Teaching Career Paths and Teacher Education Reforms.

This paper addresses policy issues raised by recent recommendations (e.g., Holmes Group, 1986) to improve the quality of teacher education by moving to fifth-year certification. It describes career patterns of beginning teachers with different undergraduate preparation paths, using data from the 1979 follow-up of the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS-72) (Riccobono, Henderson, Burkheimer, Place, & Levinsohn, 1981). The impacts of new teachers' background characteristics, educational investments, and teaching experience on income, work, and pay satisfaction are analyzed. It suggests that the wages of women and minorities are near parity early in their careers. Those who had not majored in education or who had made greater educational investments, both in advanced degrees and in the selectivity of their graduating institutions, were more likely to be dissatisfied with work and pay. Implications for school district personnel practices and state higher education policies that e...