A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

The Current State of Teaching in America:
Five Barriers to Increasing Student Achievement

It is difficult to measure directly the quality of teaching in our nation's classrooms, but a number of indicators demonstrate serious problems with the ways we recruit, prepare, license, and support teachers. The 1996 report of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF) identified five major barriers to successful education reform that relate directly to the quality of teaching in America. (Overhead 3)

1. Painfully Slipshod Teacher Recruitment and Hiring Practices

The United States has no comprehensive strategy to attract the kinds of individuals we want into teaching. Furthermore, while there is no universal shortage of teachers nationwide (and some school districts have many qualified applicants for every open position), teachers are not always in the communities and fields where they are needed. We face specific types of shortages. (Overhead 4)

• Shortages of qualified teachers in high-poverty communities. High-poverty urban and rural schools face the greatest challenges in recruiting, supporting, and retaining new teachers.
• Shortages of teachers in certain subject areas and specialties. Nationwide teacher shortages—which are most severe in high-poverty schools—are found in specific fields such as math, science, special education, bilingual education, and foreign languages. (Overhead 5)

• Shortages of teachers in certain regions. Regions of the country where student enrollment is increasing rapidly face shortages of qualified teachers, even as other states have a surplus of individuals who are qualified to teach. National and state class size reduction efforts also increase the demand for teachers.
• Shortages of teachers of color. Our nation's teaching force does not reflect the diversity that is transforming our nation's classrooms.
• Minority students comprise 36 percent of our nation's student population,^[6] but only 13 percent of our teachers are minorities.^[7] This discrepancy has been growing. (Overhead 6)

• Over 40 percent of public schools do not have a single minority faculty member.^[8]

• Nearly all large, urban school districts (92 percent) cite an immediate demand for teachers of color.^[9]

Reducing the Demand for New Teachers The challenge of ensuring enough qualified teachers is not simply to increase the numbers of new teachers that we recruit. The challenge is also to reduce the demand for new teachers by eliminating the many factors that drive teachers from the profession and by removing the barriers that prevent the many qualified individuals who are not teaching from doing so. The barriers to retaining and attracting teachers are: (Overhead 7) Cumbersome procedures. The NCTAF report found that "many districts do not hire the best-qualified applicants for teaching positions because their own procedures keep them from doing so." Problems include cumbersome screening processes and hiring decisions delayed until the school year starts.[10] Lack of portability. The lack of portability of credentials, pensions, and credited years of experience among states and districts discourages teachers from teaching where they are most needed. Poor working conditions. Poor school leadership, run-down facilities, large class sizes, and lack of books and supplies are factors that cause many talented teachers to leave the profession prematurely. Low salaries. The salaries of new and experienced teachers create recruitment and retention problems. Despite the fact that 78 percent of the public favor raising teacher salaries in order to meet the nation's recruitment challenges,[11] the average salary for beginning public school teachers ($25,735) and the average overall teacher salary ($39,347)[12] are significantly lower than those for most other professions.[13] (Overhead 8)

2. Seriously Flawed Teacher Preparation

Teacher preparation programs are often underfunded and are too focused on theory, at the expense of classroom practice. They frequently are disconnected from the arts and sciences and from elementary and secondary schools.

• Varying size and quality of preparation programs. There are approximately 1,300 institutions that prepare teachers, and the number of teachers they produce each year can range from one to nearly 2,000. The teacher education programs also vary greatly in quality. Unlike other professions that require national accreditation of professional schools, less than one-half of teacher education institutions—only 501 institutions—are currently accredited by a national accrediting body.^[14]
• Long-standing problems. The NCTAF report found "long-standing problems with traditional teacher education programs," including superficial curriculum and the teaching of theory separately from its applications.^[15]
• Feeling unprepared for the realities of today's classrooms. A recent study asked teachers with three or fewer years of experience whether they were prepared to integrate technology; meet the needs of diverse students and those with limited English proficiency; address the needs of special education students; and implement curriculum and performance standards. In each case, fewer than 30 percent of the new teachers reported feeling "very well prepared."^[16] (Overhead 9)
• Teacher educators lack current K-12 teaching experience. More than 50 percent of teacher educators report that it has been more than 15 years since they were K-12 teachers.^[17]

3. Unenforced Standards for Teachers

Standards for entry into the teaching profession are generally low, and required examinations seem designed to weed out the weakest candidates rather than to select the strong ones. Yet, despite this lack of rigor, states routinely waive their own standards and allow districts to hire unqualified individuals. Even when teachers are fully qualified, they are too often placed in out-of-field teaching situations.

