Data, while imprecise, suggest that some states are producing far more new teachers at the elementary level than will be able to find jobs in their respective states--even as districts struggle to find enough recruits in other certification fields. For some observers, the imbalances reflect a failure of teacher colleges--by far, the largest source…

An increase in teacher hiring in recent years has led some observers to posit a link to the waves of pink slips districts are now sending across the U.S. Between the 1999-2000 and the 2007-08 school years, the teacher force increased at more than double the rate of K-12 student enrollments. Hiring teachers to reduce class sizes remains a…

Leaders in a handful of school districts are pondering the idea of "front-loading" teacher compensation by paying novices more than they would typically earn under traditional salary schedules. Boosting new teachers' salaries, officials in Denver, the District of Columbia, and New York City contend, would increase the applicant pool and…

As states' information-collection systems grow more sophisticated, officials are grappling with where to draw the line on how "value added" data on teachers can be used. Since the adoption of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the task of establishing data systems for tracking students' year-to-year achievement gains has fallen…

This article reports that with the poor economy endangering more novice teachers' jobs, researchers and policymakers have begun to question the human-capital costs of "last hired, first fired" layoff policies. Such layoffs, those experts argue, do not consider teacher effectiveness, meaning that teachers who make vital contributions to school…

Since its inception, the program has tackled the most challenging issue facing the teaching profession: how to align systems for managing schools' human capital with goals for improving student achievement. In addition to pay, the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) shapes new approaches to on-the-job training, career advancement, and evaluation in…