New Teacher Center has released a new report on all 50 states that takes a look at the support available for new principals and new teachers. The results show only a slight improvement over the past few years. Support From the Start: A 50-State Review of Policies on New Educator Read more
Effective teacher teams can produce a variety of positive outcomes, from increased student achievement, to improved school climate, to high levels of teacher resilience and retention. But cultivating effective teacher collaboration is more complex than simply assigning a common planning period to a group of teachers. In this month’s issue Read more
A recent blog post from Education Week takes a look at the current state of professional development for teachers and finds a brave new world of “micro-credentialing.” The following example shows just how it works: Last year, Kay Staley and Jessica Scherer, literacy coaches in the Kettle Moraine district in Wisconsin, Read more
New Teacher Center (NTC) has released a national report showing that most states provide insufficient mentoring and support for teachers and principals as they start their careers. The report—Support From The Start: A 50-State Review of Policies on New Educator Induction and Mentoring—shows only limited progress in most states since Read more
For years, education leaders have sought to pinpoint how teachers become effective in order to better leverage teachers’ impact on student learning and improve student outcomes. Teacher leadership is receiving increased attention as a potential lever for improved instruction, recruitment and retention of effective teachers, and improved student outcomes. This Read more
Recently guest author on the Shanker Institute blog, Andy Hargreaves, reflected on research-proven methods for promoting professional collaboration among teachers. An excerpt appears below: When teachers collaborate rather than work entirely alone, they show greater confidence and competence in teaching and stronger commitment to their profession. This is because they Read more
What do we know about how students learn, and what does that knowledge mean for how we teach? That’s what The Science of Learning, a publication from Deans for Impact, seeks to answer. Deans for Impact is an organization of two dozen Deans of education schools who have committed themselves Read more
Over a the past several months Real Clear Education has been spotlighting schools and teachers participating in the Opportunity Culture initiative, a movement launched in 2011 by education policy and consulting firm Public Impact. Opportunity Culture models are aimed at improving the quality of education by extending the reach of excellent teachers Read more
Policymakers are still looking for the right way to identify effective teacher preparation programs and predict who will be an effective teacher. Nothing tried so far can guarantee effective teachers. In No Guarantees, Bellwether recommends an alternative approach that relies on the best available evidence for predicting future teacher effectiveness: Read more
How do teachers learn? What are the implications of teacher learning (or the lack thereof) for students? What is the value of a teacher who really learns? During the month of November, members of the CTQ Collaboratory tackled these questions and more during a round table discussion centered on the Read more
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 Read more
Joe Ashby was a a multi-classroom leader (MCL) at Buena Vista Enhanced Option Elementary School in Nashville, Tennessee before finishing his doctorate and moving on to be a principal in California. He recently wrote an article about that experience for Real Clear Education, and he focused on the flexibility and Read more
Teachers need helpful feedback and support to improve their instruction and own their professional growth. Over the past four years, 30 states have changed how they evaluate teachers, and another 14 states are slated to do so in the next two years. As many of those states are learning, however, Read more
Two new research studies that evaluated vast amounts of data both concluded that teachers continue to improve over the course of their careers. The prevailing wisdom from previous research, which many teachers and teachers unions have disputed, said that teachers improved in their first several years of teaching, but then Read more
The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) has offered a national certification for interested teachers since the late 1980s. There are currently 110,000 National Board certified teachers across the U.S. This blog wrote about changes the NBPTS made to its certification process to incentivize more teachers to become board-certified. Read more
Launching a major national effort to dramatically improve teacher preparation and to help teaching and learning practices evolve for the 21st century, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation recently announced the establishment of a new graduate school, the Woodrow Wilson Academy for Teaching and Learning (WW Academy). The WW Academy Read more