Two new reports from the New Teacher Center and the Aspen Institute both highlight the importance of rigorous training for new teachers. By looking at the work currently being done by certain model school districts, both reports highlight models through which novice teachers become master teachers. Interestingly, both reports also assert the importance of incorporating teacher-leaders into a rigorous teacher training system that goes far beyond simply tying student test results to teacher evaluations.
The press release for the Aspen Institute report provides a summary:
A new report by Rachel Curtis for the Aspen Institute explains how school systems can thoughtfully design and advance teacher leadership efforts to improve teacher performance, increase student achievement, and meet the heightened expectations ushered in by the Common Core. Finding a New Way: Leveraging Teacher Leadership to Meet Unprecedented Demands, articulates critical issues, and offers recommendations for systems interested in developing teacher leaders and career pathways. Teacher leadership work in Achievement First Charter Schools, Denver Public Schools, District of Columbia Public Schools, and Singapore are compared and contrasted to illustrate common approaches and areas of divergence in these systems.
Finding a New Way provides timely advice and guidance on how to replace the anachronistic and incredibly flat structure of the teaching profession with dynamic career opportunities. By recognizing the deep of well of leadership potential that currently lies fallow in effective teachers, public education can take advantage of existing talent, expand high-quality feedback and development opportunities, and increase the number of students taught by effective teachers.
New, more rigorous teacher evaluations create an unprecedented opportunity by identifying the most effective teachers; public education must respond to this opportunity with more deliberate systems for retaining top talent and developing leadership potential. Distributing leadership responsibility to teacher leaders can elevate the status of the profession, improve recruitment and retention of talent, and make the job of principals more manageable – all in service of increasing student achievement.
Finding a New Way establishes a clear process for establishing shared purpose for pursuing teacher leadership and for designing, implementing, and learning from teacher leader work. Throughout the report, examples from the field are woven together with advice and guidance on how to launch teacher leadership work that is strategic and sustainable.
In addition to the report by the Aspen Institute, the New Teacher Center has released a new report, Cultivating Effective Teachers Through Evaluation And Support: A Guide For Illinois Policymakers And Educational Leaders, which “explores whether a new state teacher evaluation law – Illinois’s Performance Evaluation Reform Act – provides sufficient growth and learning opportunities for beginning teachers. It concludes that evaluation alone cannot inform and accelerate new teacher development. Teacher learning must be supported through an aligned talent management system that includes the induction of beginning teachers.”
While the Guide is customized for policy and school leaders in Illinois, its content may potentially interest a national education audience. The Guide raises important questions about whether teacher evaluation as currently construed and designed provides a depth and frequency of feedback to meet the learning needs of beginning teachers. It offers three examples of school districts (Hillsborough County, Florida; Montgomery County, Maryland; Pleasanton Unified, California) that have implemented teacher evaluation systems that are purposeful about developing and supporting new teachers.
Following are direct links to the reports:
