To create the excellent and equitable education that America’s students deserve, teachers must work to prepare students for a competitive, globalized market. As a result, we are asking more from our teachers than ever before. Yet we continue to provide them with preparation, training, and pay that aren’t designed to meet these changing demands.
TeachStrong is a new campaign dedicated to changing the national education policy conversation. As part of this campaign, 40 partners have come together around a unifying vision for the future of education policy. These diverse organizations agree that modernizing and elevating the teaching profession should be the most pressing education policy priority for our nation. In order to raise student achievement so that our students can compete globally, it is imperative that policy leaders focus on developing better systems for recruiting, supporting, and compensating teachers.
TeachStrong is based on nine principles (see http://teachstrong.org/#principles ) that reimagine every stage of teachers’ careers, including recruitment, training, support, professional development, compensation, and opportunities for career advancement. These principles establish the conditions for success, and begin a virtuous cycle that would make the teaching profession more attractive to talented new entrants and further elevate the profession.
These principles are:
- Identify and recruit more diverse teacher candidates with great potential to succeed, with a deliberate emphasis on diversifying the teacher workforce.
- Reimagine teacher preparation to make it more rooted in classroom practice and a professional knowledge base, with universal high standards for all candidates.
- Raise the bar for licensure so it is a meaningful measure of readiness to teach.
- Increase compensation in order to attract and reward teachers as professionals.
- Provide support for new teachers through induction or residency programs.
- Ensure tenure is a meaningful signal of professional accomplishment.
- Provide significantly more time, tools, and support for teachers to succeed, including through planning, collaboration, and development.
- Design professional learning to better address student and teacher needs, and to foster feedback and improvement.
- Create career pathways that give teachers opportunities to lead and grow professionally.
To learn more, see http://teachstrong.org/about/
