Overview

Educational research now confirms the connection between excellent teacher quality and improved student achievement. In response, the nation’s governors are acting to ensure that every child has an effective teacher. As states continue to demand improved learning outcomes for all students, state policy must foster higher quality teaching. Many states are experiencing serious educator shortages, especially in math, science, and special education, and in urban and rural schools. State policy can strategically address these issues as well as other key challenges related to strengthening teacher quality, including: teacher recruitment, preparation, licensure and certification, professional development, compensation, support and induction, pay, evaluation, and school working conditions.

Focus of Center Activities

Improving Teaching Through Pay for Contribution
The NGA Center produced the report Improving Teaching through Pay for Contribution to provide practical information to governors considering changes to traditional teacher compensation policies. Pay for contribution means investing strategically in teachers by paying attention to how compensation policies align with an educator’s role in contributing to student learning. Because of its reward system, pay for contribution is particularly attractive to higher contributors. For this reason, it can help shape not only the performance of current teachers, but also the quality of the future teaching workforce by shifting who enters and remains in the profession. The report includes significant cross-sector research and recommendations about the pay policies states can use to enhance teaching effectiveness and, thereby, improve student learning.

A New Dialogue: Collective Bargaining in Public Education
This cross stakeholder conference, which took place in December 2006 in Newport, Rhode Island, offered a first step toward examining the role of state policymakers, teacher unions, and local school districts in creating the conditions and supports essential to improved outcomes for all students, especially in large urban districts. In partnership with Rhode Island Governor Don Carcieri, the NGA Center supported this conference by bringing together union representatives and state policymakers around the impact of collective bargaining on education and student achievement. Although bargaining is a district-level activity, it occurs within the scope of a state’s collective bargaining laws. Similarly, shaping local bargaining through state policy presents a prime opportunity for state policymakers to influence district level contracts effecting classroom practice. Other conference partners included the Rhode Island Foundation, The Education Partnership, and The Annenberg Institute for School Reform and the Urban Education Policy Program at Brown University. The Annenberg Institute published a conference report that includes a transcript of the opening presentation and of interviews with two additional conference speakers. Click here to view the conference agenda.

Action Agenda: Role of Teacher Quality in High School Redesign
Teacher quality is a crucial element of any state’s high school redesign agenda. For that reason, an entire section of the NGA Center‘s Action Agenda for Improving America’s High Schools is devoted to examining issues of teacher quality, emphasizing that state and local education leaders must do a better job of recruiting and preparing outstanding teachers and principals, specifically for high schools. Furthermore, these teachers and leaders must reach the schools and classrooms that need them most. Effective teachers and principals are essential in helping all students attain higher standards and leave high school prepared for college and the workforce. Only by adopting a model policy set around improving the system’s education human capital will states realize the full return on their broader high school redesign agendas.