Improving teacher preparation is critical to long-term improvement in teacher quality. More than 200,000 new teachers enter classrooms each year. Increasing student enrollment, the retirement of baby boom generation teachers, and high attrition in their first five years (between 40 and 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession) have…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Halfway Point: Obama Administration Approves Seven More States for NCLB Waivers Bringing Total to Twenty-Six; Iowa…

Alternative programs in special education are often developed in response to chronic personnel shortages. At issue, however, is the quality of alternative programs and their graduates. This paper describes the design, implementation and evaluation of a large special education alternative certification program that adheres to both professional…

After noting recent discoveries of falsified transcripts and other collegiate athletics scandals, this paper discusses the need to maintain academic integrity in athletic programs and defends rules established by the California Commission on Athletics (COA) against charges that they are unfair to community college students. The paper first warns…

This paper describes teacher professional development through field-based education within the expected standards of the teaching profession, drawing from research and experience with current trends and practices in teacher education and student learning. Today's teachers must be prepared to play a more vital role in diverse 21st-century schools.…

The Office of Educational Research and Improvement funded nine projects exploring whether partnerships could help improve teacher education and induction. It created consortia of state education agencies, state agencies of higher education, teacher education colleges, and local school districts to collaborate on improving teacher education and…

One of the most important provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is the requirement that all teachers of core academic subjects be "highly qualified" by the end of school year 2005-2006. Key principles for recruiting and preparing future teachers have been identified as raising academic standards for teachers and lowering…

A growing number of American students are nonnative English speakers. These students are vulnerable to early school exit and schools are facing more and more such students each year. Presently, about 56% of all public school teachers in the United States have at least one English language learner (ELL) student in their class, but less than 20% of…