Patrick Murphy, Michael DeArmond, and Kacey Guin, Education Policy Analysis Archives
July 2003
One of the timeless questions in education: Are we facing a teacher shortage? This new report from the Education Policy Analysis Archives uses data from the 1999-2000 federal Schools and Staffing Survey to show that the shortage is nowhere near as bad as everyone fears and that the problem is in fact concentrated in specific regions and subjects. To combat this spotty but still vexing situation, the authors recommend enticing the best teachers into the classrooms that need them most by giving them "combat pay" and other incentives ranging from signing bonuses to freedom from overbearing administrators. (Public Agenda recently concluded much the same in its report Stand by Me. See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=108#274.) You can find the report at http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v11n23/.