In order to collect data supportive of the development of new curriculum and curriculum materials for use in the preparation of teachers to work with disadvantaged children, a study was conducted to determine the type and extent of problems perceived by teachers as they teach in inner-city or "ghetto" schools. Each of 12 school district superintendents from the 17 largest U.S. cities identified an elementary school attended by many disadvantaged children; then principals of those schools selected randomly two teachers at each grade level to provide information (over a 10-day period) to be used in the construction of an instrument entitled, "My Biggest Problem Today Inventory." Three doctoral assistants synthesized the approximately 1,400 critical incidents into 184 somewhat different problem statements which served as the basis for construction of a 184-item instrument, "The Teacher Problem Inventory" (TPI), which requests respondents to consider each problem statement in terms of its frequency of occurrence and its severity. The TPI was then administered to all 287 K-6 teachers in the cooperating schools (Major results of the data analysis are appended: (1) chi square values for the 96 problems significant on either the frequency or severity scales or both, (2) frequency percentages and rank orders for the 45 significant problems reported by more than 1/3 of the respondents as either frequent or severe or both, (3) the 37 major problems grouped under nine categories.) (JS)