What role do teachers play in America's educational crisis?

A special issue of Public Finance Review, published by SAGE, examines those questions, addressing one critical dimension of the debates about educational quality and equity, namely, the role of teachers, focusing especially on the hiring and retention of qualified teachers – even in disadvantaged districts. The articles included in the issue explore such concerns as:

• Whether teachers certified in the subject produce higher test scores in their students
• The effectiveness of teacher recruitment practices
• How the No Child Left Behind testing mandate affects teacher turnover
• The special challenges of districts with many disadvantaged students
• The extent to which salaries affect teacher attrition

Publishing these articles in a special issue of Public Finance Review is the end result of papers presented at "The Teacher Quality and Teacher Retention Conference," held at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University in May 2005. “Like the conference where we first heard the research presented,” commented James Alm, journal editor, “this special issue represents an important addition to the policy discussion on how to improve education in the United States.”

The current issue of Public Finance Review is available at no charge for a limited time at http://pfr.sagepub.com/content/vol36/issue1/.

SAGE is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped inform and educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology and medicine. A privately owned corporation, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Singapore. www.sagepublications.com

Public Finance Review is a peer-reviewed journal devoted to economic research, theory, and policy applications, focusing on a variety of allocation, distribution, and stabilization functions within the public sector economy. It publishes rigorous empirical and theoretical information on public economic polices, examining and critiquing their impact and consequences, providing comprehensive coverage of the public sector economy today. http://pfr.sagepub.com/