This report examines the current status of teacher quality in the city and what the School District of Philadelphia is now doing to ensure that all classrooms have highly trained, motivated, and knowledgeable teachers ready to boost the achievement of the district's 188,000 students.The report shows that teacher quality in Philadelphia has not…

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards has developed and made available sophisticated teaching assessments in nearly two dozen fields. This paper draws on an array of research evidence, and data gathering in four urban communities with large representations of National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs), to describe three major…

The school systems of Tennessee are continuing to make efforts to recruit and retain African-American and other minority teachers. As school systems in the state become more and more diverse, these efforts must increase. The number of classroom teachers with 30+ years of experience further emphasizes the accelerated need to establish and implement…

Due to the unusually high number of adolescent mothers in the United States, public concern surrounding the issue of teenage motherhood has accelerated. In order to understand this birth trend, an ecological framework which considers multiple aspects of the lives of teenage mothers is presented here. The study, which uses the National Education…

This report examines undergraduate persistence and time to degree at public universities in Illinois, focusing on the year-to-year persistence of cohorts of freshmen students admitted to 10 universities between 1983 and 1993. It also examines the public university graduating class of 1993-94 and describes the factors influencing time to degree. It…

The completion rate and median time to degree of three doctoral cohorts at the University of Manitoba were analyzed by gender and by field of study and the results were compared to studies elsewhere. To evaluate factors affecting students' progress, a mail questionnaire was sent in the fall of 1993 to all students (N=105) first admitted to the…

This newsletter presents articles on: preparing, recruiting, and retaining the best teachers; the RAND project designed to examine the need for high quality programs that impact classroom practice (focusing on mathematics and reading); accountability reform (whether accountability policies improve student achievement); organizational and…

This study investigated the relationship between several components of teacher burnout and various professional factors. Professional factors included professional qualifications, teaching level, professional growth, professional commitment, and role efficacy. Components of teacher burnout included development of negative attitudes toward students…

This study examines within-year persistence of undergraduate white and African American college students, focusing on how this information can be used to inform initiatives on retention. Data was collected from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study of 1996; the sample included 1,482 African American and 11,292 white four-year undergraduate…

This document consists of all 26 issues of Volume 9 of "The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education," a biweekly journal that addresses issues in higher education for Hispanic Americans. Each issue contains several feature articles, a policy update column called "Outlook on Washington," a description of an exemplary program, and a…

In fall 2000, all 3,506 superintendents in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin received a survey that asked them to report on the strategies they had implemented to attract and retain teachers and on how effective those strategies had been. The survey was designed to collect basic information about a variety of…

This first section of this report profiles the first five Alternative Routes to Certification (ARTC) cohorts (1997-98 through 2001-02), including patterns of district and school participation and characteristics of all 164 candidates enrolled by district during the first 5 years. It addresses the question of who participates in ARTC. The second…

The constant state of "simply making it through the day" for many beginning teachers affects their physical and mental well-being, and impacts their decision to stay in the field of education. Given the seriousness of teacher burnout, it behooves school systems to provide an induction experience for beginning teachers that will contribute to their…

This book surveys the Career in Teaching (CIT) initiative launched in Rochester, New York, looking at its impact on the district since 1987. CIT incorporates support for new teachers, provides opportunities for highly accomplished teachers to share their skills, and offers peer review and assistance to teachers experiencing problems in their…

Utah is experiencing chronic, critical, special-educator shortages in all positions and disability areas, including speech and language pathologists and school psychologists. The Utah Attrition Study found that the most common reason for special education professionals leaving positions was "moving out of state," followed by personal…