Assessing Teacher Training.

By 1984 four studies of the teaching profession all concurred that the profession was troubled. "It's a mess," said Emily Feistritzer, author of "The Condition of Teaching," produced in 1983 for the National Center for Educational Information and the most far-reaching study to that point. Feistritzer, whose research delved into conditions in every state, blamed a significant part of the problem on the chaotic certification procedures at state departments of education. A drastically reduced pool of students going into the field exacerbated the situation; in 1973, 200,000 graduates planned to go into teaching, but by 1981, only 108,000 students studied to become teachers. Of those students, 35 percent were in elementary education; 17 percent were in physical education; 13 percent in special education. Although less than 3 percent planned to go into secondary teaching, this abnormally low figure could reflect the fact that some secondary teachers majored in their subject-...