For the past several years, our reports have examined California’s shortage of teachers who are fully qualified and willing to take available teaching jobs.

That shortage continues. In the 2001–02 school year, there were almost 42,000 underprepared teachers — teachers who had not completed a teacher preparation program and did not have a preliminary credential issued by the state. This represents about 14 percent — one in seven — of all the public school teachers in California.

We can take a bit of solace in the fact that this represents about 700 fewer underprepared teachers than there were in the 2000–01 school year.

Unfortunately, however, the situation is expected to get far worse as a result of teacher retirements and growth in the number of students.

Despite state efforts to recruit and train more teachers, the shortage of credentialed teachers still is expected to grow in the next 10 years to about 65,000. Our projections indicate that by the end of the decade, more than one in five California teachers — 21 percent — will be underprepared. These projections, based on current trends and information available from state databases, have proven to be steady and accurate since we began making them in 1999.