Studies have found substantial sorting of teachers across schools, with the schools with the highest proportions of poor, non-white, and low-scoring students having the least qualified teachers as measured by certification, exam performance, and inexperience (Lankford, Loeb and Wyckoff, 2002). Yet, there have been substantial changes in the…

The factors responsible for the shortage of middle and secondary mathematics teachers in the U.S. are discussed. Seven strategies are suggested to reach out and recruit more mathematics teachers in the future.

This report is based on the discussions of the February 2008 "Teaching by Choice: Beyond 2 + 2" conference, convened by the American Association of Community Colleges to focus on the growing role of community colleges as providers of teacher education and source of professional development for elementary, middle and secondary teachers of science,…

Arguably the most important educational resource is teachers. Teachers and teaching quality are a central feature of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) which requires a "highly qualified teacher" in every core academic classroom. Many states and large districts also have policies in place to attract qualified teachers to…

While the middle school movement has gained legitimacy in recent years, attracting preservice teachers to the middle levels remains challenging. Essentially, attracting middle level preservice teachers is analogous to catching minnows in a bucket. As university faculty attempt to bait students into teaching young adolescents, grades 4-8,…

Understanding the nature of science is even more important than mastering its details, says Alan Leshner, Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in an interview with Educational Leadership. In this article, Leshner discusses the controversy about teaching evolution, and he asserts that demands to…

Since 1990 the New York-based Teach for America (TFA) program has placed more than 7,000 teachers in some of the nation's most challenging school districts. Most TFA recruits serve in schools that qualify for funding under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act due to their high concentrations of students living in poverty. These…

As in other states, many North Carolina schools face the challenge of hiring and retaining high quality teachers. Recruiting and retaining qualified teachers in math, science and special education is particularly difficult, especially for the schools serving disproportionate shares of disadvantaged or low-performing students. In 2001, North…

This teacher recruitment study was conducted in one of the largest school districts in the United States. The participants (N = 152) were newly hired teachers. Findings revealed the participants considered economic (e.g., teacher salary schedule), school (e.g., location), and community (e.g., cultural opportunities) attributes important in their…

The average tuition of a four-year public college is $3510 per year (Adriane, 2003). In this study, letters were sent letters to the education departments of fifteen state universities in a southern state by a school level administrator. Each university was asked to help the local education agency (LEA) find prospective teachers from the…

The National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform is committed to making high-performing middle-grades schools the norm rather than the exception. The Forum believes that specialized preparation of middle-grades educators will produce competent and caring teachers who are well-qualified to teach young adolescents. Therefore, the Forum strongly…

This study focuses on three new teachers, Arnie, Andrea, and Frank, who are New York City Teaching Fellows (NYCTF), a program of alternative teacher recruitment and certification that is in its third year at an urban public college in New York City. This study focuses on just three of the Fellows in order to have a more intense look into the…