This research examines national data on the status of the minority teacher shortage--the low proportion of minority teachers in comparison to the increasing numbers of students of color in schools. The authors show that efforts over recent decades to recruit more minority teachers, and place them in disadvantaged schools, have been very…

Even a moderate number of teachers lacking college minors constitutes a problem for schools. Out-of-field teaching occurs in over half of U.S. secondary schools (rural and urban, affluent and low-income). The source of this problem lies not in teachers' educational attainment, but in lack of fit between teachers' field of training and their…

Out-of-field teaching is a relatively unrecognized problem in schools. This digest reviews what research shows about the extent and causes of the problem. There is much disagreement about how much and which types of education and training teachers should receive and what credentialing requirements states should have. Analysts have used various…

The failure to ensure that the nation's classrooms are all staffed with qualified teachers is one of the most important problems in contemporary American education. Over the past decade, many panels, commissions, and studies have focused attention on this problem and, in turn, numerous reforms have been initiated to upgrade the quality and…

Across the educational systems of the world, few issues receive more attention than the problem of ensuring that elementary- and secondary-school classrooms are staffed with adequately qualified teachers. Even in nations where students routinely score high on international exams, the issue of teacher quality is the subject of concern. It is widely…

Contemporary educational thought holds that one of the pivotal causes of inadequate student achievement is the inability of schools to staff classrooms with qualified teachers. The primary sources of the problem of underqualified teachers are, most assume, deficits in the quantity of prospective teachers recruited and in the quality of preparation…

This report investigated the extent to which students in public secondary schools are taught by teachers without basic qualifications in their assigned teaching fields--i.e., at least a college minor in the fields they teach--focusing on core academic subjects (mathematics, English, social studies, science). Analysis of the study data revealed…