This article takes the form of a letter to the 44th president of the United States, urging the president to pursue an aggressive agenda to improve teacher quality. The authors assert that because teacher quality is the single most important factor shown to impact student outcomes, the next administration must dedicate resources to human capital…

Feelings of isolation, too little time with students, lack of administrative support, and increasing demands are challenges facing special education teachers and contributing to teacher shortages. If educators are to provide the high quality programs necessary for their children and youth with disabilities, while ensuring that they make good…

In New Zealand there is an increasing trend for people with prior occupational experiences to enter secondary teaching. At a time when the media is continually questioning the status and capability of the teaching profession, we explore what or who motivates people to change their occupational paths and enter the teaching profession. Our sample of…

From his very earliest days in office, Tony Blair believed that if he was to achieve his broader educational reforms then the teaching profession itself needed modernising--it had to become a "21st century profession". This paper charts the background to this aspiration and the complex range of interrelated policies used to achieve that…

We analyse the role of private schools in the teachers' labour market. Private schools employ an increasingly-disproportionate share of teachers in Britain, relative to the number of their pupils. Their teachers are more likely than state school teachers to possess post-graduate qualifications, and to be specialists in shortage subjects.…

Over the last decade, policy and business leaders have come to know what parents have always known: teachers are the largest school-based factor in student achievement. Yet not all schools have equal access to the most effective teachers. High-needs schools that serve large proportions of economically disadvantaged and minority students are more…

A STEM teacher is one who teaches in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In K-12 schooling, most STEM teachers instruct mathematics and science classes, which continue to be critical shortage areas. As part of a comprehensive human capital strategy, designing recruitment initiatives to attract qualified STEM teachers…

Of all full-time faculty members in the United States, approximately 75% are White males, and the gap in the percentage of tenured men compared with the percentage of tenured women has not changed in 30 years (Trower & Chait, 2002). A number of studies have been conducted over the past 5 decades examining the factors influencing the recruitment…

TO IDENTIFY FACTORS RELATED TO PERSISTENCE IN TEACHING, THE FOURTH OF A SERIES OF LONGITUDINAL QUESTIONNAIRE STUDIES OF CUNY GRADUATES COMPARED 169 MEN AND WOMEN WHO CONTINUED TO TEACH TO (1) 117 WHO TAUGHT, LEFT, AND RETURNED, AND (2) 338 WHO TAUGHT, THEN LEFT THE PROFESSION. GREATER PERSISTENCE IN TEACHING WAS FOUND AMONG MEN RATHER THAN WOMEN,…

Congress established the Transition to Teaching (TTT) program to serve "high-need schools" in "high-need districts" (local education agencies or LEAs). The program is authorized under Title II, Part C, Subpart 1, Chapter B of the "Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965," as amended by the "No Child Left…

In the winter of 2006-2007, The New Teacher Project (TNTP) engaged in an extensive review of teacher staffing policies and practices in Chicago Public Schools (CPS). TNTP investigated the impact of CPS staffing rules through several avenues: (1) Review of CPS Teachers contract; (2) Analysis of Human Resources transaction data; (3) Surveys of…

Recruitment includes all organizational practices and decisions affecting the number and type of individuals willing to apply for and accept vacant positions (Rynes, 1991). Effective recruitment practices have the potential to improve the quality of educational experience for students, reduce the cost of personnel development, and decrease the…

This article reports how hundreds of fresh recruits, many of them new to K-12 teaching, were filling public school classrooms across New Orleans in Katrina's aftermath. The state-led Recovery School District (RSD), which now operates 34 New Orleans public schools, dramatically increased its teacher workforce for this academic year, having hired…

The international recruitment by countries of the North of teachers from less developed countries has become a controversial aspect of the problem of "brain drain". As a political and economic issue, the argument is that it reduces human capital within the education system and leads to the movement of highly skilled teachers from…

This conceptual paper examines a tug-of-war between state and national authorities in the United States for control of teacher recruitment, preparation, licensing, and professional development policy-making. A discussion of policy problems and instruments grounds analysis of each governing body's policy-activity since 1980. The analysis reveals…