Leader

This paper, by Rachel Curtis of Human Capital Strategies for Urban Schools, gives examples of school systems that have created unique teacher career pathways as part of a larger vision to transform the culture of teaching and learning within schools. Through these profiles, Curtis outlines a process to help school systems develop new roles for teachers and create and implement systems and structures to support teacher leadership efforts.

In this report, McKinsey examines 25 school systems around the world, including the 10 best performing, to drill down on what matters most in the systems. It found that attracting the right people to become teachers, properly developing them into effective instructors, and ensuring that the system is modeled to deliver the best possible instruction to every child are key elements to the top-performing school systems. 

This infographic, released by Digital Learning Now, explains how blended learning creates not only new opportunities for students but also new career opportunities and improved conditions for teachers. The infographic lists 10 benefits of blended learning for teachers, including more leadership roles, more earning power, extended time with students, and team teaching.

Blended learning that combines digital instruction with live, accountable teachers holds unique promise to improve student outcomes dramatically. This brief explains how schools can use blended learning to encourage improvements in digital instruction, transform teaching into a highly paid, opportunity-rich career that extends the reach of excellent teachers to all students and teaching peers, and improve student learning at large scale. Public Impact calls this a “better blend”: combining high-quality digital learning and excellent teaching.

This report by the Rainwater Leadership Alliance presents detailed information and examples from successful principal preparation programs on their approaches to recruitment, selection, training, ongoing support, and continuous improvement.

In this TED talk, Daniel Pink, career analyst and former Al Gore speechwriter, dissects the puzzle of motivation, starting with the fact that most social scientists know the answer to this puzzle while most managers do not. Pink explains that traditional rewards are not always as effective as we think they are. True motivation can be defined by three elements: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. He emphasizes this by providing anecdotes coupled with facts. 

This Wallace Foundation report seeks to provide an answer to whether licenses that states require for school principals cover the skills and knowledge to promote student learning. And, if not, what policy framework would allow educators, lawmakers, and others rethink principal licenses? The investigation finds that licenses don’t reflect a learning focus and that licensing requirements across states are unbalanced and misaligned with today’s ambitions for school leaders. 

Teachers in the United States have historically had lower average salaries than their peers with similar educational backgrounds, with 62 percent of teachers requiring a second job outside of the classroom—such as tutoring, mowing lawns, selling stereos, or bartending—to be able to afford to teach. The Teacher Salary Project aims to raise awareness about the need to provide more attractive compensation to attract and retain effective teachers.

Education Resource Strategies (ERS) is an organization that provides resources and tools that aim to change the way people, time, and money are used in urban education to dramatically improve student learning. Resources on their webpage on teaching innovation include publications and case studies that focus on rethinking and redesigning teacher compensation systems to attract, reward, and retain talent and ideas on how to restructure the teaching job to emphasize teacher teams, differentiated roles, and opportunities to develop and increase impact.