1. States grant teachers tenure without considering whether they are effective.

States do virtually nothing to establish teachers' effectiveness in the classroom before awarding them permanent employment status—more commonly known as tenure.

• Although all states control how and when local districts award teachers tenure, only two states require any evidence of teacher effectiveness to be considered as part of tenure decisions. All other states permit districts to award tenure virtually automatically.
• Even if states did have a process that connected tenure to teachers' effectiveness, 43 states allow teachers to earn tenure in three years or less, which is not enough time to accumulate sufficient objective data about teacher performance. Three states award teachers permanent status after a single year of teaching.
• In addition to—but generally separate from—the tenure process, all states also confer 'professional' licenses, a stage of licensure that should signal the state's confidence in teachers' capabilities. To move from a probationary to a permanent, nonprobationary license, only 16 states require any evidence of effectiveness, and only one of these states requires this evidence to be the preponderant criterion for awarding permanent licenses to teachers.

2. States are not doing enough to help districts identify effective teachers.

Determining which teachers will be effective before they begin to teach remains an elusive goal. The absence of predictive indicators creates a critical need to identify whether teachers are effective as soon as possible, before tenure is awarded.

• Only 23 states require that new teachers be evaluated more than once each year, a necessary component for determining effectiveness. Nine states do not require any evaluations of new teachers. Further, only 16 states require that new teachers be evaluated early in the school year, ensuring that feedback and support is received in a timely manner.
• Only four states require evidence of student learning to be the preponderant criterion in teacher evaluations. Just 15 states require any objective measures of student learning. Twenty-one states do not even require that teacher evaluations must include classroom observations.
• Twenty-two states do not accept any responsibility for ensuring that teachers are evaluated consistently and appropriately. These states do not require districts to use a state-developed instrument, approve locally developed instruments or provide any guidance that would hold teachers accountable for classroom effectiveness.
• Longitudinal data systems are essential to the use of value-added data to measure teacher performance, and it is much more efficient to build these systems at the state level, rather than at the local level. Although most states have the preliminary pieces of data systems in place, only 19 states have the capacity to match individual student records with individual teacher records. Of these 19 states, only two use value-added data to assess teacher effectiveness.

3. States are complicit in keeping ineffective teachers in the classroom.

Although it is local districts that hire and fire teachers, states could do considerably more to ensure that ineffective teachers do not remain in the classroom indefinitely.

• Only 13 states specify that teachers who have been rated unsatisfactory on multiple evaluations should be eligible for dismissal. Just 26 states require that teachers who receive even one unsatisfactory evaluation are placed on an improvement plan.
• Licensure tests are meant to ensure that an individual meets the minimal qualifications to be a teacher, yet 22 states permit teachers to remain in the classroom for three years or more without passing all required licensing tests. A mere seven states require teachers to pass all tests before entering the classroom.
• Forty-two states still allow teachers in classrooms holding only emergency licenses in at least some circumstances, although this practice is supposedly banned under the No Child Left Behind Act. More than half of these states issue renewable emergency licenses, meaning that teachers who have not met all minimum requirements are allowed to remain in classrooms for extended--and perhaps indefinite--periods of time.

4. State policies raise barriers and offer few incentives to retain effective teachers.

In the areas of compensation, certification and induction, there is much more states could do to support the retention of effective teachers early in their careers.

• States mandate burdensome requirements for permanent certification that have no relationship to teacher effectiveness. Twenty states require teachers to complete additional coursework that is not specifically targeted to improve their practice, a requirement that amounts to little more than seat time. Five states require teachers to earn advanced degrees in order to get a professional license, despite extensive research that shows these degrees do not improve classroom performance.
• More than half of the states do not require that local districts provide new teachers with adequate support. Thirteen states have no state-level requirements for new-teacher induction, and 14 states require only limited or weak support.
• Seventeen states require districts to adhere to a state-dictated salary schedule that sets minimum pay for every level, and 18 states require districts to pay more to teachers who have earned advanced degrees, which have been shown repeatedly to bear no connection to teacher effectiveness.
• Only 28 states help districts by providing incentives (differential pay or loan forgiveness) to teach in high-needs schools, and just 26 states provide incentives to teach shortage subject areas such as mathematics or science.
• Of the 20 states that support performance pay, not all have programs that recognize its appropriate uses and limitations. Only 16 states explicitly connect performance pay to evidence of student achievement, and only 13 states ensure that all teachers are able to participate, whether or not they have students who take standardized tests.
• Only five states ensure that districts fairly compensate new teachers who bring with them relevant prior work experience.
• Not a single state encourages local districts to provide significant pay increases to teachers when they are awarded tenure, a milestone in a teacher's career that should be significant, but is instead automatic. Such pay increases would be smart policy if tenure decisions were based on a review of evidence of teacher effectiveness.

5. State pension systems are generally inflexible and unfair to all teachers, but they particularly disadvantage teachers early in their careers.

States continue to provide teachers with expensive and inflexible pension plans that do not reflect the realities of the modern workforce.

• A mere three states offer teachers the option of selecting a defined contribution plan as their primary pension plan; one additional state provides only a defined contribution plan. The portability of these plans can be attractive to an increasingly mobile workforce.
• Forty-eight states make teachers wait more than three years to vest in their pension plans; nine states make teachers wait for 10 or more years. Teachers who leave the system before vesting do not receive benefits upon retiring; they can only withdraw their funds. In some states, teachers are not even entitled to withdraw the full amount they contributed.
• Pension systems also disadvantage teachers early in their careers by overly committing districts' resources to retirement benefits, leaving little room to provide benefits that might be of more immediate relevance to new teachers. Local districts in some states are required to contribute as much as 20 percent of their teachers' salaries to the pension system and/or Social Security.
• Twenty states do not allow teachers to purchase time for approved leaves of absence, such as maternity or paternity care, which are common for teachers early in their careers. Another 18 states limit how much time can be purchased.
• Fifteen states use a formula to calculate retirement benefits that changes based on number of years of teaching, meaning that some years of teaching are worth more than others when it comes to pension benefits. In these states, more experienced teachers receive even more generous benefits.
• Forty-five states pay out much more in retirement benefits to some teachers than others by allowing early retirement based on years of service, at a price of hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional benefits per teacher. For example, a teacher allowed to retire at age 50 collects 15 years of benefits more than a teacher with comparable experience who retires at age 65.