Teacher

The Center for American Progress investigates the role of teacher leaders in implementing the Common Core State Standards in six districts and makes recommendations for districts implementing the standards. The teacher leaders were empowered to participate in various ways in decision making at district and school levels.

Leading Educators has partnered with schools to help develop more than 900 teacher leaders since 2008. This report uses focus groups, interviews, and surveys with these teachers and their principals to establish connections between teacher practices and student outcomes. Three main areas of success are identified: developing priorities aligned with the school and setting measurable goals, identifying a cohesive team, and agreeing on schedules that enable teacher leaders to fulfill their leadership responsibilities. 

This report examines promising early results from the Emerging Leaders selective teacher leadership program run by New Leaders; it argues that appropriate preparation strategies and clear expectations must be in place for teacher leaders to be most effective.

In 2010, the New York City Department of Education created an Office of Innovation, or iZone, to introduce personalized learning and blended learning programs in district schools. This report presents lessons learned from implementation from 2012 to 2014 and lays out steps districts can follow to successfully implement innovative practices and reshape procurement processes necessary to develop new instructional tools and instructional practices.

This case study focuses on Talledega School District, a high-poverty, rural district in Alabama, and its transition from a traditional school curriculum to a project-based curriculum integrating technology. The case study outlines how the district prepared for the new model: retraining teachers, redesigning school facilities, and engaging with the community. Performance results and graduation rates in the district have continued to improve following implementation of the new system.

This report examines ways districts can work with teacher preparation programs to ensure all students have access to high-quality teachers. A roadmap for how districts and teacher preparation programs may work together is included, along with 10 key recommendations and accompanying examples of effective partnerships.

In an analysis of state-level data, this study on teacher retention in Kentucky found that teachers under the age of 31 and over the age of 50 are more likely to leave the profession than teachers between those ages and that teacher retention rates are lower in schools with high percentages of free- or reduced-price lunch-eligible students.

The National Council on Teacher Quality’s ninth annual teacher policy yearbook presents evaluations of policies in all states in teacher policy areas, including teacher retention, expanding the teaching pool, and professional development.

This working paper from the Center for Education Data and Research presents findings about the teacher hiring process from a study analyzing data from Washington state on prospective teachers and student teaching assignments. The study found that the location of student teaching assignments is predictive of first teaching positions, and that more qualified student teachers tend to take student teaching assignments in more advantaged districts, which could impact the inequitable distribution of highly effective teachers.

This report by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research finds that Chicago Public Schools teachers with low-end scores on Recognizing Educators Advancing Chicago’s Students (REACH), Chicago’s new teacher evaluation system, are overrepresented in schools with the most high-need students while highly evaluated teachers are overrepresented in low-poverty schools. The report also finds that schools with better organizational and learning climates attract teachers with higher REACH scores, even in high-poverty schools.