Expanding the Impact of Excellent Teachers

By Bryan C. Hassel & Celine Coggins

If you are a teacher who helps students learn exceptionally well, this is your moment—schools and policymakers must vastly expand your impact, now.

Today, our nation is at a crossroads; we simply cannot fall short educationally for another decade as other countries surge.

Why is this time unique? Two crucial trends are at play. First, the United States has begun to act on the compelling data showing great variation in teachers’ success in helping students learn, as well as the monumental impact this variation can have on the life chances of students. As states and districts work to build better teacher-evaluation systems, schools will have increasingly accurate and useful data to identify which...