On February 24, 2017, all of the authors of the state-of-the-state manuscripts published in the "Journal of Education Finance" met in Cincinnati, Ohio, to participate in a roundtable discussion focused on recent legislative actions in 38 states. A majority of those papers were revised to reflect a final report on legislative actions…

The COVID-19 pandemic led governors to take unprecedented social distancing measures to protect the health and well-being of citizens. School closures were among the first state-mandated orders to help slow the spread of COVID-19. As schools plan to reopen in the fall, they are likely to confront another crisis--that many of their teachers will be…

Teacher shortages that most severely affect schools serving the least advantaged children have been part of the California education landscape for the last half decade. This brief describes how key teacher supply and demand factors vary across the state, and it provides potential policy solutions to mitigate ongoing shortages. The brief also…

When California students returned to school in fall 2019, hundreds of thousands returned to classrooms staffed by substitutes and teachers who were not fully prepared to teach. In recent years, California has experienced widespread shortages of elementary and secondary teachers as districts and schools seek to restore class sizes and course…

Across the country, districts and schools are struggling to meet the growing demand for qualified teachers. Indeed, there are some subjects--such as mathematics, science, and special education--in which nearly every state is experiencing a teacher shortage. As a result, states often turn to underqualified teachers to fill the vacuum, a problematic…

For years, the debate about American education was like a bad marriage. The arguments were about everything but the core issue--instructional quality. The other issues--education finance, school choice, standards--all matter, but are secondary to the importance of effective instruction. In the labor-intensive education field, effective instruction…

The United States is in the midst of an increasingly worsening shortage of registered nurses, due, in part, to the nursing educator shortage. Further, nursing programs nationwide are turning away qualified applicants because of a lack of nursing educators. Unfortunately, the nursing educator shortage is not a problem that will be easily fixed. As…

The provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 for teacher quality direct that all students in U.S. public schools be taught by highly qualified teachers. Although the Pacific Region entities are trying to meet this teacher-quality mandate, most are still far from fulfilling the minimum education requirements for their teachers. By…