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…

Our nation's educational system has scored many extraordinary successes in raising the level of reading and writing skills in younger children. Yet the pace of literacy improvement in our schools has not kept up with the accelerating demands of the global knowledge economy. In state after state, the testing data mandated by No Child Left Behind…

Engaging in the charter school sector is not for the faint of heart--doing so requires grappling with many complex questions. How will the work impact the reputation of the university? What political, financial or legal liabilities will the institution assume? Who will do the day-to-day heavy lifting? Across the country, dynamic higher education…

To improve the quality of the teacher workforce, some states have tightened teacher preparation and certification requirements while others have eased requirements and introduced "alternative" ways of being certified to attract more people to teaching. Donald Boyd, Daniel Goldhaber, Hamilton Lankford, and James Wyckoff evaluate these…

This document reports on New York meetings attended by over 200 teacher educators and liberal arts and science faculty, teachers, administrators, and New York State Education Department policymakers to consider the implications of the research findings and recommendations presented in "Teachers for Our Nation's Schools" by John I.…

Today's linguistically diverse classrooms require teachers who are properly educated to communicate effectively with students, parents, and the larger community. Teacher education programs have the responsibility of preparing teachers with these skills and of responding to the shortage of racial and ethnic minorities within the state of New York's…