Download our "Lessons Learned: New Teachers Talk About Their Jobs, Challenges and Long-Range Plans" series of reports: Issue No. 1: They're Not Little Kids Anymore: The Special Challenges of New Teachers in High Schools and Middle Schools; Issue No. 2: Working Without a Net: How Teachers from Three Prominent Alternate Route Programs Describe Their First Year on The Job; and Issue No. 3: Teaching In Changing Times.

The third installment in our Lessons Learned series of reports on new teachers found two specific areas in which teacher training may be lacking: preparedness for the diversity of the contemporary American classroom and teaching students with special needs.

Seventy-six percent of first-year teachers told researchers that teaching an ethnically diverse student body was covered in their training, but only 39 percent said that training helps them a lot in the classroom. The survey covered twelve areas of teacher training ranging from direct instruction to their study of history, philosophy, and policy debates in public education.

Lessons Learned is produced by Public Agenda and the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality.