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This analysis on the age distribution of public school teachers have been prepared by Dr. Richard Ingersoll for the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF), using data gathered through the U.S. Department of Education's Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), which is administered every four years. The data for this analysis are drawn from the 2003-2004 survey, as the 2007-2008 survey is still in the data collection phase. In addition to showing the age distribution of public teachers in each state, the data tables also report: (1) Median Age; (2) Lower Quartile (median age of the youngest 25 percent of public school teachers in the state); and (3) Upper Quartile (median age of the oldest 25 percent of public school teachers in the state). This report reveals that the median age of public school teachers varies widely across the United States, from 40.5 in Kentucky to 49 in West Virginia. While every state faces an aging teacher workforce, the trend is particularly acute in certain regions of the country, including: New England: Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut; and Northwest/Northern Rockies/Northern Plains: Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota.

This report examines the status of elementary and secondary teaching as a profession in the United States. The primary data source is the 1990-91 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. The sample used contains data from 11,589 schools. This report assesses levels of teacher professionalization in elementary and secondary schools by examining a selected set of the traditional characteristics used to distinguish professions from other occupations. Tables provide data for these criteria: (1) credentials (professional hiring requirements); (2) induction (mentor programs, effective assistance); (3) professional development (continuing education support, participation in professional organization activities); (4) specialization (in-field teaching by secondary level teachers); (5) authority (teachers' decision making influence of school board, principal, and faculty); and (6) compensation (starting salary, maximum salary, paid benefits). Analyses are provided regarding differences in professionalization based on school size and the poverty level of the student populations for public schools, and the orientation or affiliation of private schools. Although all schools exhibited some characteristics of professional workplaces, it was found that most were lacking in or fell short on a number of the characteristics. Two appendixes list standard statistical error factors for tables and additional resources regarding the Schools and Staffing Survey. (Contains 63 references.) (JLS)

This report investigated the extent to which students in public secondary schools are taught by teachers without basic qualifications in their assigned teaching fields--i.e., at least a college minor in the fields they teach--focusing on core academic subjects (mathematics, English, social studies, science). Analysis of the study data revealed that many students are taught by out-of-field teachers: 20 percent in English classes, 25 percent in mathematics, 39 percent in life science or biology, 56 percent in physical sciences classes, and over 50 percent in history or world civilization. Low-income schools had higher levels of out-of-field teaching than did more affluent schools; schools serving predominantly minority student populations did not have higher levels of out-of-field teaching than did schools serving predominantly white students. In several fields, students in both low-track and low-achievement-level classes were more often taught by out-of-field teachers than were students in high-track and high-achievement-level classes; however, predominantly minority classes did not have higher levels of out-of-field teaching than did predominantly white classes. Students in seventh and eighth grade classes were more often taught by out-of-field teachers than were senior high students. Data tables are included. Appendix A contains standard errors; Appendix B lists additional resources on the 1990-91 Schools and Staffing Survey, which served as the basis for the study. (Contains 31 references.) (ND)

Provides guidelines for what to expect in an article using logistic regression techniques, discussing tables, figures, and charts to be included to comprehensively assess results and assumptions to be verified; demonstrating the preferred pattern for applying logistic methods, with an illustration of logistic regression applied to a data set; and offering recommendations for appropriate reporting formats of logistic regression results and the minimum observer-to-predictor ratio. (SM)

