New Study Finds Today’s Teachers Better Prepared

              A new study has found that teachers entering the profession today have higher academic qualifications than their counterparts a decade ago, but there’s still work to be done. “We’ve had over the last decade a number of [such] efforts, and this certainly suggests things are moving in the right direction,” said study author Drew H. Gitomer. 
The report, released by the Educational Testing Service, says the finding bodes well for greater student learning because of the evidence that teachers’ academic ability is tied to their effectiveness. It also concludes that a host of policy changes aimed at improving teacher quality have shown results, though how much each change counts is impossible to say.
The study examined 153,000 teachers or prospective teachers who took the Praxis II test as part of seeking licensure in 20 states in 2002 through 2005 and compared their academic profiles with those of test-takers in the mid-1990s. The Praxis is owned by the ETS, a nonprofit research and testing service based in Princeton, N.J. The improvement occurred even though many more candidates than 10 years ago are entering the profession through alternative routes, the research says.
The improvements held equally for men and women, for different racial and ethnic groups, and across those aiming for careers in elementary and secondary teaching, the report states.
 Less positively, though, the profiles of those seeking a license to teach in elementary school, special education, or physical education remained “markedly” lower, it says, than the profiles of those seeking to teach an academic subject in high school.

— Teachers of Color