Regional Center Staff

This Ask the Team brief from the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders examines different state methods for ensuring equivalency between district evaluation systems. For the purposes of comparing data for discussions of inequitable access to great teachers and leaders, ensuring state equivalency in system development is of key importance. 

During this interactive session, presenters discussed the use of performance data to support equitable access to great teachers from different perspectives. Researchers described the efforts that districts across the United States are making to address equity gaps in using performance measures, along with the challenges and the opportunities of using value-added models to examine access to great teachers. State-level policies and practices to support this work also were discussed, with Georgia as an example.

Conduct working conditions surveys, focus groups, and interviews among teachers, other instructional staff, and students, and encourage school leaders to use the resulting data to focus and improve their school improvement plans and their own leadership performance. Research continues to show that working conditions influence a teacher’s decision to stay in or leave a school and sometimes the profession. Research also shows that working conditions can affect teacher effectiveness. 

Ensure that local education agencies focus on supporting instructional leadership in high-need schools to provide teaching staff the working conditions they need to succeed for improved teacher recruitment, development, and retention. 

Survey effective teachers and leaders currently working in high-poverty schools to determine what effect, if any, financial compensation has on their decisions to move to or stay in high-need schools.

Examine local and national incentive-based programs for lessons learned in encouraging teachers to stay in or move to high-need schools. 

Support local innovation related to recruitment and retention incentives (e.g., housing incentives and local market-based salary bonuses) as well as career advancement opportunities that encourage effective teachers to stay in hard-to-staff schools. 

Reliably implement a comprehensive educator evaluation system to help determine whether the access to great teachers and leaders is equitable in your school, across your district, and across your state.

Align educator licensing and certification systems to the latest research on effective teaching and leading. For example, instead of accepting degrees and coursework to satisfy professional development requirements, consider changing to a focus on job-embedded professional development activities and performance evaluation. Research demonstrates that, unlike degrees and coursework, job-embedded professional development and performance evaluation have a measurable impact on teacher learning and student achievement. 

Support local innovation related to recruitment and retention incentives (e.g., housing incentives and local market-based salary bonuses) as well as career advancement opportunities that encourage effective teachers to stay in hard-to-staff schools.