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.
Our classrooms haven’t kept pace with the changing world. The Ford Model T represented breakthrough technology in its day—more than 100 years ago—but it wouldn’t serve us well today. Likewise, our traditional classroom model from the same era doesn’t work well for far too many students and teachers. In fact, as a result of this outdated model, it is more difficult for schools to find and keep great teachers, which ultimately hurts student learning.
This interactive resource answers questions and provides guidance about reimagining teaching based on your leadership role. It contains a scan of state policies that impact whether districts can make strategic staffing a reality, case studies from innovative states and districts that are leading the way, and advice for leaders on how to get started.
Districts are facing hard choices: How can teacher evaluation help?
Teacher evaluation systems—if implemented well—can help districts make better workforce decisions. We examine whether large districts’ policies align with the research on what will likely make for effective and impactful evaluation systems.
Just as the U.S. managed one of the most successful rollouts of COVID vaccines of any nation, so too can we dramatically improve the literacy rate in the nation.
Admissions requirements: Following the lead of state policy?
Do state policies have an impact on who enters teacher preparation and what is the impact of program’ admissions requirements on teacher candidate enrollment?
To cultivate the type of learning environment that would support and sustain candidates of color there are three areas to consider: community, curriculum, and communication.
Could it be that teacher certification does in fact matter?
Lo and behold, it turns out that stricter certification requirements do appear to pay off—but not for the reasons that have all that much to do with what happens inside a college of education.
All of our children deserve access to well-prepared teachers with a strong foundation in their subject area, the instructional skills to accelerate learning, and the understanding to support and inspire. It falls to teacher preparation programs to prepare new teachers who can enter classrooms ready to provide an excellent education to their students.
This analysis considers state trends in many of the most essential aspects of delivering classroom-ready teachers, including the qualifications for being admitted into teacher preparation and earning a teaching license, with a focus on states’ shifting testing regimes. It also examines states’ activities to diversify the teacher pipeline and improve the quality of clinical practice, and offers specific recommendations for actions state policymakers can take to ensure a strong, well-prepared teacher workforce.
Teacher preparation residencies have the benefit of providing extended time for future teachers to learn how to teach before they are responsible for their own classrooms.
The wind at our backs on diversifying the teaching profession
No longer is it appropriate to decouple the goal of improving teacher quality from parallel efforts to increase the number of Black and Hispanic teachers. What’s left to argue about is how we get there.
A diverse and capable teacher workforce benefits all students. Unfortunately, diversity and academic aptitude are often seen as conflicting goals in teacher preparation. However, research shows that increased admissions standards to teacher preparation programs also saw increased diversity of undergraduate education majors.
In a unique undertaking, this study rates teacher prep programs on the extent to which they are contributing to the diversity of their state’s teacher workforce, rates prep programs on how selective they are in program admissions, and dispels a myth that these goals are in conflict by highlighting the many programs that have successfully achieved both.
February 1, 2021
Amber Moorer, Christie Ellis, Graham Drake, Kate Walsh
Teachers accomplish so much each day, that any day that they are absent means lost learning for their students. In this report, NCTQ explores the importance of teacher attendance; examines teacher attendance trends across 30 of the largest school districts in the nation; and identifies patterns and connections that surround teacher absenteeism, such as a connection between central office and teacher attendance, and correlations between teacher attendance and teacher characteristics such as tenure and years of experience. The study is an update to NCTQ’s 2013 Roll Call report.
