analysis of burnout, job satisfaction, and teachers’ intentions to quit. Teach. Teach. Educ. 2021, 105, 103425. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
- Bleiberg, J.; Kraft, M.A. What Happened to the k-12 Education Labor Market During Covid? The Acute Need for Better Data Systems (Working Paper) [Internet]; Anneberg Institute at Brown University: Providence, RI, USA, 2022. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Gersten, R.; Keating, T.; Yovanoff, P.; Harniss, M.K. Working in Special Education: Factors that Enhance Special Educators’ Intent to Stay. Except. Child. 2001, 67, 549–567. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
- Lovaglio, P.G.; Mezzanzanica, M.; Colombo, E. Comparing time series characteristics of official and web job vacancy data. Qual. Quant. 2020, 54, 85–98. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
- Guarino, C.M.; Santibañez, L.; Daley, G.A. Teacher Recruitment and Retention: A Review of the Recent Empirical Literature. Rev. Educ. Res. 2006, 76, 173–208. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
- Sass, D.A.; Seal, A.K.; Martin, N.K. Predicting teacher retention using stress and support variables. J. Educ. Adm. 2011, 49, 200–215. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
- Beręsewicz, M.; Cherniaiev, H.; Mantaj, A.; Pater, R. Text analysis of job offers for mismatch of educational characteristics to labour market demands. Qual. Quant. 2024, 58, 1799–1825. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
- Galloway, M.L. Teacher Push Out: Lower Wages, Longer Hours, and State Freeriding on Teachers. Ph.D. Thesis, California State University, Sacramento, CA, USA, 2021. Available online: https://scholars.csus.edu/esploro/outputs/doctoral/Teacher-push-out-lower-wages-longer/99257898315301671 (accessed on 15 August 2025).
- Hise, M. Attrition, Mobility, and Retention Patterns of Public-School Teachers. Ph.D. Thesis, Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA, USA, 2022. Available online: https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/etd/1231/ (accessed on 17 July 2025).
- Kangas-Dick, K.; O’Shaughnessy, E. Interventions that promote resilience among teachers: A systematic review of the literature. Int. J. Sch. Educ. Psychol. 2020, 8, 131–146. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
- Sievert, C. Interactive Web-Based Data Visualization with R, Plotly, and Shiny; Chapman and Hall/CRC: Boca Raton, FL, USA, 2020. [Google Scholar]
- Wyoming Education Careers [Internet]. Available online: https://marksresearch.shinyapps.io/Wy_Ed_Jobs/ (accessed on 25 September 2025).
- Xie, Y.; Cheg, J.; Tan, X. DT: A Wrapper of the JavaScript Library “DataTables” [Internet]. 2022. Available online: https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=DT (accessed on 4 July 2025).
- Cheng, J.; Karambelkar, B.; Xie, Y. Leaflet: Create Interactive Web Maps with the JavaScript “Leaflet” Library [Internet]. 2021. Available online: https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=leaflet (accessed on 14 May 2025).
- Kassambara, A. ggpubr: “ggplot2” Based Publication Ready Plots [Internet]. 2023. Available online: https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ggpubr (accessed on 13 June 2025).
- Perrier, V.; Meyer, F.; Granjon, D. shinyWidgets: Custom Inputs Widgets for Shiny, Version 0.9.0; dreamRs: Frankston, Australia, 2023. [Google Scholar]
- Harrison, J. RSelenium: R Bindings for ‘Selenium WebDriver’ [Internet]. 2022. Available online: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/RSelenium/index.html (accessed on 30 May 2025).
- Wickham, H. Rvest: Easily Harvest (Scrape) Web Pages [Internet]. 2024. Available online: https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rvest (accessed on 4 September 2025).
- Finding Teaching Jobs and Other Education Jobs [Internet]. Available online: https://www.schoolspring.com/#environment.basedomain# (accessed on 25 September 2025).
- Homepage [Internet]. Frontline Education. Available online: https://www.frontlineeducation.com/ (accessed on 25 September 2025).
