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Resident Scholar Frederick M. Hess

America needs more teachers. Retirements, rising student enrollments, and a drive to reduce class size will create a demand for as many as 2 million new teachers over the next decade. The needs are especially pressing in the distressed schools where teachers least want to teach and in certain subjects such as math and science.

But more is not enough: America also needs better teachers. Empirical evidence of the importance of teacher quality is mounting, and has sparked a dialogue about the quality of the nation's teaching force. In Tennessee, research by William Sanders has quantified the cumulative effects of even one or two bad teachers on a student. He found substantial differences in student achievement based on the sequence in which a student had particular teachers. Similar studies elsewhere have shown the same results. Perversely, the students who need the very best teachers are the ones most likely to be hurt by the shortfall of quality teachers.