Teacher Shortage, Training Needs Cited

U.S. Education Secretary Richard W. Riley cited “one of the worst shortages of qualified teachers in memory” and said some 250,000 teachers were working without proper preparation at a conference in Washington, D.C. “It’s gotten so bad that some schools have been forced to put any warm body in front of a classroom,” Riley told the first ever National Conference on Teacher Quality. He said the movement to raise educational standards would not succeed--despite recent gains in standardized testing scores and declines in high school dropout rates--unless teachers received adequate training and resources.