The most important resource a community can offer its youth is well-trained teachers. In response, thousands of communities throughout have given their kids access to highly skilled educators who are backed by supportive professional learning settings. Their pupils are performing at high levels, and their schools offer instruction that varies from good to world class.
However, not all American children are currently receiving high-quality instruction. In rural and low-income regions, where untrained and underprepared teachers are all too frequently clustered in schools designed for failure rather than success, the shortage is especially acute. It is wrong that students have to pay this price.
We have discovered that our attempts to provide every child with high-quality instruction are being hampered by high rates of teacher attrition and turnover. The issue of teacher retention has spread across the country. We have come to the conclusion that until we address the issues that are forcing teachers out of far too many of our schools, “teacher shortages” will never end and that every child will not receive high-quality instruction. This report’s first section details this issue, and the tactics in the sections that follow provide a plan of action to buck this worrying trend.
It’s time for our leaders to step up their efforts to implement comprehensive education reform by promising to hire, train, and compensate qualified educators in well-run schools. To ensure that all of our children’s birthrights are protected and that they will have access to schools with highly qualified teachers where learning can flourish, we need legislators and educational leaders who are willing to practically sign their names on the bottom line.
Our leaders’ dedication to education will be evaluated in this new age of accountability. They must be determined and unyielding about results, bring knowledge and wisdom to bear on the obstacles they face, and concentrate on specific goals in order to achieve outstanding teaching.
A significant shift from the current situation is called for by the plan, which would establish a new framework for professional development and an accountability framework to guarantee that high standards of instruction are fulfilled at all levels. There is now widespread agreement across the country that what teachers know and can do is the most important influence on what students learn. Educational officials at the state and municipal levels are directly responsible for determining whether the country’s youngsters will receive high-quality instruction. We suggested a chain of accountability made up of certification, licensure, and accreditation standards to assist them in fulfilling that obligation. It demanded that all educational institutions be accredited. In addition to challenging governments to impose strict requirements for admission to the profession through performance-based licensure that would assess subject matter knowledge, teaching knowledge, and teaching skill, it suggested that professional standards boards be set up in each state. It served as a reminder to school districts of their responsibility to make sure all teachers are qualified to teach in each classroom. Lastly, it suggested establishing new standards as a basis by which to measure and honor successful instruction.
While there has been success on all of these fronts, the implementation of the “highly qualified” teacher qualifications will now test the strength of this chain of accountability. Every time short cuts to teacher training are used, weak links are created, and the chain is broken every time recruiting practices and teacher licensure are compromised in hasty, ill-founded attempts to fill classroom openings. Better is what our communities and families deserve. They need to be sure that their educational authorities are hiring qualified, capable, and compassionate teachers for their schools.
We support the following requirements as benchmarks for teacher training, licensing, and hiring in order to guarantee that “highly qualified” new teachers fulfill the new high standards. These standards reflect a growing, evidence-based consensus regarding the knowledge and skills instructors should possess in order to enhance student learning. Those who are “highly qualified beginning teachers” include:
– Have a thorough comprehension of the subjects they instruct;
– Show that you have a solid grasp of how students learn;
– Exhibit the instructional abilities required to assist every student in meeting high goals;
– Establish a constructive learning atmosphere;
– To identify and address each student’s unique learning requirements, employ a range of evaluation techniques;
– To enhance student learning, demonstrate and incorporate contemporary technologies into curricula;
– To enhance student learning, cooperate with coworkers, parents, community members, and other educators;
– Evaluate their methods to enhance instruction and student performance in the future;
– Seek professional development in pedagogy and content; and
– Encourage a love of studying in their pupils.
Common sense backs up these research-based standards: American students have a right to teachers who are knowledgeable about their subjects, who are aware of their needs and those of their pupils, and who have mastered the art of making learning engaging.
Why don’t all American children have a highly competent teacher since we know that good instruction makes a difference? Why would anyone ever think about lowering the bar for what constitutes a highly competent teacher? We just don’t have enough qualified teachers to match the demand, is the typical response. It is now widely accepted that a nationwide teacher shortage, fueled by rising student enrollments, reduced class sizes, and teacher retirements, limits efforts to enhance education and schools.
