Policy solution or hollow promise?

n the face of a predicted shortage of public school teachers, experts have identified "mid-career entrants" to teaching--teachers who enter the profession as a second career--as a source of supply of public school teachers that will be critical to tap in order to avert a staffing crisis (e.g. National Commission on Teaching and America's Future , 2007; Gordon, Kane, & Staiger, 2006). In addition, mid-career entrants have been heralded for their content knowledge and organizational insight (e.g. National Academies Press , 2000, 2005; Johnson et al., 2004), their interest in working in hard-to-staff schools (Natriello & Zumwalt, 1993), and their potential to help reduce the racial and gender imbalances that exist between teachers and students in U.S. public schools (Feistritzer, 2005; Ruenzel, 2002; Shen, 1997, 1998). In my thesis, I use a linear contrast methodology and data from five administrations of the Schools and Staffing Surveys (SASS) from 1987 through 2004 to assess the legitimacy of policymakers' assertions that mid-career entrants will help avert a staffing shortage and improve teacher quality. In these two dissertation papers, I present descriptive profiles of mid- and first-career entrants and describe how their personal and professional characteristics changed over the period of observation. Further, I examine how the percentage of mid-career entrants among new teachers changed over time and whether this trend differs by race and gender. Lastly, I form tentative hypotheses about mid- and first-career entrants' mobility and attrition by examining their reported levels of satisfaction with aspects of their work and worksite. I find that the percentage of mid-career entrants among first-year teachers nearly doubled--from 20% to 39%--between 1987-88 and 2003-04.

Further, I find that mid-career entrants were more likely than first-career entrants to be male and from minority racial backgrounds. Despite these characteristics, mid-career entrants' increasing presence in the new teacher workforce has not ameliorated the gender imbalance and has played only a partial role in reducing the racial imbalance among first-year teachers. I do not find any evidence to suggest that mid-career entrants appear any more or less likely than first-career entrants to change schools or leave teaching.