Author Description

This report deals with the supply of and demand for elementary and secondary school teachers in the United States, using data from the Schools and Staffing Survey of the National Center for Education Statistics. There is considerable concern over whether the United States will experience shortages of teachers in the coming years as student enrollments rise and demand for teachers increases. In 1990-91, the year of the survey, there were multiple and diverse sources of new teachers, including re-entrants into teaching. Over half of all secondary school teachers had master's degrees, but many taught in areas other than the one in which they had trained, with out-of-field teaching especially common in private schools. This analysis focuses on the levels of training teachers had in the subjects they taught, based on the premise that adequate staffing requires teachers at the high school level to hold at least a college minor in the fields they teach. Most of the newly hired were teachers who had moved or transferred from other schools. Between 1990-91 and 1991-92, there was an overall teacher turnover rate of 13%. Fifty-five percent of those who left, left teaching altogether. Ten tables and six figures in the text display survey findings. An appendix contains standard errors for six of the text tables. (Contains 75 references.) (SLD)