Over half of these will be first time teachers, who will need to pass new, more difficult certification requirements. Attrition rates for new teachers in some urban districts reach 50 percent in the first five years of teaching. Urban eighth graders are twice as likely as their suburban or rural peers to attend schools where at least one teacher leaves before the end of the year. One quarter are teaching outside their fields. In virtually every subject area, more affluent students get better teachers.
Urban schools are twice as likely as others to hire unlicensed or underqualified teachers.
Eight out of ten beginning teachers are female. Urban districts have a harder time filling teaching vacancies, especially in such sought-after fields as biology, mathematics, bilingual education, and special education. Minority students make up 75 percent of urban enrollments, but only 20 percent of undergraduates in teacher education are minorities. Newly hired teachers in urban schools are more likely than their counterparts in suburban and rural districts to have either no teaching license or an emergency or temporary one. Most elementary school teachers have only 8.3 minutes of preparation time for every hour they teach, while high school teachers have just 13 minutes of prep time per class hour.