Abstract:
North Carolina has a teacher shortage. Contributing to this are retirements, resignations, a rapidly increasing school-age population, provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act that require all classroom teachers to be fully certified by the end of the 2005-06 school year, and a university system that does not graduate enough teachers to meet the state's needs. The state must hire 10,000 teachers a year; teacher college graduates in 2003 numbered 3,100, of which 2,200 were employed in North Carolina. Damico discusses the state's need to attract teachers, and then retain them; techniques used to fill teacher slots, like lateral entry and out-of-state recruitment; and ways to strengthen teacher recruitment and retention, like the N.C. Teaching Fellows Program, N.C. Teach, and Troops to Teachers.