This newsletter's central item is an essay on teaching as a profession and its condition in the midst of current trends and historical movements. It discusses teacher education, recent reform efforts to incorporate new understandings of teaching and learning in programs for prospective teachers, establishment of professional development schools, and other efforts that work from new ideas on the nature of teaching and the teacher's role. A discussion of school reform argues that regulations do not transform schools, but rather teachers in collaboration with administrators and parents do. A final section reviews policies to professionalize teaching by developing more rigorous preparation, licensing, and selection practice, and more effective professional development in exchange for fewer rules prescribing what is to be taught, when, and how. This section notes that professionalizing teaching may call for rethinking school structures and roles and reallocating educational dollars. A short article describes a teacher recruitment campaign, "Recruiting New Teachers, Inc." and their efforts through mass media that have attracted a well-educated and diverse slice of the population to teaching. A sidebar describes the work of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future. (Includes an annotated NCREST publications list on authentic assessment and accountability, and restructuring; reprints series; and publications contributed to NCREST.) (JB)