Frank Bruni has penned a piece highlighting the teaching shortages that have made the news around the country in recent weeks. The shortages are so acute in some places, both urban and rural, that teachers are being brought in who are not even fully certified yet. After researching and talking with various noted education professionals, Read more about Can We Interest You In Teaching?[…]
With an estimated 1.5 million new teachers entering schools over the next decade, what can policymakers do to ensure that the next generation of teachers is ready to teach on day one? A new brief released by the Education Policy Center at American Institutes for Research (AIR), A Million New Teachers Are Coming: Will They Read more about Improving Teacher Preparation[…]
The percentage-and overall number-of high school students reporting an interest in teaching has steadily declined since 2010, according to The Condition of Future Educators 2014. This ACT report compares data on the self-reported career interests of nearly 1.85 million 2014 US high school graduates who took the ACT® test, compared to those who took the Read more about Interest in Teaching Careers Declining[…]
More than 87 percent of TFA teachers say they don’t plan on remaining teachers throughout their careers, compared with 26.3 percent of non-TFA teachers working in the same subjects, grades, and schools, according to an analysis released last week by Mathematica Policy Research (PDF). The study suggests the risk of turnover is relatively high for Read more about Teacher Retention and TFA[…]
Jane Best and Emily Winslow at McREL Education have released a new brief focusing on current challenges of working toward equity in education. Particularly in a post Vergara vs. California education climate, educator equity and how to effectively distribute teachers to all students it is an issue on education professionals’ minds. With increasingly diverse student populations, Read more about Educational Equity: Challenges for Educator Effectiveness[…]
In the final installment of Marc Tucker’s blog series on the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, Gene Wilhoit, the former Executive Director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, discusses the need to transform how we recruit, train, and develop our teachers and the consequences of failing to do so. Wilhoit and Read more about Gene Wilhoit: Transforming how we recruit, train, and develop teachers[…]
The U.S. Education Department has recently rolled out another phase in its quest to ensure that lower income students have similarly excellent teachers as their higher income peers. What is the research behind the push for equitable distribution of teacher effectiveness? What are the issues and complexities of this work? In this month’s issue brief, Read more about October Issue Brief: Access to Effective Teachers[…]
Teacher Prep Review 2014 is the second edition of NCTQ‘s annual assessment of the nation’s 2,400 teacher prep programs. The Review uncovers early evidence that teacher prep programs are beginning to make changes. It arrives at a time of heightened, unprecedented activity across the nation to improve teacher preparation. Here are a few of the Read more about Teacher Prep Review 2014 Report from NCTQ[…]
To build a world-class educational system, America needs outstanding teachers. But how do we recruit exceptional candidates into the teaching pipeline? How do we ensure that these candidates represent the diversity of our student population? In this month’s issue brief, we have assembled information about America’s teacher pipeline problem, as well as policy ideas and Read more about June Issue Brief: America’s Teacher Pipeline[…]
If you spend time in almost any major school district in America today, you will notice that the students often do not look much like the teachers. In fact, in some areas, the students don’t look anything like their teachers. There is a significant demographic gap in the largely white teaching profession and an increasingly Read more about America’s Leaky Pipeline for Teachers of Color[…]
Just four years after passing a law mandating that prospective teachers must pass the Test of Academic Proficiency (TAP) within five attempts, Illinois state board of education officials have scrapped this law in hopes of “manipulating the pipeline” of new teachers. State officials, dismayed at the disproportionately low number of minority teachers compared to minority Read more about Illinois scraps limits on basic skills test-taking[…]
Newly emerging research is beginning to shed light on the extent to which disadvantaged students have access to effective teaching, based on value added measures. “Value added” is a teacher’s contribution to students’ learning gains. Because individual researchers have varied in their presentation of this evidence, it is challenging for practitioners to draw lessons from Read more about A Summary of Recent IES Research on Access to Effective Teaching[…]
Can big data and predictive analytics help school leaders hire better teachers? That’s the new pitch being made by two companies: TeacherMatch, from Chicago, and Washington-based Hanover Research. Both claim that their new algorithm-driven teacher-selection tools can predict the impact teacher candidates will have on student test scores should they be hired, which they argue Read more about Data Tools to Predict Teacher Candidates’ Impact[…]
The National Academy of Education recently released its report, “Evaluation of Teacher Preparation Programs: Purposes, Methods, and Policy Opinions”. The report begins by suggesting that there is consensus on the importance of teachers for students but also admits that there is far from a consensus on how exactly teachers become “good” educators. There is a Read more about Evaluation of Teacher Preparation Programs[…]
The Secretary of Education is planning a publicity blitz aimed at recruiting “the best & brightest to the profession,” as he recently tweeted. Public service announcements will run on TV and radio, online and in print. Emissaries to dozens of college campuses will talk up teaching as a savvy career choice. And a new website Read more about US Teacher Corps Campaign[…]
With so many reports on new standards, evaluations, and assessments in K-12 education, sometimes it seems that teacher preparation receives little attention. But the landscape of teacher preparation and licensure is shifting as well. In this month’s issue brief, we focus on new standards, accreditation policies and licensure regulations that affect teachers, teacher preparation providers, Read more about December Issue Brief: Teacher Preparation and Licensing[…]