The high schools that have low graduation rates – and the middle schools that feed into those high schools – typically have the least qualified teachers, the highest number of vacancies, and the greatest teacher turnover.   Ninth graders often bear the brunt of this difficulty in attracting and retaining qualified, committed teachers.

In keeping with one of our key research strategies – merging databases to find new relationships – we have merged teacher and student databases from large urban districts.  From these data, we have examined how teacher qualifications are distributed within high schools, the effect of elementary versus secondary level credentials at the middle grades level, and whether the best middle grades math and science teachers are more likely to resign from their district.