The Condition of Education summarizes important developments and trends in education using the latest available data. The report, which is required by law, is an indicator report intended for a general audience of readers who are interested in education. The indicators represent a consensus of professional judgment on the most significant national…

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) teacher quality provisions recognize both the importance of teacher quality for improving student achievement and the unequal distribution of teachers across districts and schools. But the question of how to achieve the goal of a high quality teacher in every classroom is complicated because of the challenges of…

Recognizing the vast disparities in academic achievement throughout Arizona's public schools, the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) has recently started pushing for tougher standards and demanding for more school accountability. This study analyzes the ranking system implemented by the ADE that categorizes all public schools according to…

Begun in 1996, Project Launch uses individual mentoring and day-long conferences to support new teachers in participating school districts in a 13-county area of North Dakota. First-year full-time teachers meet weekly with their assigned mentors to address immediate concerns and develop a teacher action plan. All participants gather for 4 days of…

Few colleges of education include theory and practice about the need to nurture resilient teacher leaders. This issue should be addressed in order to improve the preparation and continued development of the nation's teachers, particularly those in urban schools. This newsletter suggests that as problems confronting schools, particularly urban…

Nationwide, public attention has increasingly focused on the need for a variety of early care and education arrangements to meet the changing needs of families. The demand for early care and education has grown for families from all socioeconomic sectors, intensifying as participants in welfare-to-work programs enter the workforce, and as work…

This digest examines the rural teacher shortage from a policy perspective and suggests strategies to address the problem. The rural teacher recruitment and retention problem varies across states. An adequate number of teachers are trained each year nationwide, but the problem is with distribution. Recent research on rural teacher recruitment and…

This paper asserts that the concept of teachers' vision (teachers' images of their ideal classroom practices) may provide a particularly powerful way of understanding variations in teachers' experiences and dealing with prospective teachers' experiences of "reality shock" or disillusionment when entering the profession. It proposes that…

This report presents information from a 1999 meeting on teacher recruitment, preparation, and retention in hard-to-staff schools. The meeting was attended by 27 education leaders from around the country. It sought to exchange information and ideas about the problems of securing teachers for hard-to-staff schools, determine the extent of consensus…

This publication is the introductory guide to the Recruiting New Teachers, Inc.'s Toolkit, which is designed to help states and school districts meet their teacher recruitment and retention challenges. The guide provides information on: today's national teacher shortage crisis; how to make a case for stepping up recruitment efforts for diverse…

This report presents suggestions for retaining beginning teachers. Research indicates that after 5 years, nearly half of new teachers leave teaching in the state where they first taught. Helping new teachers become veterans is an important step in addressing teacher shortages. New teachers tend to leave because of such factors as inadequate…

Schools in the Houston (Texas) area use training and reward systems to attract and keep bilingual teachers. (Author)

A study of the career progression patterns of agricultural education majors at North Carolina State University revealed that 94 of the 338 graduates are teaching vocational agriculture. This number represents roughly one-fourth of the vocational agriculture teachers in North Carolina. (LRA)

Reports a graduate survey of Dundee (Scotland) College of Education students, focusing on sex differences in numbers still in teaching, grade level assignments, promotions, and geographic location of teaching job (Scotland or abroad). (SJL)

Texas small schools have promising programs, innovative practices, and pressing problems. They utilize mainstreaming and provide special materials for the gifted and talented. Problems are primarily in the areas of hiring and retaining teachers, financing programs, and energy costs. (CM)