Facing a growing population and the demands of No Child Left Behind, the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) is finding itself destitute in the recruitment and certification of highly-qualified educators. Because of extremely low average salaries and the existence of critical-need areas, the MDE has decided over the past decade to create an…

The National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality (TQ Center) designed the Interactive Data Tools to provide users with access to state and national data that can be helpful in assessing the qualifications of teachers in the states and the extent to which a state's teacher policy climate generally supports teacher quality. The Interactive Data…

Every four years, the presidential election campaign unfolds, and the position of the candidates on education is predictable: They are in favor of it. Something else is easy to predict: In every presidential campaign, hot-button issues--some important and some infuriatingly not--suck up most of the oxygen, and the hoped-for focus on education…

Local high schools sending the names and phone numbers of all juniors and seniors to United States military recruiters is more than a back-door assault on student privacy. This may have life-or-death consequences for unwitting kids who are contacted by these recruiters. This student information give-away was mandated in a little-known provision of…

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…

Historically, it has been tough to get teachers for urban districts, but this is not the case in Baltimore, Maryland, anymore. Since 2002, the New Teacher Project has been finding at least 10 applicants for each teaching job it fills for the once hard-to-staff Baltimore district. Armed with unorthodox recruitment strategies, the group targets…

American educational leaders seek to educate children (regardless of race, class, or economic status) to become productive citizens. In order for our country to compete with other countries where students are well educated and highly motivated, we need to ensure that our educational system is equipped with the technology and tools that would allow…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 set forth to hold all schools accountable to high standards and address the long-standing objective of closing the achievement gap between students from high and low socioeconomic backgrounds. The guidelines and criteria that describe highly qualified teachers emphasize pedigrees and standardized test scores as…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) has increased concern about the staffing difficulties faced by schools that serve a high percentage of low-achieving students. NCLB requires each student be taught in all core academic subjects by a highly-qualified teacher by the 2005-06 school year. The law defines highly-qualified teachers as those…

This article addresses the problem of small nonprobability samples in research in the education of the deaf and hard of hearing in the face of a current and increasing emphasis on "scientifically based research" as required by recent No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal legislation. The authors examine the gains and losses in information…

With the 2002 enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA), GAO was mandated to review the Troops-to-Teachers program, which provides financial assistance and counseling to help military personnel obtain their teacher licenses, especially in priority subject areas, such as math and science, and find employment in high-need districts and…

America's schools are facing a critical shortage of teachers just as student enrollments are rising and more rigorous assessments of student achievement are being implemented. The shortage is especially acute in hard-to-staff schools in urban and rural areas, as well as in high-demand subjects such as math, science, and bilingual and special…

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…

The purpose of this doctoral project was to conduct a policy analysis of two federal laws affecting public education today-- the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004. The common themes of both pieces of legislation and the congruent and the incongruent mandates required by each law were…

In this report, three specific questions guide the analyses that follow: (1) To what degree has the School District of Philadelphia upgraded the teaching credentials of its teachers? (2) How well has the district succeeded in reducing teacher attrition and increasing the experience level of its workforce? (3) Have district efforts since the state…