Teacher Quality/Effectiveness
Read more about efforts to improve teachers’ skills and the standards used to evaluate those skills
Teaching Profession
Calif. Groups Unite To Promote Peer Review
Four major education stakeholders in California came together last week in an unprecedented collaboration aimed at helping alleviate concerns over the nation's first statewide peer-assistance and -review program for teachers.
Federal
Partnership on Teaching To Regroup
The first incarnation of the National Partnership for Excellence and Accountability in Teaching has come to an end. NPEAT, as it is known, will not request a third year of funding from the $23 million the U.S. Department of Education had extended under a five-year contract--a decision that leaves some researchers without money to finish their projects on teaching quality.
Standards & Accountability
Teaching Tops Agenda At Summit
Teaching was paramount at last week's education summit, as state leaders confronted the challenges of making standards real in classrooms.
Teaching Profession
Denver Teachers To Pilot Pay-for-Performance Plan
Teachers in Denver have approved a two-year pilot that will give bonuses to some teachers if they meet goals for their students' academic performance.
Teaching Profession
Teacher Ed. Riled Over Federal Plan
The U.S. Department of Education's shot at defining high-quality teacher-preparation programs has left many in the higher education community steaming.
Teaching Profession
Castor To Head Board Certifying Outstanding Teachers
Betty Castor, the president of the University of South Florida and that state's former schools chief, has been chosen to lead the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
Teacher Quality: The Role of New Forms of Compensation
Two Commentaries published recently in these pages discussed several initiatives created to provide quality assurance that all students in all classrooms will be taught by well-prepared and competent teachers. ("On Teacher Quality: The View From Teachers," May 19, 1999.) The authors stressed efforts to strengthen preservice teacher preparation, an evolving shift toward performance-based teacher licensing, and recognition of accomplished teaching through certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. These initiatives are sound and on the right track, but they are not sufficient. A complete teacher-quality-assurance system also needs a redesigned human-resources system, including new forms of teacher compensation.
Teacher Preparation
Teaching Prospects Show Mixed SAT Scores
Prospective teachers don't score nearly as well on SAT exams as do other college graduates, but they outperform their peers in the subjects they plan to teach, a study released last week reveals.
Teacher Preparation
Deregulation Urged To Enrich Teacher Corps
A mostly conservative-leaning group of scholars, education officials, and state policymakers has signed on to a cyberspace-based teacher-quality "manifesto" proclaiming that deregulation holds the key to improvement.
Teacher Preparation
Out-of-Field Teaching Is Hard To Curb
Faced with a proposal requiring that schools notify parents if a child's class was being taught by "an uncertified or inappropriately certified individual," the Texas school board reacted decisively this month. It voted 12-0 to reject the measure, which the state's teacher-certification board had hoped would call greater attention to the pervasiveness of so-called out-of-field teaching.
Teaching Profession
Teachers' Literacy Skills Akin to Other Professionals', ETS Says
Educators have long suffered the biting witticism, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." But new research shows that, at least by one measure, teachers hold their own against people in other lines of work.
School & District Management
Teaching Partnership Regroups To Define Mission and Survive
A $23 million contract announced by the Department of Education in fall 1997 created an unusual partnership of researchers and education organizations devoted to the improvement of teaching.
School & District Management
Scrutinizing the Profession
A reorganized NPEAT has scaled back its research and grouped it into three strands.
Teaching Profession
Founding President of Master Teachers' Board To Depart
The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is in the market for new leadership.