HELP WANTED: GOOD TEACHERS.

• Author: Hirsch, Eric

Many states are pursuing aggressive ways to recruit new teachers and encourage them to work in schools that are the hardest to staff.

From the urban districts of New York and Los Angeles to the rural districts of the Midwest, schools are struggling to hire qualified teachers. They have become so hard to find that many districts are leaving state and national borders behind in their search. School administrators in Detroit are traveling to India this summer to find teachers. Chicago launched a Global Educators Outreach program to bring teachers from as far away as Colombia and the Philippines.

California "will need approximately 300,000 teachers over the next decade," says Kerry Mazzoni, former chair of the House Education Committee and California's secretary of education. But she wants to ensure that these new teachers "are ready for the classroom and well trained with rigorous standards." As the nation looks to hire more than 2 million teachers over the next 10 years, ensuring that new educators have the knowledge and skills to help students attain the highest level of education will be difficult.

"The dual challenge of addressing quantity and quality will create conflicting pressures, says Assemblywoman Barbara Cegavske from Clark County, Nev., the sixth largest and one of the fastest growing districts in the country.

"The pressure to create more teachers through accelerated programs or streamlined licensing may conflict with the pressure to put qualified teachers in classrooms," she says. "Given the complexity of the issue, it is likely that this problem will not be easily solved."

Although local school districts--through collective bargaining agreements and partnerships with teacher preparation programs-- have traditionally been responsible for recruitment and pay, states are playing a larger role as shifts in the demographics of educators and students make replenishing the teacher corps more difficult.

THE NEED FOR ADDITIONAL TEACHERS

Burgeoning school enrollments are one reason there's such a need for more teachers. Last fall, a record 53 million students filled U.S. schools and this level is expected to remain steady. Western states, including California, Idaho, Nevada and New Mexico, expect to have double-digit increases in K-12 enrollment.

Another problem is that teachers are getting older. Almost half are 45 years old or older, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. While these figures illustrate a teaching force with vast experience--nearly one-third have been in classrooms for more than 20 years--they also point to the fact that nearly half of current teachers will retire during the next decade.

The impact of an aging teaching pool will affect some states more than others. "In Iowa, 40 percent of our teaching staff will retire in the next 10 years," Representative Mary Mascher points out. That state is not alone. About 30 percent of the teachers in 20 states have more than 20 years of classroom experience; these states are predominately in the central and northeast regions of the country.

The retirement issue is compounded by the difficulty in getting those trained to teach into classrooms and then keeping them...