Too many legislators come to the conclusion that they must sacrifice quality for numbers because they think they have a teacher shortage. The requirements for entering the teaching profession are too frequently decreased in an attempt to recruit a sufficient number of teachers.
However, conventional wisdom is incorrect. Teacher retention is the true issue with school personnel. Too many teachers leaving rather than too few joining is the main reason why we are unable to maintain high-quality instruction in many of our schools. The high turnover among current teachers, which is only made worse by employing untrained or underprepared people to replace departing teachers, limits a school’s capacity to establish and sustain a strong professional learning community.
According to research, the country produces more than enough new instructors annually to meet its demands, with the exception of a few subjects in particular fields. However, it is estimated that about one-third of new teachers quit after just three years, and nearly half have left after five. This attrition rate is too high for any teacher supply method to ever overcome. Instead, we should question how many teachers left last spring and why, when we read about how many a school district needs to hire in the fall.
Although it is crucial to provide our schools with qualified instructors, this does not ensure that they will be able to teach at a high level. A second essential component is needed for the national formula for school reform, even though hiring and training highly competent teachers is a key component. Ensuring that every school is set up to facilitate effective teaching and learning is a complementary and equally important component of attaining quality teaching.
Good teaching and good schools are known to reinforce one another. Additionally, we are aware that poor schools may and do undercut the efforts of excellent educators. The structures in which teachers operate frequently fail to support their efforts when they fail to provide the kind of learning that we anticipate. Because of those conditions, qualified teachers far too often quit teaching early in their careers, long before they have gained the experience, training, and knowledge necessary to become successful educators.
With this research, we reaffirm the need to strike a balance between recruiting and preparing top-notch teachers and making sure every school develops into a robust learning environment where both teachers and their students may flourish. Poor school performance is typically caused by very high turnover rates that result from long-standing, unresolved issues in the schools rather than a shortage of teachers.
Every child should have excellent teachers in well-run schools. The law offers our country’s leaders a rare chance to reaffirm their dedication to the laborious task of meaningful school reform and high-quality teacher preparation. There are several instances throughout our history of Americans rising to the occasion and overcoming great obstacles. We are determined and knowledgeable enough to repeat that.
We extend an invitation to everyone involved in American education to join us:
1. Every school needs to be set up for successful teaching and learning.
2. We must demand high-quality teacher licensure, accreditation, and preparation. Good planning yields significant benefits.
3. From guided induction to successful teaching, we must create and maintain professionally fulfilling career pathways for educators.
This report does more than just note and suggest. To accomplish our goals, we will need to do more than simply shout out sound policies. Making teaching engaging, fulfilling, and rewarding in every school is the only way to achieve the type of instruction that this report advocates. Excellent educators should be employed by well-managed schools. Given their abilities and achievements, they should also receive a high salary.
The stakes are really high. We bet on our teachers every day for the future of this nation. Every day, we commit our young people’s dreams to their educators. It is up to us to determine whether those dreams are postponed, rejected, or realized. As the individual manifestation of a commitment we here make to America‘s children, and which we welcome each reader to join us in, we shall continue to donate our own time, energy, and effort.
To achieve this, we suggest three strategies. We go into great detail on each of these in the parts that follow, and we offer roles for individuals who share accountability in a chain of accountability for improvement.
1. SET UP EVERY SCHOOL FOR SUCCESSFUL TEACHING AND LEARNING
Good schools recruit and nurture good instructors. Because their schools are designed based on our understanding of how people learn and develop, both teachers and students, teaching and learning thrive there. The connection is easy to understand: only when we have high-quality schools for all children will we be able to provide them with high-quality instruction. We extend an invitation to state leaders, superintendents, school boards, principals, and educators to participate in a nationwide endeavor that will have practical implications.