- Sign In—TalentEd [Internet]. Available online: https://elmoreco.tedk12.com/sso/Account/Login?ReturnUrl=%2Fsso%2F%3Fpid%3D9%26productUrl%3DaHR0cHM6Ly9lbG1vcmVjby50ZWRrMTIuY29tL1JlY29yZHM%3D (accessed on 25 September 2025).
- GovernmentJobs|City, State, Federal & Public Sector Jobs [Internet]. Available online: https://www.governmentjobs.com/ (accessed on 25 September 2025).
- School Jobs|Faculty and Administrative Jobs [Internet]. Available online: https://www.schooljobs.com/ (accessed on 25 September 2025).
- PeopleAdmin. PeopleAdmin—Fulfilling the Mission of Higher Education [Internet]. Available online: https://peopleadmin.com/ (accessed on 25 September 2025).
- Sheridan College Applicant Portal|Search Jobs [Internet]. Available online: https://jobs.sheridan.edu/postings/search (accessed on 25 September 2025).
- Northwest College Applicant Portal|Search Jobs [Internet]. Available online: https://northwestcollege.simplehire.com/postings/search?page= (accessed on 25 September 2025).
- UW Candidate Experience Careers [Internet]. UW Candidate Experience. Available online: https://eeik.fa.us2.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperience/en/sites/CX_1/jobs (accessed on 25 September 2025).
- Wickham, H.; Averick, M.; Bryan, J.; Chang, W.; McGowan, L.D.; François, R.; Grolemund, G.; Hayes, A.; Henry, L.; Hester, J.; et al. Welcome to the tidyverse. J. Open Source Softw. 2019, 4, 1686. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
- Wickham, H.; Francois, R.; Henry, L.; Müller, K. dplyr: A Grammar of Data Manipulation [Internet]. 2021. Available online: https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=dplyr (accessed on 10 August 2025).
- Grolemund, G.; Wickham, H. Dates and times made easy with lubridate. J. Stat. Softw. 2011, 40, 1–25. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]




| Institution | Position | Location | Posting Date | URL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Casper College | Director of Financial Aid | Casper, WY, USA | 12 September 2025 | https://www.schooljobs.com/careers/caspercollege (accessed on 24 September 2025) |
| Central Wyoming College | Adjunct | Riverton, WY, USA | 10 September 2025 | https://www.schooljobs.com/careers/cwc (accessed on 24 September 2025) |
| Laramie County Community College | Mathematics Instructor | Cheyenne, WY, USA | 31 August 2025 | https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/lcccwy?page= (accessed on 24 September 2025) |
| Tab/Dataset | Data Type | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Wyoming K-12 & Higher Ed. | Job Scraper and Longitudinal Consolidator | otherjobs.xlsx contains manually collected K-12 postings. Archived data for each time point is stored in separate CSVs for both K-12 and higher education. The single RMarkdown file consolidates, cleans, and processes all datasets. |
| Wyoming K-12 & Higher Ed. | Shiny Application | Applications draw from the processed files generated by the consolidated RMarkdown script. Includes dashboards for both K-12 and higher education, with current and longitudinal views. |
Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content. |
© 2026 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.
Share and Cite
Perkins, M.A.; Akorede, B.A. Tracking K-12 and Higher Education Job Postings Through Web-Scraped Longitudinal Data. Data 2026, 11, 52. https://doi.org/10.3390/data11030052
Perkins MA, Akorede BA. Tracking K-12 and Higher Education Job Postings Through Web-Scraped Longitudinal Data. Data. 2026; 11(3):52. https://doi.org/10.3390/data11030052
Chicago/Turabian StylePerkins, Mark A., and Bolaji Aderibigbe Akorede. 2026. "Tracking K-12 and Higher Education Job Postings Through Web-Scraped Longitudinal Data" Data 11, no. 3: 52. https://doi.org/10.3390/data11030052
APA StylePerkins, M. A., & Akorede, B. A. (2026). Tracking K-12 and Higher Education Job Postings Through Web-Scraped Longitudinal Data. Data, 11(3), 52. https://doi.org/10.3390/data11030052

