General Resources

Teachers and students are using electronic instructional and learning materials with ever-increasing frequency. This report examines how pixel-based media are changing modern learning both in and out of the classroom. 

This report investigates the implementation of new teacher mentoring programs in five states, including Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The report examines topics including who provides mentoring, what training mentors receive, how mentors are compensated, how much mentoring new teachers receive over time, and barriers to implementing adequate mentoring programs.

This report from the New Teacher Center (NTC) reviews state policies designed to support new teachers and the mentors working alongside them in their first years in the classroom. Based on findings from a similar report published in 2012, NTC concludes that limited progress has been made by states in the intervening period. 

This report presents an analysis of teacher characteristics and learning experiences and describes how they can affect English language learner (ELL) student outcomes in mathematics. Teachers with prior experience teaching ELL students and teachers who pursued specific training in ELL instructional strategies achieved positive gains with their ELL mathematics students when compared with non-ELL students. Teachers with years of generic teaching experience did not achieve similar gains.

This report investigates why professional development strategies are failing in their goal to effectively support teachers and promote growth. After conducting extensive discussions with educators, researchers determined that teacher agency is a crucial ingredient of any professional development strategy because it motivates teachers to pursue continued development and provides an environment of continuous learning.

This report seeks to identify the components of a sustainable, effective teacher career continuum by studying eight varied school districts—high-poverty, low-poverty, urban, suburban, and rural—across the United States during a three-year period. The report describes and analyzes key elements of a viable teacher career continuum in sections on design features and enabling conditions.

This report examines key findings from a 2014 California teacher survey. Slightly more than 500 teachers with varying levels of experience responded to the survey, which found that California teachers favor a system of tenure founded on a performance-based professional benchmark and believe that more support is needed to help struggling teachers improve.

Fourth in a series of reports by Wallace Foundation on principalship, this report examines the progress districts participating in the Principal Pipeline Initiative have made in implementing systems to evaluate and support principals using clear standards. The districts worked on refining their evaluation processes to focus on helping principals improve as instructional leaders by identifying areas of weakness and providing tools to support growth. 

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.

Developed by a consortium of national school leader organizations, this publication takes a new look at the education leadership landscape and presents new professional standards to guide educational leaders as they work to improve student outcomes.