Using primary sources, this unit explores the founding of the 12th and most successful of the English colonies in North America, Pennsylvania. Established by the Quaker civil libertarian William Penn, Pennsylvania was intended to demonstrate that a society founded on mutual respect, tolerance, and individual responsibility could flourish. The first 50 years of this province demonstrate that European-Indian relations need not have been based on violence and the destruction of native cultures. In a crucial departure from the past, religious tolerance also was legally guaranteed. Penn understood that separate religious groups might share common interests. The government of Pennsylvania explicitly derived its authority from the people it was intended to govern. The unit embodies five objectives: (1) to study historical documents in order to experience history as a dynamic discipline that studies, interprets, and debates the meaning of human artifacts and through those, humanity's collective past; (2) to examine the effect that the Quakers' respect for life and abhorrence of violence had on establishing relations with Indians based on trust and honesty; (3) to study two of the founding principles of Pennsylvania, namely religious toleration, and faith in the people's capacity to govern, and to consider the extent to which those values remain valid in today's world; (4) to speculate on how treating women as the spiritual equals of men, rather than their inferiors, affected women and altered Quaker society; and (5) to appreciate the ethnic diversity of Pennsylvania and to experiment with the methods historians use to investigate people from the past. (Author/DK)

This unit is one of a series that represents specific moments in history from which students focus on the meanings of landmark events. By studying primary sources of a crucial turning point in history, students become aware that choices had to be made by real human beings, that those decisions were the result of specific factors, and that they set in motion a series of historical consequences. The First Amendment guarantees each citizen's right "to petition the government for a redress of grievances." Within months after Congress sent the Bill of Rights to the states for ratification in 1789, antislavery forces took full advantage of this fundamental liberty. By doing so, they provoked Congressional debates so stormy that within 18 months of the Constitution's ratification the House of Representatives already rang with the dire threat of civil war. The United States was born with the problem of conflicting sectional interests, and this unit is designed to reveal that the debate over slavery, the most heated example of sectionalism, began almost immediately after ratification of the Constitution. This unit documents the first Congressional debates over slavery and raises for students the fundamental political questions regarding this national issue which remained significant through 1860. At the same time, the debates themselves refer frequently to the key political controversies of the 1790's, demonstrating that slavery was not debated in a political vacuum. Lesson plans include: (1) predicting political behavior; (2) accounting for political behavior in the 1790 and 1800 debates; and (3) evaluation of arguments. Contains 5 references. (Author/DK)

The material in this unit is designed to introduce students to the origin and role of ideas in history, especially their role in the lives of ordinary people, in the rapidly industrializing United States of the 19th century. These lessons concern Americans in the great age of industrialization, from 1850 to 1900. Unit objectives include: (1) identifying common characteristics of the late 19th century success ethic, using examples from biography and literature; (2) describing the social, economic, and political circumstances that nurtured the success ethic; (3) identifying promoters of the gospel of wealth and explaining why they promoted it; and (4) examining the tension between an ethic of individual success and an ideology that justifies the power of the rich. The first of three lesson plans deals with the virtues of frugality. Objectives of this lesson include discussing characteristics of the success ethic and suggesting reasons why it prevailed in early America, and showing the common values of most Americans and their belief that most people could achieve. The second lesson on virtues of wealth helps students to identify the main components of the competing form of the success ethic that developed in the industrial United States, to identify people such as Horatio Alger, who preached the virtues of wealth, and to examine a rags to riches story and evaluate its realistic and unrealistic characteristics. The third lesson on the gospel of wealth presents primary sources from which students can identify the promoters of the gospel of wealth, examine their methods of appealing to ordinary people, and analyze the values implied in an ideology that exalts wealth and the wealthy. (DK)

This booklet for practitioners and others working with groups of older adults with chronic pain describes a model for a program for learning about factors associated with pain and about coping. An overview is provided of the model developed at the Turner Geriatric Clinic that has an education and support group format and involves both an informational and experiential component. (Each session combines a lecture by an expert with brief experiential exercises and/or personal group discussion. The various phases of the program are discussed in detail, including planning, publicity, six group sessions (with two handouts), and evaluation. Questionnaires administered during the first and last sessions are provided. These recommendations from the planning members are listed: extensive publicity, six sessions in the prescribed order, review of previous session and preview of following one in each group meeting, circular seating arrangement, speakers who present too much rather than too little information, one speaker per session, review after each meeting among planning members, general aches and pains emphasis rather than focus on specific chronic pain condition, ongoing evaluation, and variations, including different settings and leadership arrangements. (YLB)