A recent article by Kaylan Connally from EdCentral examines the implications for states’ evaluation systems moving forward and how ESSA may influence other state teacher quality efforts.
ESSA will affect the way teacher preparation, teacher equity, teacher growth and advancement are handled by states.
Teacher Preparation – Through ESSA Title II formula funds, states can now expand alternative routes to teacher preparation such as teacher residency programs and create new “teacher preparation academies.” For the latter, states can use up to two percent of their funds to devise new programs that operate outside state regulations and colleges of education. These academies would receive state authorization so long as their program candidates receive “significant clinical training” under an effective teacher and demonstrate their effectiveness prior to graduating, including their ability to raise student achievement. If the academies produce effective teachers over time, then the state may recognize their graduates’ certificates of completion as equivalent to master’s degrees for teacher pay and promotion.
Teacher Equity – ESSA eliminates NCLB’s requirement that states take steps to ensure all teachers are “highly qualified” or hold a bachelor’s degree, state certification, and subject matter knowledge. However, states would still need to report data on teachers’ professional qualifications between high- and low-poverty schools, including the number and percentage of teachers who are inexperienced, hold emergency or provisional credentials, and teach outside of their field. In addition, states would need to describe the measures they will use to ensure low-income and minority students are not served at disproportionate rates by “ineffective, out-of-field, or inexperienced teachers“—with “ineffective” replacing “unqualified.”
Under ESSA, states can also use Title II formula funds to ensure equitable access to “effective” teaching for low-income and minority students, and must provide a description of how they have used funds toward that end. Similar to ESSA’s inclusion of teacher academies, replacing “highly qualified” with “effective” encourages states to devise new programs and policies to focus on teachers’ potential or demonstrable effectiveness in the classroom. Given this change, states may begin to move away from input measures like teacher qualifications toward output measures like evaluation data, although ESSA offers no definition for what constitutes “effective” teaching.
Teacher Growth and Advancement – NCLB made general teacher and principal professional development (PD) an allowable use of both state and local Title II funds. However, under ESSA, it is only an allowable use for local educational agencies (school districts, charter management organizations, etc.). Under ESSA, states can only use their funds to support high-quality PD for principals along with teacher PD in specific contexts such as technology, the transition to elementary school, and STEM education. What’s more, states can no longer use Title II funds to develop systems to measure (or help local educational agencies measure) the effectiveness of specific PD programs—for instance by examining impact on teachers’ learning and growth.
ESSA would enshrine into law a new version of the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) competitive grant program. The updated TIF program does provide some grants directly to states to implement teacher performance pay systems as part of a broader “human capital management system” that promotes teacher development and advancement. In addition to performance pay, the new TIF makes expanding teacher leadership opportunities—including through teacher-led PD, coaching, and hybrid teacher roles—an explicit use of state funds.
For a more in-depth analysis of ESSA and how it affects teacher quality at the state level, see http://www.edcentr.al/essa_teacherquality/.
