Two decades ago, at a time when much of the country faced looming teacher shortages, a number of states invested in comprehensive strategies for strengthening the teaching profession. For example, and drawing upon recommendations from the National Commission on Teaching & America's Future, both California and North Carolina built statewide…

In the future, teachers will become "teacherpreneurs," that is, teachers who develop their pedagogical talent, "sell" their expertise, and find innovative solutions to challenges facing their students. Unions will become professional guilds, and teachers will use new technologies to meet all their students' needs.

In the raging controversy over the purpose of public education and how to fix the nation's underperforming schools, the voices of America's best teachers are seldom heard. Now for the first time, in a provocative book about the future of teaching and learning, 12 of America's most accomplished classroom educators join a leading advocate for a…

This monograph appears midway through the development of a book on the future of teaching, scheduled for publication in the fall of 2010. The book is a team effort, undertaken by 12 accomplished educators from across the United States, who have agreed to systematically study and speculate about public education and the teaching profession in the…

The education research community has spent years debating the value of teacher education and professional development programs and their impact on teaching effectiveness and student achievement. These debates will no doubt intensify as Congress turns its attention this year to reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. School…

A rich literature--both within education circles and in other kinds of labor markets--links teachers' sense of efficacy and collective responsibility to their teaching effectiveness and improved student achievement. Prior research has found that a teacher's self-efficacy as an instructional leader is strongly and positively associated with…

A series of case studies examined the problems of the teacher labor market (such as difficulty in recruiting high quality teachers) and explored avenues for supplying schools with effective teachers. The case studies were based primarily upon 525 interviews with (or surveys of) teachers, school and university administrators, teacher education…

The dynamics of the teacher labor market were examined, focusing upon the problems of which teachers leave the profession, why they leave, where they go, and what it would take to retain them as public school teachers. In-depth case studies were made of six universities and six school districts. Data were collected by interviews (n=180) with…

A report is given of a survey of 170 sophomores enrolled in advanced English classes and 205 sophomores enrolled in regular English classes. The students were questioned about their career expectations, their perceptions of teaching as a career, and current incentives for entry into the teaching profession. Findings indicated that only a small…

A report is given of a series of qualitative studies conducted to clarify the market patterns of career choice and expectation, recruitment and selection, turnover and mobility, and working conditions and career alternatives of public school teachers. A study of the career expectations of noneducation college students was also made. These studies…

For the brightest students the most significant reasons why they won't teach relate to frustrating working conditions, bureaucratic requirements, the lack of professional control, and few opportunities for intellectual growth, as well as these students' intolerance for diversity in the workplace and their perception of teaching as a "boring…

Educational reform movements--changes in state policies about teacher quality and recruitment and the professionalization of teaching--and their impact on the teacher labor market of the coming century are discussed. Four studies of teachers, teacher persistence, recruitment, and school district hiring practices are discussed. (JL)

At the same time that NCLB has given states a mandate to staff their classrooms with "highly qualified teachers," the federal government is pushing a dangerously narrow definition of the knowledge and skills that today's teachers need. Over the last decade, policy makers and business leaders have come to realize what parents have always…

This report is an attempt to classify and interpret the new pieces of state legislation influencing the teaching occupation: how teachers are trained, licensed, inducted, and compensated. The historical basis of recent teacher reforms and the concepts of teaching that these new policies embody are analyzed. Examined are trends in state teacher…

The Teacher Cadet Program (TCP) provides a course of study to encourage academically-able high school students to consider teaching as a career. Reported is an evaluation of the program's effectiveness based on data collected from a survey of college freshmen who were high school cadets, interviews with a sample of the surveyed college freshmen,…