When it comes to ensuring every student gets great teachers, state governments play a crucial and underappreciated role. Without access to the right data, school systems will struggle to match the supply and demand for new teachers. Without certification policies that prioritize student impact over paper credentials, too many talented Read more
Writing for Chalkbeat, Matt Barnum has compiled eight lessons the sector has learned from education research in 2019. Excerpts of his piece appear below: Education research is hard to keep up with, and often enough, it’s hard to even understand. It seems like there are more caveats than clear conclusions, Read more
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark Brown v. Board decision that school segregation was unconstitutional. Yet 65 years later, schools in major US cities remain more segregated than neighborhoods, and many students attend classes filled mostly with students who look like them. At the same Read more
Researchers from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Washington, D.C. have released a new report, “The Promise of Adolescence: Realizing Opportunity for All Youth.” Adolescents—young people ages 10 to 25—make up nearly one-fourth of the U.S. population. Drawing upon recent scientific advances, the report finds ample evidence Read more
The Center on Great Teachers and Leaders (GTL Center) has released a free, user-friendly data tool that helps states, educator preparation programs (EPPs), and districts to identify and visualize diversity gaps across the entire educator career continuum, from “future teachers” graduating from high school and entering preparation programs, to preservice Read more
There’s mounting evidence that, for children of color especially, having one or more teachers of the same race over the course of students’ educational careers seems to make a positive difference. But to what extent, if any, do the benefits of having a same-race teacher vary by type of school? Read more
Over the past decade, Michigan has made changes to a number of laws related to teachers and teaching in the state’s public school system. These changes include new requirements for teacher evaluation, and the use of teacher performance ratings for decisions such as teacher tenure, dismissal and retention. Since 2011, Read more
The great sorting of the most talented young people into haves and have-nots starts long before college, according to a new report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) in partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Born to Win, Schooled to Lose: Why Equally Talented Read more
A new report by professional services firm STEMconnector defines a successful result for talent development in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields as the emergence of “a diverse and STEM-ready talent pool with the knowledge, skills, and mindsets needed to secure and succeed in careers today and in Read more
Thousands of public school teachers voluntarily leave their jobs each year, hurting student achievement and costing districts billions of dollars to find replacements. Lynnette Mawhinney and Carol Rinke were once part of that churn. Now, with both women serving as professors at teacher prep programs, Mawhinney and Rinke have co-authored Read more
New America has analyzed professional teaching standards in all 50 states to better understand whether states’ expectations for teachers incorporate culturally responsive teaching. To support this analysis, researchers identified eight competencies that clarify what teachers should know and be able to do in light of research on culturally responsive teaching. Read more
A new report from Educators for Excellence New York outlines the importance of teacher preparation and offers recommendations for increasing teacher diversity. Ready for Day One and Beyond is a new paper written by teachers on the Educators for Excellence New York Policy Team. The paper starts with two Read more
State leaders have outlined bold equity goals to improve the outcomes of all students. But these goals can’t be met if the data used to measure and support them reflect bias. The Data Quality Campaign’s latest blog series dives into the concept of asset framing and examines how data can Read more
A new study suggests that faculty members’ attitudes about intelligence can have a major impact on the success of students in science, mathematics and technology courses. Students see more achievement when their instructors believe in a “growth mind-set” about intelligence than they do learning from those who believe intelligence is Read more
Recently in Chalkbeat, Matt Barnum analyzed recent reports of teacher demographics and explained how the demographic make-up of the American teacher workforce can be understood in two different ways. Excerpts from his piece appear below: Teachers of color are still a small share Read more
Recently, in Education Week, Madeline Will summarized a new study from Johns Hopkins University that finds that if a Black student has just one or two Black teachers in elementary school, that student is significantly more likely to enroll in college. Black students who had just one Black teacher by Read more