Rookie Teacher, Age 50

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James Fogel, at age 50, has earned plenty of money as a lawyer, plus a splash of prestige as a criminal-court judge in New York City. Now he feels free to step down from the bench and dive back into the subjects he loved most in college: math and physics. At the same time, he is following what he describes as "an even higher calling" than the law--to work as an inner-city high school math teacher.

This is the season when school systems across the U.S. are recruiting teachers for next fall, a task that has grown more difficult in the face of a teacher shortage in many areas. But thousands of talented career switchers like Fogel are providing a much needed boost to the applicant pool. Some 55,000 teachers, many of them baby boomers, are expected to retire this year. And more teachers will be needed to meet swelling enrollments--a total of 2.2 million new teachers by 2010.

Yet the teacher shortage is as much a matter of quality as quantity. While the teacher-training programs at U.S. colleges will graduate some 200,000 potential new educators this year--most of them bright and eager--school principals and reformers say a sizable minority of the neophytes are just not good enough, especially in math and science, at a time when expectations are rising for students and teachers alike.

Only about 38% of K-12 teachers in the U.S. have a degree in a field other than education. And in states from Massachusetts to Maryland, most teachers have flunked new certification tests in math and science. Yet for years, school systems have heavily favored applicants with education degrees. School systems made it difficult for even the best-qualified career switchers to become teachers, often requiring them to spend a year or more obtaining master's degrees in education. The recruiters often seemed to care more whether prospective teachers could talk the jargon of "metacognition" and "kinesthetic modalities" than whether they could actually solve an algebra problem or explain cell division.

Now, though, the requirements, and the thinking behind them, are changing. Like the best sports coaches, more school recruiters and principals are drafting prospects who show strong ability and attitude--and who can learn any skills that they lack. States and school districts are aggressively recruiting new teachers from among the ranks of accountants, doctors, lawyers, retired military officers and other career switchers, who now represent about 5% of the nation's 2.8 million public-school teachers. The schools promise to turn these professionals into educators in less than two months after intensive coaching in methods of teaching and maintaining discipline in the classroom. "I can't have any teacher in this building who doesn't know the subject matter. If you are only one page ahead of the students, they know it," says Gregory Hodge, principal of the Harlem school where Fogel teaches. "But we can teach you how to be a good teacher."