Today, well more than a decade since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and because of its demands for states to keep statistics on students’ access to highly qualified teachers, we know much more about the impact of high-quality teaching on student achievement. We also know that teacher characteristics once considered important indicators of teacher quality are only weakly related to their performance in the classroom.
New measures of teacher effectiveness, determined by evidence of teacher practice and improvements in student achievement, are now available and provide strong markers for assessing teaching quality and the equitable distribution of the most capable teachers.
This new report, “Attaining Equitable Distribution of Effective Teachers in Public Schools”, by Glenda L. Partee at the Center for American Progress explores shifts in policy and practice at this juncture and explores a range of state policy levers that can be used to improve the overall quality of the educator workforce as a larger strategy to ensure that all students have access to effective teachers.
Among other recommendations specific to states, Partee concludes with a demand for a shift from a focus on highly qualified teachers to highly effective teachers:
Finally, in a future reauthorization of ESEA, Congress must acknowledge the shift from a focus on attaining highly qualified status to a focus on teacher effectiveness. Equity provisions must ensure that poor students and students of color are not taught by inexperienced, ineffective, or out-of-field teachers at higher rates than other students. In a new ESEA, states must demonstrate that they are using strong systems of evaluation based on multiple measures, including student academic growth, to address inequities in order to maintain federal funding support.
For more information, please visit: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2014/04/11/87695/attaining-equitable-distribution-of-effective-teachers-in-public-schools/
