If you have your images turned off, you may be missing several important links. Finding highly qualified teachers for the students who need them most is a difficult problem. Not enough college students want to teach in big cities, and few education schools focus on preparing teachers for urban classrooms. Urban districts have a tougher time hiring and filling teaching vacancies, especially in such sought-after fields as biology, mathematics, bilingual education, and special education. Often, the cities can't match the salaries or attractive working conditions available in the surrounding suburbs.
Urban schools are twice as likely to hire unlicensed or underqualified teachers.
Finding enough minority teachers is also a challenge. A 1997 survey by Recruiting New Teachers Inc. found that 92 percent of the largest urban districts reported an immediate need for teachers from minority races and ethnic groups. Some studies suggest that prospective minority teachers are more interested in working in urban districts than are other teacher education students. But only 20 percent of undergraduates in teacher education are minority-group members. Outdated and cumbersome hiring procedures compound the problem.