This article reports on a new study which concludes that teachers entering the profession today have higher academic qualifications than their counterparts a decade ago. The report, released this week by the Educational Testing Service, says the finding bodes well for greater student learning because of the evidence that teachers' academic ability is tied to their effectiveness. It also concludes that a host of policy changes aimed at improving teacher quality have shown results, though how much each change counts is impossible to say. The research looked at 153,000 teachers or prospective teachers who took the Praxis II test as part of seeking licensure in 20 states in 2002 through 2005 and compared their academic profiles with those of test-takers in the mid-1990s. Drew H. Gitomer, the author of the report, found that the more recent candidates had stronger grades as undergraduates and higher scores on the SAT college-entrance exam than the test-takers in the earlier group. The improvements held equally for men and women, for different racial and ethnic groups, and across those aiming for careers in elementary and secondary teaching, the report says. Less positively, though, the profiles of those seeking a license to teach in elementary school, special education, or physical education remained "markedly" lower, it says, than the profiles of those seeking to teach an academic subject in high school. And takers of the tests for middle school teaching--including experienced teachers seeking federal "highly qualified" status--"much more" strongly resembled elementary school teachers in their weaker academic qualifications. Also worrisome is the lack of ethnic and racial diversity in the teaching pool, unchanged from the mid-1990s, according to the study.