In December 1981, James Shymansky, a science education professor at the University of Iowa, and I surveyed 450 teacher placement offices at U.S. colleges and universities. We also polled 1,000 high school principals to determine the qualifications and teaching assignments of science and math teachers. The results were startling: Half of the classes of newly employed science and math teachers and one-third of all science and math classrooms in the U.S. were, according to the school principals, staffed by teachers who were unqualified in those subjects. The number of men and women who had received teaching degrees and were qualified to teach science and math had dropped by a factor of four in only 10 years.
These results, which were incorporated into testimony presented by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) to committees of Congress, received widespread media attention. Almost immediately, a flurry of other studies and commissions was created ...
