California Urged to Address Teacher-Quality Shortcomings

California students are unlikely to meet the meet academic goals for mathematics and English under the No Child Left Behind Act unless policymakers continue to improve the quality of the state’s teaching workforce, a research study suggests.

The report, released last week by the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, based in Santa Cruz, Calif., says that 18,000 of the state’s more than 300,000 teachers are still “underprepared,” meaning they don’t have, at minimum, a preliminary teaching credential.

Though that figure has been declining since 2000, weaknesses in the teaching workforce still hit poor and minority students the hardest, says the report, based on research conducted by SRI International, of Menlo Park, Calif., and data from the...