By Phil Williams
National educational reforms designed to ensure that elementary and secondary school classrooms are staffed with qualified teachers will not work, according to a UGA sociologist.
The research by Richard Ingersoll focuses on the problem of out-of-field teaching--teachers assigned to teach subjects in which they have little education or training. He found that the most  common assumptions about the causes of the problem are largely untrue and that proposed solutions may, in fact, cause more harm than good.
“Even using a minimal standard for a qualified teacher--those holding a college minor in the field they teach--the numbers of out-of-field teachers are striking,” says Ingersoll. “For example, a third of all secondary school teachers of mathematics have neither a major nor a minor in that field.”
Ingersoll analyzed data from the Schools and Staffing Survey--the largest and most comprehensive survey of teachers ever completed. This survey, conducted by the National Center for Educational Statistics, an arm of the U.S. Department of Education, included about 11,000 schools and 55,000 teachers in all 50 states.
The widespread use of under-qualified teachers has been long known but little studied because of the absence of accurate data. That situation was remedied with the staffing survey in the early 1990s. The problem of out-of-field teaching has become a major topic in educational reform circles. But, Ingersoll asserts, the problem remains largely misunderstood.
Critics often explain out-of-field teaching as a result of inadequate training, inflexible teacher unions or shortages of qualified teachers. Ingersoll found that all three claims are largely wrong.
He adopted a minimal definition of “qualified teacher,” focusing on how many of those teaching core academic subjects at the secondary level did not have a major or a minor in their fields, counting both academic and education majors and minors.
“In short, I assumed that few parents would expect their teenagers to be taught, for example, 11th-grade trigonometry by a teacher who did not have a college minor in math, no matter how bright the teacher,” says Ingersoll. “I found, however, that to be the case for millions of students.”
In addition to the fact that a third of all secondary school teachers who teach math do not have either a major or a minor in the subject, Ingersoll also found that a quarter of English teachers do not have majors or minors in English. More than half of teachers teaching physical science classes are without an academic major or minor in any one of the physical sciences, and the same holds true for secondary school history teachers.
Ingersoll argues that the relatively low achievement-test scores of U.S. students is one of the consequences of out-of-field teaching.
“Is it any surprise that science achievement is so low given that, even at the 12th-grade level, 41 percent of public school students in physical-science classes are taught by someone unqualified?” he asks.
Moreover, the reasons for out-of-field teaching have been diagnosed incorrectly, says Ingersoll. While there are problems with the preparation and training of teachers and there are teacher shortages at times, the statistics don’t support the idea that these are the major reasons for out-of-field teaching. Nor do strong teacher unions seem to be the issue.
Such explanations have resulted in reforms designed to train and recruit new teachers. Reformers in many states have pushed tougher teacher certification standards, more rigorous academic course work and more testing of teaching candidates.
The fundamental issue, however, is how the teaching profession is perceived in the United States, says Ingersoll, who is a former high school teacher himself.
“Unlike in many European and Asian nations, in this country elementary and secondary school teaching is largely treated as lower-status work and teachers as semi-skilled workers,” says Ingersoll.
The result of this public view has been the recruitment and retention problems that have made out-of-field teaching a common practice in American schools. As Ingersoll points out, high-quality teaching requires expertise and skill, and teachers should not be treated like interchangeable blocks that can be placed in any empty slot regardless of their training.
In the short term, Ingersoll says, there are several possible solutions. First, in high-demand fields, schools could offer incentives or provide retraining to attract and retain teachers. Second, principals should cut back on out-of-field assignments for beginning teachers to help cut down on the high number of such teachers who leave the profession. Finally, in the long term, the way to upgrade the quality of teachers is to upgrade the job itself.
“Few would require cardiologists to deliver babies, real-estate lawyers to defend criminal cases or sociology professors to teach English,” says Ingersoll. “If we treated teaching as a highly valued profession, there would be no problem attracting and retaining more than enough excellent teachers.”
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