We use a unique dataset of student teaching placements in the State of Washington and a proxy for teacher shortages, the proportion of new teacher hires in a school or district with emergency teaching credentials, to provide the first empirical evidence of a relationship between student teaching placements and teacher shortages. We find that…

Studies show that historically underserved students are disproportionately assigned to less qualified and effective teachers, leading to a "teacher quality gap." Past analyses decompose this gap to determine whether inequitable access is driven by teacher and student sorting across and within schools. These sorting mechanisms have…

While there is a robust literature examining the patterns and causes of teacher turnover, few articles to date have critically examined the measures of turnover used in these studies. Yet, an assessment of the way turnover is measured is important, as the measures become the means by which the "problem" of turnover becomes defined and…

The past decade has seen a tremendous amount of research on the use of value-added modeling to assess individual teachers, and a significant number of states and districts are now using, or plan to use, value added as a component of a teacher's summative performance evaluation. In this article, I explore the various mechanisms through which the…

Though policymakers are increasingly concerned about teacher shortages in U.S. public schools, the national discussion does not reflect historical patterns of the supply of and demand for newly minted teachers. Specifically, the production of teacher candidates has increased steadily since the mid-1980s, and only about half of graduating teacher…

Throughout the United States there is an increasing trend toward using value-added methods (VAMs) for high-stakes decisions. When policymakers use VAMs to identify, reward, and dismiss teachers, they may perpetuate the egg-crate model of schooling and undermine efforts to build instructional capacity schoolwide. At any time, in any school, some…

A followup of the National Longitudinal Survey (NLS) included a questionnaire for past and present teachers and those who were trained but never taught. The analysis suggested that retention among teachers has increased during the last decade and that the availability of teachers has not declined. Many former teachers left good schools. (VM)

Discusses the problems of using alternative certification for public school teachers and explains why this departure from traditional teacher education is not a simple solution for bolstering the ranks of quality teachers. Issues surrounding recruitment, preparation, and teacher shortages in urban schools are also addressed. (GR)

Notes that the abundant supply of teachers provides unprecedented opportunity for improvements in school and teacher education programs, as well as for selective recruiting of students preparing to teach and upgrading teachers with substandard qualifications. (Author/AM)

Discusses problems in research methodology inherent in studying teachers' career paths. Demonstrates the use of proportional hazards modeling to identify overlooked factors in research on teachers' career persistence other problems in educational research. (FMW)

Inseparable histories of teaching, teachers, and teacher education point to social and institutional pressures on the development of teacher preparation over the past two centuries. Persistence of basic patterns of influence and policy suggests that reform of teacher education requires both programmatic changes and improvements in the conditions…

Among high school seniors, (1) most of those who aspired to teach were White females; (2) teacher aspirants were less concerned with earning good incomes than those who chose other professions; (3) job security was not an important motivation for entering teaching; and (4) teacher aspirants were intellectually less able than their classmates.…

Data available from implementations of the Reading Recovery program in the United States are summarized for nature of the reading tasks, student achievement, cost effectiveness, and teacher effectiveness and retention. Reading Recovery has drawn attention to the needs and potentials of low-income students and effective instructional elements. (SLD)