Ingersoll, Richard
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Professor of Education and Sociology
Introduction
Richard M. Ingersoll, a former high school teacher, is Professor of Education and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. His area of expertise is America’s elementary and secondary teaching force. His research and writing focus on teaching as a job, teachers as employees, and schools as workplaces.
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Publication Holes in the Teacher Supply Bucket(2002-03-01) Ingersoll, RichardFew educational issues receive more attention than the need to ensure that all elementary and secondary classrooms are staffed with qualified teachers. A rash of studies, commissions and national reports announce that we are on the precipice of a severe teacher shortage. These shortfalls, we are told, are due primarily to two demographic trends - increasing student enrollment and the retirement of a graying teaching force.Publication Turnover Among Mathematics and Science Teachers in the U.S.(2000-02-01) Ingersoll, RichardFor some time educational policy analysts have been predicting that shortfalls of teachers resulting primarily from increases in student enrollment and teacher retirements will make it very difficult for schools to find qualified teachers and, in turn, will hurt school performance. Moreover, analysts have argued that shortages will be worse for particular fields, such as math and science, because of difficulties in recruiting qualified candidates. This paper summarizes what the best available nationally representative data reveal about the rates of, and reasons for, teacher turnover for both math/science and other teachers. The data show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the problems schools have adequately staffing classrooms with qualified teachers are not primarily due to teacher shortfalls, stemming from either increases in student enrollment or increases in teacher retirement. Rather, the data show that school staffing difficulties are primarily a result of a "revolving door" where large numbers of teachers depart teaching for other reasons, such as job dissatisfaction and in order to pursue better jobs or other careers. These findings have important implications for educational policy. Teacher recruitment programs - the dominant policy approach to addressing school staffing inadequacies - will not solve the staffing problems of schools, if they do not also address the problem of teacher retention. In short, the data indicate that recruiting more teachers will not solve teacher shortages if large numbers of such teachers then prematurely leave.Publication National Assessments of Teacher Quality(1996-10-01) Ingersoll, Richard MThis report addresses the issue of evaluating and measuring the quality of school teachers. In particular, it speaks to the problem of assessing the competence, performance and effectiveness of elementary and secondary teachers through large-scale national sample surveys. Its objective is to provide a foundation and springboard for thinking about the conceptual and methodological issues underlying the development of national survey measures of teacher quality. This paper will not attempt to conceive or construct such measures or indicators themselves. Rather, it seeks to provide background to such efforts. Its role is to review the range of contemporary thought on assessing teacher quality and to discuss the possibilities and problems of adapting existing methods and measures for use in large-scale surveys, such as those undertaken by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) of the U.S. Department of Education.Publication Do Accountability Policies Push Teachers Out?(2016-05-01) Ingersoll, Richard; Merrill, Lisa; May, HenryThe impact of accountability on U.S. schools, for good or ill, is a subject of debate and research. The authors recently studied an aspect of accountability that had previously received little attention. They asked, do accountability reforms affect public schools' ability to retain their teachers? By analyzing data from the Schools and Staffing Survey and the Teacher Followup Survey, they found strong (but unsurprising) evidence that accountability made teacher retention more difficult in low-performing schools; schools whose students scored low on high-stakes assessments had higher teacher turnover than those that scored higher; and schools that received sanctions because of their low performance had even higher turnover. The most helpful finding of the analysis was that even in schools subject to sanctions, higher teacher turnover was not inevitable. Schools that had better working conditions—and especially those that gave teachers greater classroom autonomy–were able to mitigate the negative effects of accountability sanctions. The authors conclude that holding teachers accountable for results must be paired with giving them control over the instruction that produces these results.Publication The Changing Face of Teaching(2018-05-01) Ingersoll, Richard; Merrill, Lisa; Stuckey, DanielAn analysis of nearly 30 years of data on the teaching force sheds new light on the makeup of the occupation—and on staffing priorities.Publication The Mathematics and Science Teacher Shortage: Fact and Myth(2009-03-01) Ingersoll, Richard; Perda, DavidContemporary educational thought holds that one of