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…

Teacher shortages have been steadily increasing across the nation, particularly in the field of special education. According to analyses conducted by the Center on Personnel Studies in Special Education (COPSSE), reasons for this include the fact that veteran special education teachers are retiring at a faster rate than new teachers are being…