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Evidence-Based Strategies

Our evidence-based strategies are customizable, stakeholder-driven, and designed for impact.

Educator shortages toolkit

We Know Research. We Know Schools.

Our team of seasoned consultants and expert researchers work in concert to translate the latest research and knowledge about educator talent management into actionable, evidence-based strategies. Our tools, resources, and services are developed in close collaboration with state, district, and regional partners and are field-tested with, and shaped by, practitioners in the field whenever possible.

To learn more about our free tools, recent research, and available services, explore the following featured evidence-based strategies.

Featured Evidence-Based Strategies

Expand
Equitable Access

Closing achievement gaps requires a great educator in every classroom, for every student. We offer comprehensive, step-by-step planning toolkits and implementation supports for moving the needle on this crucial equity lever.

Diversify the
Educator Workforce

An effective educator workforce is a diverse educator workforce. We offer easy-to-use data tools to visualize the development of diversity gaps across the educator career continuum, as well as complementary services for selecting strategies and taking action based on the data.

Address
Educator Shortages

Solving urgent and persistent educator shortages requires both short-term strategies to meet immediate demand and long-term, systemic strategies to attract, prepare, and retain an effective educator workforce. We offer tools and services to help utilize data to establish a comprehensive plan to address shortages across the full career continuum.

Strengthen
Mentoring & Induction

Mentoring and induction programs are only as effective as the instructional supports that they offer to beginning teachers. Our tools and services deliberately integrate evidence-based strategies that reinforce the content and skills that all teachers need to improve student outcomes.

Foster
Teacher Leadership

Teacher leadership is an effective, sustainable strategy for establishing meaningful educator pathways and creating long-term improvements in the educator workforce. We offer tools and services to design and implement state and local teacher leadership models designed to improve teacher engagement and teaching conditions, while strengthening retention.

Improve Teacher Well-Being
and Teaching Conditions

Positive, collaborative, and supportive working environments are crucial to recruiting and retaining effective educators, especially in high-need contexts. We offer toolkits, teaching conditions surveys, as well as consulting services to assess, understand, and improve teaching conditions. We work in all school contexts, and we offer tailored materials and services for low-performing and hard-to-staff contexts.

Coach & Support
School Leaders

School leaders must be results-driven instructional leaders and change agents. We offer free professional learning modules and an industry-leading competency-based leadership coaching model focused on nurturing the knowledge, skills, and competencies of school leaders.

Promote Social & Emotional
Learning for Educators

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is essential to academic achievement and well-being, for both students and educators. We offer free teacher self-assessments and learning modules as well as aligned consulting and coaching services to build SEL skills and competencies for educators.

View
ESSA Supports

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) offers new opportunities for using federal funds to better prepare, develop, recruit, and retain great educators for all students. Use this page to locate our resources for supporting your state in efficiently and effectively allocating funds to improve your students’ access to great educators.

Evidence-Based Strategy Toolkits

Mentoring and Induction Toolkit 2.0

Use the Mentoring and Induction Toolkit 2.0 to 

  1. facilitate meaningful conversations with districts about  design and implementation 
  2. review summaries of research and best practices
  3. explore relevant examples
  4. create a streamlined process for action planning.

The revised toolkit includes a deeper focus on equity with new insights and information about tailoring mentoring and induction programs for use in high-need contexts

Insights on Diversifying the Educator Workforce Data Tool

The Insights on Diversifying the Educator Workforce Data Tool is a free, user-friendly, Excel-based tool to help practitioners to identify, visualize, and target diversity gaps across the entire educator career continuum:

  • Future teachers graduating from high school and entering educator preparation programs
  • Preservice teachers entering the educator workforce
  • Classroom teachers growing and developing into experienced instructors

The data tool also includes a geographic information systems (GIS) component to support place-based analysis.

Educator Shortages in Special Education Toolkit

The Educator Shortages in Special Education Toolkit is organized around the guiding principle that short-term strategies to meet immediate demand must be intentionally paired with long-term, systemic strategies to attract, prepare, and retain effective special education teachers to create comprehensive shortage solutions. The toolkit includes the following:

  • Toolkit Facilitation Guide
  • Special Education Teacher Shortages Primer
  • Analyzing Special Education Teacher Shortages: A Data Tool for Practitioners
  • Shortage Strategy Selection Tool

Although this tool is designed specifically to address shortages in special education, the tool can be used to address all teacher shortages.

Equitable Access Toolkit and Implementation Playbook

The Teaching Conditions Toolkit assists states and districts in understanding what teaching conditions are and how improving teaching conditions can create a more positive teaching and learning environment, raise teacher retention rates, and strengthen positive school culture. The toolkit includes the following modules:

  • Module 1: Understanding Teaching Conditions
  • Module 2: Collaborative Data Interpretation
  • Module 3: Stakeholder Engagement
  • Module 4: Root Cause Analysis and Action Planning
  • Module 5: Monitoring

Module 1 is free and available for use, and the GTL Center team offers customized services and supports for states and districts interested in utilizing the toolkit modules 2 through 5. 

Equitable Access Toolkit and Implementation Playbook

The Equitable Access Toolkit and Implementation Playbook offers the following suite of resources for planning and implementing equitable access plans for states and districts:

  • Stakeholder Engagement Guide
  • Root Cause Analysis Workbook
  • Data Review Tool
  • Implementation Planning Guide
  • Communications Guidebook

Teacher Leadership Toolkit 2.0

The Teacher Leadership Toolkit 2.0: includes a synthesis of research on teacher leadership, current examples, and useful tools for designing, implementing, and supporting teacher leadership initiatives. The toolkit includes the following sections and resources:

  • Part 1: Establishing the rational and goals for the teacher leadership system.
  • Part 2: Selecting and implementing strategies to establish and sustain teacher leadership.
  • Part 3: Refining implementation through progress monitoring.
  • 10 Toolkit Resources: states and districts may use the resources individually to build knowledge with stakeholders or state education agency staff before engaging in decision making about teacher leadership initiatives.