Teacher

This five-part, online module, created by the IRIS Center, highlights that administrative support is critical for new special education teachers and demonstrates how teacher support can boost effectiveness in the classroom.

This report, published by the Asia Society, examines the strategies used to develop and support strong teaching and school leadership workforces in three very different contexts: Melbourne, Australia; Singapore; and Toronto, Canada. The report contains a cross-city analysis and three in-depth case studies examining each of the cities. Best practices identified across these cities include a shared emphasis on systemic approaches, strong recruitment initiatives, increasingly thoughtful preparation and mentoring, purposeful support for ongoing learning, and proactive leadership development.

This report—published by the Alliance for Excellent Education and the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education—provides a set of case studies that examines best practices for cultivating teacher and leader effectiveness from around the globe, honing in on Finland; Ontario, Canada; and Singapore. The areas featured in this report have well-developed and effective systems in place for recruiting, preparing, developing, and retaining teachers and school leaders.

Published by the National Center to Improve Recruitment and Retention of Qualified Personnel for Children with Disabilities, this brief highlights best practices—from across the country—for utilizing technology and social media (including Facebook and Twitter) to recruit and retain special education teachers and specialists.

Published by the National Center to Improve Recruitment and Retention of Qualified Personnel for Children with Disabilities, this case study researches the approaches three states have taken to “grow their own” special education personnel. Grow Your Own programs enable local education agencies (LEAs) to recruit and train special education employees from their own communities, often targeting high school students with an expressed interest in education careers, paraprofessionals, and/or rural educators seeking a career change. Approaches from Arizona, South Carolina, and Utah are highlighted.

This research study, published by the U.S. Department of Education and Mathematica Policy Research, analyzes the effect of providing high-performing teachers selective transfer incentives to move to a struggling school. In particular, it analyzes the Talent Transfer Initiative experiment, which was implemented in 10 school districts in seven states. The study found that the transfer incentive successfully attracted high-performing teachers and had a positive impact on teacher-retention rates during the payout period.

This report, produced by The New Teacher Project (TNTP), documents the perspectives of 117 of America’s best teachers, with the hope that their feedback can be used to strengthen the profession. The report highlights the following key findings: (1) Teachers have a tumultuous relationship with their profession; (2) Teachers value a wide range of measures to determine success in the classroom; and (3) Teachers do not attribute much of their success to formal preparation programs.

This report, published by the Fordham Institute, studies data from North Carolina to determine how “right-sizing” a classroom—i.e., giving the most effective teachers the most students—could affect academic achievement. The report finds that when the best teachers teach larger classes and the weakest teachers teach progressively smaller classes, student learning improves (across all students, not just those who move class). 

Published by the National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY) and the Center for Educator Effectiveness at Pearson, this report provides a vision of teacher career pathways designed to attract and retain excellent Generation Y teachers. The report reviews recent initiatives that promote teacher role differentiation, and, based on the findings, recommends strategies for creating the necessary conditions to develop sustainable teacher career pathways and make teaching a more attractive career option.

This research report, published by the Calder Center at American Institutes for Research, examines the effectiveness of IMPACT—the District of Columbia’s teacher evaluation and compensation system—which provides individually targeted and high-powered incentives linked to performance (measured by multiple scores). The report found that the program improved the effectiveness of the D.C. Public Schools’ teacher workforce, both through the exit of low-performing teachers and through the performance gains evident among those who remained.