Sheila Nataraj Kirby

Supply and Demand of Minority Teachers in Texas: Problems and Prospects

Teacher supply and demand issues are of critical importance as our society enters the 21st century. Over the next decade, there will be an increasing demand for new teachers––about two million––due in part to a dramatic increase in enrollments and high attrition rates as an aging teacher workforce becomes eligible for retirement. Where these teachers will come from and where they will teach is important to understand as our society faces increasing racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity. Amid this diversity is a continuing concern that some racial-ethnic groups are disproportionately placed at risk. Thus, this article focuses on the supply and demand patterns of minority teachers, with special attention to teachers of students in high-risk districts. We analyze data on teachers from Texas between 1979 and 1996. We provide a variety of descriptive results––both univariate and multivariate––showing that while Texas has been successful in attracting minority teachers, it has a long way to go in attaining the goal of the Texas State Board of Education: to have a teacher workforce that reflects the racial-ethnic composition of the state.

Nontraditional Recruits to Mathematics and Science Teaching

This paper focuses on nontraditional training programs that train recruits for mathematics and science teaching. These recruits include recent college graduates with degrees in mathematics or science, individuals in science-related fields who are retiring or who want to make a midcareer switch to teaching, and teachers who initially prepared to teach in areas other than mathematics or science. We find that not all programs are equally effective and that the quality and intensity of preparation make a difference in how well prepared recruits feel to teach. Our study also indicates that, for all their promise, nontraditional teacher preparation programs cannot fully overcome other attributes of teaching that make recruitment and retention of teachers difficult.

Sources of Teacher Supply: Some New Evidence From Indiana

This article is a first step in identifying the diverse sources of teacher supply, the magnitude of the flow form each source, and the characteristics of the teachers that enter or reenter from each source. The analysis uses data on all full-time teachers in Indiana from 1965 to 1988, as well as a survey of new hires in 1987–1988. Our data suggest that experienced teachers (both returning and migrating) have constituted an important source of supply—at present they account for almost 60% of all new hires. Inexperienced teachers appear to be delaying entry into teaching—they have become increasingly older over time, with over a third of them being 35 years old or older. These findings have important implications for teacher recruiting in the future as retirements increase and the reserve pool begins to shrink.

Black Teachers in Indiana: A Potential Shortage?

There is considerable concern regarding the declining proportion of minorities entering teaching. We use data on Indiana public school teachers to examine Black representation in the teaching force, their patterns of entry and attrition. We find that the overall picture—an aging Black teaching force, increasing attrition due to retirement, a decreasing proportion of new Black hires—suggests that Black representation in the teaching force may well become a cause for concern unless active recruitment policies are implemented.

Using State School Accountability Data to Evaluate Federal Programs: A Long Uphill Road

Evaluations of federal programs designed to improve student achievement generally depend on data gathered by the states for school accountability purposes, rather than data specifically designed for program evaluation. In addition, these data are available at the school level but not at the student level. This article first discusses issues related to the quality of school-level data collected as part of state accountability systems, including the reliability and validity of school-level test scores as a measure of the value added by schools to student learning. It then outlines various ways in which school-level data can be usefully analyzed and illustrates the challenges inherent in doing so, including the challenges of aggregating data across states to find an overall program effect. The final section discusses the implications of the arguments presented here for measuring changes in school performance and linking these effects to a specific program. Ultimately, our ability to measure changes in outcomes and link them back to the intervention depends on three factors: (a) identifying a set of activities attributable to the program, (b) measuring the quality of implementation of these activities, and (c) obtaining a valid and reliable measure of the desired outcome. The article makes it clear that none of these is easy to come by.

Managing the Enlisted Force: Whisking in the Wind?

The enlisted force will face changing roles and responsibilities as we move into the future. A central issue is whether the current management system will adequately meet these new challenges. In order to answer this question, we need a critical evaluation of how well the current system has functioned in the past. This article focuses primarily on the management of the experience and grade distribution-arguably one of the most difficult and least successful policies in the history of enlisted management. Its main thesis is that factors other than management policies and practices have had an important impact in shaping the force and that the inability to manage to stated goals may not be entirely the fault of the managers. Unless these trends are factored into future decisions regarding enlisted force management, future policies are likely to be as unsuccessful as they have been in the past.