From what I hear, they're doing their best, but they simply can't find them. The responsibility that we all have is to understand that this is a complex problem, and it has to be addressed on several different levels. Coupled with that challenge are international comparisons showing U.S. high school students lagging behind their peers in many industrialized countries, a connection U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley made in his State of American Education Address last month. Their translators simply have no words to describe it. Some education experts go so far as to say it's no coincidence that the U.S. rankings on the Third International Mathematics and Science Study drop after the 4th grade.
Recent research does show the practice is rampant.
Richard M. Ingersoll, a sociologist at the University of Georgia in Athens, has analyzed U.S. Department of Education data and found that in every subject, large numbers of teachers are leading classes for which they lack even the equivalent of a college minor. Nationwide, for example, he found that about 28 percent of high school mathematics teachers have neither a major nor a minor in math, and 18 percent of all science teachers are similarly deficient in their preparation. Previous Education Department analyses indicated that the practice was most prevalent in poor and urban districts. The state-level picture, however, is often painted in ways that seem less alarming. The view gets even gloomier when Mr. Ingersoll examines the types of science majors and minors teachers have.