• Candidates not judged on performance. Entering teaching usually requires passing a standardized test and earning a specified number of credits through teacher education programs. Most states do not base teacher licensing on classroom performance.
• No exams required. Seven states require no exams for licensure for either elementary or secondary school teaching.^[18]
• Lack of subject-area exams. Forty-four states require candidates for licenses in secondary school teaching to take a test, but only 29 require them to take tests in the subject area they will teach.^[19]
• Exams not based on a body of knowledge. Licensing tests are not based on whether a candidate has the body of knowledge needed to be an effective teacher. In some states, passing scores are set so low that candidates can pass a subject-matter exam by correctly answering as few as half the test items, and only 5 percent of the candidates fail the test.^[20]
• Standards routinely waived. Even though state-set standards are generally low, states routinely waive them. More than 30 percent of newly hired teachers enter the profession without having fully met state standards for licensure.^[21] (Overhead 10)
• Out-of-field teaching. Teachers are often asked to teach subjects in which they do not have a major or minor.

• Thirteen percent of public school teachers of core academic subjects in grades 7-12 are teaching "out of field" in their main teaching assignment..^[22]

• In high-poverty schools (those with more than 60 percent of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch), teachers are twice as likely to be out of field than in low-poverty schools (22 percent vs. 11 percent).^[23] (Overhead 11)

A Complicated Picture It is difficult to measure the extent of out-of-field teaching, and its causes are often misunderstood. Statistics understate the problem. Researchers agree that these out-of-field figures understate the problem, since they do not take into account part-time teachers and teachers' secondary assignment fields. High school teachers have academic majors but are misassigned. Many policymakers assume that teachers teach out-of-field because they do not have an academic major. However, most high school teachers (95 percent) have a major in either an academic field or in education in a specific subject area, as opposed to a major in general education..[24] When they are teaching out-of- field, it is because they have been assigned to do so. (Overhead 12) Many middle school teachers lack academic majors. Lack of academic majors, however, is a problem in middle schools when teachers are assigned to teach specific content. About 27 percent of middle school teachers majored in general education rather than in an academic area.[25]

4. Inadequate Support for Beginning Teachers

New teachers in America are often left to "sink or swim." They are given the toughest assignments—the classes that no one else wants to teach and the extracurricular activities that other teachers do not want to supervise. Many new teachers do not receive the extra support they need in order to succeed.

• New teacher attrition. About 22 percent of new public school teachers leave the profession in the first three years.^[26]
• Inadequate support. Although more than 50 percent of first-year public school teachers participate in some type of induction program, the quality and scope of the programs range from comprehensive to cursory.^[27]

5. Lack of Professional Development and Rewards for Knowledge and Skills

Teachers often have too few opportunities to improve their knowledge and skills, and their professional development opportunities are of low quality. Professional development remains largely short-term, non-collaborative, and unrelated to teachers' needs.

• Feeling unprepared for the realities of today's classrooms. Most teachers do not feel very well prepared for the realities of today's classrooms—addressing the needs of diverse students and those with special needs, integrating technology into instruction, and teaching to challenging standards.^[28] (Overhead 13)
• Inadequate time spent on professional development. Teachers continue to be offered professional development opportunities that last fewer than 8 hours, despite the fact that teachers report that professional development with a longer duration is more effective.^[29] (Overhead 14 and Overhead 15)
• Lack of collaboration. Most professional development is not collaborative in nature, even though teachers and researchers say that collaborative professional development—such as common planning periods, team teaching, and regularly scheduled collaboration with other teachers and administrators—is more effective than other forms.^[30] (Overhead 16)
• Lack of time within the school day. American schools are not organized to provide teachers and administrators time within the school day to collaborate and to engage in meaningful professional development.

• U.S. teachers devote more time (57.8 hours in a two-week period) to direct teacher-student academic instruction than do teachers in Japan (44 hours) and Germany (38.5 hours).^[31]

• Allocation of resources. The nation's schools typically spend only 1 percent to 3 percent of their resources on teacher development, compared to significantly higher expenditures by both American corporations and schools in other countries.^[32]
• Lack of rewards. Teachers are not rewarded for increasing their knowledge and skills.

• Only 23 states provide salary supplements for teachers who have demonstrated their accomplished teaching by earning National Board certification.^[33]

• While most districts reward teachers for getting advanced degrees, these degrees often do not have to be related to a teacher's subject area or to improving instruction.

[Why We Must Invest in Good Teaching]

[The Coming Crisis]