Author: Marilyn McMillen Seastrom

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 104

ISBN-13:

Over the last 15 years, interest in student performance and teacher qualifications has intensified among educational policymakers and researchers. During this time period, research has accumulated that links student achievement to the qualifications of teachers. Two central measures of elementary and secondary teacher qualifications are teachers' postsecondary education and their certification. To understand how many students are taught by teachers lacking specified levels of training, efforts have focused on mismatches between teacher qualifications and their teaching assignments (National Commission on Teaching and America's Future 1996; Ingersoll 1999). Such mismatches are commonly referred to as out-of-field teaching. Mismatches might include, for example, teachers with a degree in English who are teaching classes in social science; or, conversely, teachers with educational backgrounds in the social sciences who are assigned to teach classes in reading. The two measures of teacher qualifications featured in this report provide different perspectives on out-of-field teaching. Teachers who do not have a major, a minor, or certification in the subject taught can, most certainly, be classified as out-of-field teachers. In the middle grades in 1999-2000, some 11 to 14 percent of the students taking social science, history, and foreign languages, and 14 to 22 percent of the students taking English, mathematics, and science were in classes led by teachers without any of these credentials. In addition, approximately 30 to 40 percent of the middle-grade students in biology/life science, physical science, or ESL/bilingual education classes had teacher lacking these credentials. The following are appended: (1) Technical Notes; (2) Detailed Data Tables; and (3) Standard Error Tables. (Contains 39 tables and 23 footnotes.).