Regional Center Staff

This national webcast, which was facilitated by Candace Crawford, a senior policy associate at The Education Trust, brought together experts and practitioners to discuss existing research and strategies that promote equitable access to excellent teachers. The presenters included Judy Wurtzel, advisor to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Education; Cortney Rowland, a senior policy associate at the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality (TQ Center); and Charles Clotfelter, Ph.D., a professor of public policy, economics, and law at Duke University.

Codeveloped by National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality staff and an outside researcher (Jennifer Imazeki, Ph.D., San Diego State University), this brief summarizes existing literature on issues of equity. It goes beyond describing the problem and offers solutions (including cost-effectiveness) that states might consider adopting.

This PowerPoint presentation by National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality Director Sabrina Laine, Ph.D., for the Georgia Equity Plan Meeting contains research- and expert-based recommendations for achieving equity. Feel free to reproduce the slides for your work with other states.

This resource developed by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education illustrates how data from state longitudinal data systems could be combined with data collected by educator preparation programs to provide a rich source of information for program evaluation and improvement and district hiring decisions. 

The Civil Rights Data Collection provides data on key education and civil rights issues in the nation’s public schools for use by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, other Department of Education offices, and other policymakers and researchers. This data collection provides information about students in public elementary and secondary schools on a variety of indicators, including enrollment; access to educational programs or services; and academic proficiency results disaggregated (i.e., broken out) by race, ethnicity, sex, and disability.

As discussed in the 2009 biennial  report of the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality, the Tennessee Department of Education collected and analyzed data on teacher patterns and identified disparities in the state’s high-poverty and high-minority schools in 2006. See Chapter 3 in the report for additional information.

In collaboration with the Delaware Department of Education and the Mid-Atlantic Comprehensive Center, the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality (TQ Center) developed interview protocols to study access to great teachers in the state. State education agencies and districts can modify these protocols to conduct similar needs assessment work. See Chapter 3 in the report for additional information.

Access to important educational resources in California’s middle and high schools is not equal among schools that serve different student populations. Overall, the most disadvantaged populations of middle and high school students are likely to have the least access to the resources necessary for learning. 

The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) and the Office of Educator Equity and Talent (OET), in partnership with the New Teacher Center, piloted a three-year program called TELL (Teaching, Empowering, Leading, and Learning) to provide educators in Ohio with data, tools, and support to facilitate school improvement planning and address issues of inequitable access. As a part of the initiative, Ohio is doing the following:

The Office of Educator Equity was created within the Center for the Teaching Profession at the Ohio Department of Education to do the following: