In recent years, federal education programs and policies have increasingly focused on teacher quality as a means for closing achievement gaps, in part by directing states to measure teacher qualifications and performance and to promote equitable access to qualified and effective teachers among schools within a district.
A new report by Andrew Wayne, Courtney Tanenbaum, Delphinia Brown, and Andrea Boyle of the American Institutes for Research provides a broad overview of state efforts, as of the 2011-12 school year, to monitor equitable access to qualified and effective teachers among schools; develop and adopt multiple measures of teacher performance to rate teachers among at least three performance levels; and implement targeted strategies for promoting equitable access to qualified and effective teachers.
Key Findings
- In 2011-12, states most commonly monitored equitable access to qualified and effective teachers among schools by using measures of teacher qualifications.
- Four states reported using measures of teacher performance–student achievement growth and/or measures of teacher practice–to monitor equitable access to qualified and effective teachers among schools, and nine states used teacher performance measures to monitor the quality of the teacher workforce overall.
- In two of the four states that reported using teacher performance measures to monitor equitable access among schools, officials reported seeing larger inequities than were previously detected using measures of teacher qualifications alone.
- Six states reported that they were using multiple measures of teacher performance to rate teachers on at least three performance levels in 2011-12, and 38 states indicated that they were in the process of developing such measures.
- Offering monetary incentives was the most common strategy that states reported using to promote equitable access to qualified and effective teachers among schools (24 states).
- Other state-reported strategies for promoting equitable access to qualified and effective teachers were specialized professional development (14 states) and teacher recruitment and preparation programs (14 states).
For more, see: https://www.air.org/resource/state-efforts-promote-equitable-access-effective-teachers
