Problems with teacher demand/supply estimates are reviewed, and comments are made on current policies intended to increase both the supply and the quality of teachers. Some experiences and reactions to recent changes in credentialing and educational requirements are also noted, including revisions in state certification statutes, requirements for…

Year-round schools offer a wide enough variety of scheduling options and educational benefits that all districts should consider adopting a locally appropriate year-round format. The traditional 9-month school year is based not on educational considerations but on the economic conditions that prevailed in preindustrial society--conditions that no…

This paper discusses the topic of teacher contract negotiations from the perspective of the school administrator, offering a variety of general and specific suggestions intended to help administrators avoid potential pitfalls in contract negotiation and implementation. The first half of the paper presents some general comments on the contract…

This paper presents findings of a national survey that asked principals to identify qualities they found desirable in teaching candidates. A total of 271 out of 500 secondary principals returned completed questionnaires, a 54 percent response rate. A single questionnaire item, in which respondents rated a fictitious teaching candidate, elicited a…

Teacher selection is a complex set of procedures that may be influenced by administrators' beliefs and values. This paper presents findings of a study that identified the teacher characteristics most valued by Arkansas public school administrators. Data were gathered during the 1995-96 school year through a survey of 40 area school administrators…

All graduates of Eastern Illinois University from 1982, 1983, 1984, and 1985 (n=7703) were compared on high school predictor scores (American College Testing--ACTs--and class ranks) and university grade point averages (GPA)--cumulative GPA, junior and senior GPA, and junior and senior GPA adjusted by removing professional education courses.…

This paper highlights selected key findings and discusses several issues emerging from an extended case study of the development and operation of a statewide teacher career ladder enacted into law in Tennessee in 1984. Data for the study were gathered through interviews, observations, elimination of documents, and a survey of selected teachers.…

These two papers present opposing arguments regarding the issue of using market factors to determine faculty salaries. In the first paper, Thomas E. Wagner begins by outlining factors that are relevant to determining faculty pay, including years of service, academic rank, teaching ability, research and scholarship, community and institutional…

This paper studies the variables that may be related to the length of time that black teachers stay in teaching and, if they do leave, to whether or not they return. Specifically studied are the career paths of 2,535 black teachers who began their careers in North Carolina between 1974 and 1982. Used to predict the timing of both an exit from…

Credential portfolios as a selection tool in the hiring of new teachers is not a new idea. Their importance has been stressed in the professional literature. For the purpose of this study, we developed a portfolio checklist of items to be included in the beginning teacher's professional portfolio. After a pilot study was conducted, 400 surveys…

Sex differences in tenure and promotion rates and time to tenure and promotion at the University of Maryland, College Park, were studied longitudinally. The study population consisted of tenure-tract assistant and associate professors appointed or promoted in 1973, 1975, and 1977, excluding part-time and visiting faculty. Campus-wide, 42 percent…

The process of making and implementing coherent teacher personnel policies is compounded by complex interactions among Federal, State, and local agencies. On first view, it appears these interactions are what impede rational policy initiatives in the teacher personnel area. However, it is not so much the interactions as the way in which policy is…

Public school collective bargaining will not work unless management approaches negotiations as a two-way street and demands from the union what it requires to protect its own interests. With today's surplus of available teachers, management has the opportunity to reclaim prerogatives it has abdicated through past negotiations. In particular,…

While tenure-track faculty begin their careers with some sense of what they will teach, what they will earn, and how they will be promoted, lecturers are not allowed such assurances. In the early days, lecturers in the English Department at the University of Nevada Reno (UNR) taught basic composition courses, four per semester unless they were…

Merit pay is discussed in three sections, focusing on: (1) an approach to the measurement of the merit of college teachers that avoids much of the subjectivity and potential favoritism that has caused other merit systems to fail, the procedure which evolved over a period of years, and a review of its evolution; (2) results of several surveys of…