the pivotal causes of inadequate school performance is the inability of schools to adequately staff classrooms with qualified teachers, especially in fields such as mathematics and science. Shortages of teachers, it is commonly believed, are at the root of these staffing problems, and these shortfalls are, in turn, primarily due to recent increases in teacher retirements and student enrollments. The objective of this study is to empirically reexamine the issue of mathematics and science teacher shortages and to evaluate the extent to which there is a supply-side deficit—a shortage—of new teachers in these particular fields. The data utilized in this investigation are from three sources—the Schools and Staffing Survey and its supplement, the Teacher Follow-Up Survey; the Integrated Postsecondary Educational Data System; and the Baccalaureate and Beyond Survey, all conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. The data show that there are indeed widespread school staffing problems—that is, many schools experience difficulties filling their classrooms with qualified candidates, especially in the fields of math and science. But, contrary to conventional wisdom, the data also show that these school staffing problems are not solely, or even primarily, due to shortages in the sense that too few new mathematics and science teachers are produced each year. The data document that the new supply of mathematics and science teachers is more than sufficient to cover the losses of teachers due to retirement. For instance, in 2000 there were over two and half teachers in the new supply of math teachers for every one math teacher who retired that year. However, when preretirement teacher turnover is factored in, there is a much tighter balance between the new supply of mathematics and science teachers and losses. The data also shows that turnover varies greatly between different types of schools and these differences are tied to the characteristics and conditions of those schools. While it is true that teacher retirements are increasing, the overall volume of turnover accounted for by retirement is relatively minor when compared with that resulting from other causes, such as teacher job dissatisfaction and teachers seeking to pursue better jobs or other careers.Publication Loosely Coupled Organizations Revisited(1993) Ingersoll, RichardOver the past two decades organizational analysts have become increasingly intrigued by those complex organizations which, despite appearing to be highly rationalized, paradoxically seem to lack expected levels of internal coordination and control of their productive activities and employees. The resulting body of research has popularized several new labels for such organizations - loosely coupled systems and organized anarchies. This essay evaluates this line of research by focussing on its analysis of schools, which are usually considered to be the epitome of loosely structured organizations. In brief, I disagree with this perspective's conclusions and argue that distinguishing the mode and degree of organizational coupling and control depend on where, by what criteria and how one looks. My contention is that although this debunking perspective ostensibly rejects tidy rational and efficiency models of organization, ironically it unwittingly employs many of the latter's assumptions of organizational behavior. In particular, these analysts adopt, I argue, a framework that precludes the discovery of both the degree and forms of organizational control within schools. Subsequently, by re-examining and re-interpreting the existing research on school organization, this paper identifies and illustrates a range of institutional and organizational mechanisms by which schools and the work of teachers are constrained and circumscribed.Publication High Turnover Plagues Schools(2002-08-15) Ingersoll, RichardPublication Rejoinder: Misunderstanding the Problem of Out-of-Field Teaching(2001-01-01) Ingersoll, RichardThe phenomenon of out-of-field teaching - teachers assigned to teach subjects for which they have little education or training-is an important, but long unrecognized, problem in schools. It is an important issue because highly qualified teachers may actually become highly unqualified when they teach subjects for which they have little background. This issue has long been unrecognized, however, largely due to an absence of accurate information about it - a situation remedied with the availability, beginning in the early 1990s, of new data on teachers.Publication An Agenda for Research on Teachers and Schools: Revisiting NCES' Schools and Staffing Survey(1995-11-01) Ingersoll, Richard MThis paper outlines an agenda of research on teachers and schools utilizing NCES' Schools and Staffing Survey. SASS is an unusual education survey. Unlike most major large-scale nationally representative surveys, SASS does not focus on students, nor on feature measures of student achievement and student outcomes. Instead, SASS focuses on teachers and schools. Indeed, it is probably the largest and most comprehensive survey of teachers in existence. SASS consists of linked surveys of schools, districts, principals, and teachers. It has obtained a wealth of information on teachers-their backgrounds, training, attitudes, behavior-and on schools-their principals, working conditions, contexts, characteristics, processes, and climate.