Math skills are critical for students’ success in other subjects and later in life, yet far too many teacher prep programs fail to give aspiring teachers the essential knowledge they need to be effective math teachers—undermining student learning before the first lesson even begins.
What can California, Texas, and Washington, D.C. teach us about how to diversify the teacher workforce?
Nationally, the diversification of the teacher workforce is slowing compared to the diversification of college-educated adults, but California, Texas, and Washington, D.C. are bucking that trend. Explore what factors contribute to their relatively high rates of teacher diversity and how their policies and practices will likely affect teacher quality.
The early bird gets the better teacher candidate pool
Pervasive late hiring processes hinder districts’
ability to hire high-quality teacher candidates, yet still many districts can’t
seem to rise out of this rut. One large district figured out something to do
about it.
To do right by students with disabilities, principals need better tools
A recent study from CALDER provides some insight into how a lack of information may contribute to the challenge of achieving equitable outcomes for students with and without disabilities.
What we’re reading: D.C. Voices: Teacher retention and recruitment during the pandemic
New analysis from Chelsea Coffin and Tanaz Meghjani at the D.C. Policy Center explores some of the teacher workforce data from D.C. public schools, and reports on how key education officials and educators there are thinking about teacher retention and recruitment during the COVID-19 crisis.
The emerging science on predicting if a teacher will be effective
Researchers have spent decades investigating the most valid predictors and measures of teacher quality, with one of the hopes being that school districts will know exactly what to look for when hiring new teachers.
Ensuring strong and stable substitute teacher pools
What do substitute teacher pools look like across the largest school districts in the country and how can districts use strategic compensation and other innovative practices to ensure a strong and stable substitute pool?
Three steps for creating and retaining a strong STEM teaching corps
Districts report the most difficulty not only filling STEM and special ed vacancies but keeping them filled with strong, effective teachers. Given these shortages, what can districts do to recruit and retain a strong STEM workforce?
“First, do no harm” is a good dictum for doctors, and may be one for policymakers as well. Even the best-intended policies can cause an unintended ripple of harm.
“This should work!” Reading between the lines of a new study looking at how to make the most of effective elementary teachers, it seemed pretty clear that even its dispassionate authors, Kevin Bastian and C Kevin Fortner (of UNC Chapel Hill and Georgia State University, respectively) were taken aback by their results.
Inequities in the classroom: When the only thing missing is the will to act
In spite of a federal law requiring states to take action to ameliorate the inequitable distribution of teacher talent, many states (and consequently their districts) aren’t doing much.
It’s safe to say that recessions are bad – people lose jobs, investments lose value, politicians lose elections. However, it turns out there’s one group that benefits from an economic downturn: students.
We all know that new teachers are more apt to get handed the toughest classrooms, a double whammy on student growth (where it’s most needed) and teacher attrition rates. What’s not as clear is what we mean by toughest assignments.
A new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research compares two approaches to incentivizing teacher performance and highlights the value of initiatives aimed at rewarding ability and effort.
Teachers are not
interchangeable parts in a school district. That’s why principals need to have
the final say about the district’s decision to transfer a teacher into their
school.
Ripple effects: effective teaching echoes for years
The nation has taken steps toward giving all students, regardless of their background, equal access to great teachers. By more equitably distributing teachers, can schools actually get more equitable results, or are teachers too small a piece of the achievement puzzle?
Want teachers who are ready on day one? Here’s where to look!
As school districts plan for the coming school year, many are already considering where to recruit a fresh crop of new teachers – teachers eager to put everything they’ve learned from preparation into practice.
