All Talk, No Action: Putting an End to Out-of-Field Teaching.

Abstract

This report has a state-by-state analysis of the new 1999-2002 Schools and Staffing Survey data on the percentage of core academic secondary school classes taught by a teacher without major or minor in the subject. The report documents the huge and growing problem of disproportionate numbers of classes in highpoverty and high-minority secondary schools being taught by out-of-field teachers. The report also includes a list of recommendations which states, districts and schools can act on immediately to help reduce out-of-field teaching. Comments Reprinted from Education Trust, August 2002, 14 pages. The author, Dr. Richard M. Ingersoll, asserts his right to include this material in ScholarlyCommons@Penn. This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs/142 O ver the past decade, teacher quality has become one of the most widely and loudly discussed issues in education. And no problem related to teacher quality has received more attention than the unacceptably high rates of outof-field assignment in the nation’s middle schools and high schools. A solid consensus, based on research and common sense, now recognizes that secondary teachers must be knowledgeable about the subjects they teach if they are to help all students achieve high academic standards. Yet, according to a new analysis based on recently released results from the latest federal Schools and Staffing Survey, the amount of out-of-field teaching in the nation and states remains unacceptably high, with classes in high-poverty and high-minority schools much more likely to be assigned to a teacher lacking minimal academic qualifications in the subject being taught. The analysis also reveals that, while out-of-field teaching is far too pervasive at the high school level, the problem is even worse in middle schools, where very high rates of misassignment suggest a staggering disregard for whether teachers have the minimal academic foundation necessary to teach classes in core academic subject areas. Finally, the study reveals that the nation made no progress in reducing out-offield teaching between 1993-94 and 1999-2000, the year the latest survey was administered. If anything, the problem actually got somewhat worse, a change largely driven by higher rates of out-of-field teaching in the nation’s lowestincome and highest-minority schools, the very schools where students need good teaching the most desperately. What can account for the stubborn inertia behind such disappointing results? The obstacle is not a lack of agreement that there’s a problem, nor disagreement The Education Trust, August 2002 1 All Talk, No Action: Putting an End to Out-of-Field Teaching by Craig D. Jerald, The Education Trust Data Analysis by Richard M. Ingersoll, University of Pennsylvania about how serious it is. National commissions, international conferences, pronouncements by national and state leaders, extensive media coverage, compelling new research evidence, stacks of reports, and buckets of political soundbites and goal-setting all have contributed to a growing sense of urgency on the topic over the past decade. Nor is the obstacle that the problem is impossible to solve. Certainly, regional labor-market shortages in some fields can exacerbate the problem. But a growing body of evidence suggests that there are plenty of teachers within the system, and potential teachers outside it, who have (or, with some initial help, could obtain) the necessary academic foundation to teach secondary-level math, science, social studies, or language arts. After all, as Richard Ingersoll—a University of Pennsylvania researcher—points out, how can shortages explain out-of-field teaching in subjects like language arts and social studies, where we have long recognized the existence of teacher surpluses? In other words, out-of-field teaching isn’t nearly as natural or inevitable as many believe. Indeed, in his 1999 State of American Education speech, speculating on why American schoolchildren fall so far behind their international peers by the time they reach the end of high school, then-Secretary of Education Riley admitted, There is a unique American phenomena that really makes no sense—the practice of assigning teachers to teach ‘out of field.’ Foreign education ministers who visit me are just stumped when I try to explain this practice. Their translators simply have no words to describe it. What’s missing is action. Despite all of the lip service given to the problem over the past decade, most states and districts still operate as if it is acceptable to assign secondary classes in specific subjects to individuals who never studied them. Even states that claim to outlaw or discourage the practice leave plenty of loopholes through which the practice is allowed to continue. Fortunately, the new No Child Left Behind Act recognizes that the key to raising student learning and closing achievement gaps lies in access to a highly qualified teacher for all students. That new federal requirement should signal to all of us that the time for empty talk is long over. To provide every student with a qualified teacher, education leaders must take action now to put an end to the practice of assigning out-of-field teachers once and for all.

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