This report discusses trends in California's teaching force for 2002: shortage of qualified teachers (e.g., the shortage varies across different subjects and is expected to worsen due to teacher retirements and growth in numbers of students); getting good teachers (e.g., California's underprepared teachers continue to be inequitably distributed statewide, and schools with poor, minority, or low-achieving students are far more likely to have high numbers of underprepared teachers); recruiting new teachers (e.g., state funding for teacher recruitment initiatives expanded in recent years but has subsequently been cut back due to budget shortfalls); entering the fray (e.g., among all underprepared teachers, the number and proportion participating in preintern and intern programs has increased, while the number and proportion of emergency permits has decreased); teacher preparation (e.g., there has been an increase in production of credentialed teachers in all sectors of the teacher preparation system, but budget shortfalls raise questions about whether this rate of growth can continue); teacher induction (e.g., some districts provide their own system to ease new teachers into the profession, and the state funds an induction program called the Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment program); and professional development (e.g., in recent years, California has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in teacher training). A list of references is provided for each section. (SM)