In this chapter, the authors argue that increasing the racial/ethnic diversity of the teacher workforce should be a key component of any system that aims to supply schools with well-prepared teachers for all students. The authors first explain why they think attention and resources should be devoted to increasing the diversity of the teacher…

Contemporary educational thought holds that one of the pivotal causes of inadequate student achievement is the inability of schools to staff classrooms with qualified teachers. The primary sources of the problem of underqualified teachers are, most assume, deficits in the quantity of prospective teachers recruited and in the quality of preparation…

This comprehensive review of 16 nationally representative public opinion polls conducted between 2000 and 2006 provides insight into how teachers, school administrators, parents, and the general public view the teaching profession. It looks specifically at issues of teacher availability, recruitment, and retention for at-risk and hard-to-staff…

Helen Ladd takes a comparative look at policies that the world's industrialized countries are using to assure a supply of high-quality teachers. Her survey puts U.S. educational policies and practices into international perspective. Ladd begins by examining teacher salaries--an obvious, but costly, policy tool. She finds, perhaps surprisingly,…

The early part of the 21st century sees the United States competing in an increasingly globalized, high-tech economy that highly prizes those individuals with quality mathematics and science educations, and bestows economic and other benefits on the nations and regions in which they live and work. Nations around the world--recognizing the…

With No Child Left Behind's call for highly qualified teachers, the stakes for recruiting and retaining teachers have never been more important. Alabama, like other states, has struggled to develop policies and programs that effectively staff all classrooms with quality educators. The Center for Teaching Quality, with the support of SERVE, has…

In this paper, the authors describe a cost analysis framework and approach that can be easily understood by a range of relevant audiences and that has been successfully used to estimate the costs of a range of professional development initiatives. The paper illustrate its use by drawing on the authors' experience applying the framework in three…

Over the next decade many countries of sub-Saharan Africa will face a demand for qualified secondary school teachers that current systems for teacher recruitment, training, deployment and retention will be unable to meet. While strategies for increasing teacher supply to meet this shortage have been suggested, less attention has been given to…

The Substitute Vocational Assistant Program (S.V.A.P.) was designed to provide highly motivated high school graduates with the opportunity to obtain New York State Education Department certification and employment as a vocational/trade education teacher. The program is a comprehensive experience, 5 and one half years in length, that includes a…

Based on research studies, the current literature, and findings emerging from efforts to recruit well-qualified teacher education students for the University of Dayton, seven recommendations were developed for teacher educators to consider in implementing a formal, systematic recruitment program: (1) Teacher recruitment should begin with the…

The Teacher Education and Mentoring Program (TEAM) allows intern teachers who have not completed the required teacher education courses prior to employment as regular classroom teachers to have the support of master teachers, or mentors, while teaching with provisional certification. The internship is a closely supervised practicum with each…

The recommendations in this task force report by the Task Force on Teacher Education are based on information on the academic program, student profiles, research efforts and pedagogical programs obtained from site visits to the colleges of education in the three state universities in Arizona. The first section of the report discusses the…

This report documents the extraordinary crisis facing Florida's public schools and provides evidence that Amendment 9--a proposed constitutional amendment to reduce class sizes--is a cost-effective and invaluable first step to rebuilding its troubled public schools. The report also sets the record straight about the long-term benefits of investing…

In early January 2003, "Education Week" released a new report on the status of teaching in the United States and concluded that many states are taking steps to recruit and retain skilled teachers, but few efforts focus on the schools where these teachers are needed most. Drawing upon a large national database, "Quality Counts…

This document provides information about teacher candidates completing programs in Maryland institutions of higher education and the hiring needs of local school systems. The report also outlines a number of important incentives and strategies for the recruitment and retention of quality teachers for Maryland public schools. The Maryland State…