– Manage educational institutions in accordance with the findings of research on human learning;
– Funds should be reallocated and appropriately allocated to give educators and other school administrators the time, freedom, and tools they require to establish and maintain small, targeted professional learning communities;
– Reallocate funds from big, underperforming schools to help establish tiny learning communities that will eliminate student anonymity and instructor isolation;
– Superintendents, principals, teachers, and other school leaders who exhibit the vision and ability to create schools that can meet the demands of the twenty-first century should be chosen, trained, retained, and rewarded;
– Adopt contemporary technology and utilize research to help teachers identify the learning needs of their students and implement effective teaching techniques that allow for proper lesson customization;
– Make use of networked, Internet-based learning communities that let educators and learners engage in high-quality instruction whenever and wherever they choose; and
– Employ a variety of evaluations and accountability metrics to provide a continuous and transparent view of students’ progress toward their learning objectives.
2. DEMAND TOP-QUALITY ACCREDITATION, LICENSING, AND TEACHER PREPARATION
The pointless argument between “traditional” and “alternative” teacher training should be put aside. We know that excellent teacher preparation is a powerful predictor of both teacher retention and effective teaching practices, regardless of how or where it is obtained. All ways to teaching should adhere to the same high standards since all paths lead to the front of the classroom. New teachers who get high-quality teacher preparation are equipped with the abilities, self-assurance, and competence to start their teaching careers. A teacher’s license should attest to the fact that they are well competent to instruct.
Making sure that (a) they have obtained the credentials required to teach from an accredited institution and (b) they have been evaluated by performance standards that will guarantee the quality of their instruction through licensure is the most straightforward way to ensure that schools are staffed with highly qualified teachers.
By implementing the new recommendations for teacher preparation and quality assurance, states, universities, schools, and school districts can work with us to make sure that teacher preparation creates a solid foundation and that licensure ensures high-quality instruction:
Teacher Preparation
– To guarantee that all applicants are adequately prepared to teach, strict admission and graduation requirements should be imposed on teacher training programs;
– Demand that all “traditional” and “alternative” training programs offer demanding instruction intended to cultivate and impart the qualities of highly trained teachers;
– Create programs for preparing teachers that are founded on the six pillars of effective teacher education;
– Establish incentives at the federal, state, and local levels to attract and train educators in fields with high needs; and
– Create and support robust K–16 collaborations where teacher training closely reflects the needs of both students and schools.
Teacher Quality Assurance
– Demand that all programs that prepare teachers adhere to strict accrediting requirements;
– Establish leadership accountability for the caliber of teacher preparation at the program and institution levels;
– Close any programs that can’t generate teachers of a good caliber;
– If there are no independent standards boards, establish one and develop regulatory processes to carry out the board’s rulings;
– Create and apply generally recognized benchmarks and passing scores for licensing tests that are based on a strict definition of quality instruction; create a variety of licensure requirements, including demanding topic knowledge exams, performance-based evaluations of teaching abilities, and portfolios that record both content knowledge and teaching abilities;
– Apply penalties to schools that force instructors to teach outside of their fields and to districts that employ unlicensed teachers;
– Publicize information about teaching assignments and teacher licensure status;
– To enhance the system for teacher training and licensure, gather and apply data on K–12 student achievement, teacher licensure, and teacher retention; and
– Adopt advanced certification and multitiered licensing programs for teachers at all levels, from novice to expert.
3. CREATE A TOP-RATE TEACHING PROFESSION
We must also focus on maintaining teaching as a profession if we want today’s novice educators to grow into tomorrow’s skilled educators. This entails creating career pathways that, from onboarding to successful teaching, provide instructors with the fulfillment of a fulfilling career. We urge states, educational systems, unions, school boards, and corporate executives to take the following actions to solve this issue:
Staffing Actions
– Create data-driven plans and processes for school staffing;
– Establish incentives at the federal, state, and local levels to recruit educators in fields with significant needs;
– Make use of contemporary technologies to expedite the hiring and recruitment of teachers; and
– Remove obstacles to teacher movement by establishing portable licenses and standardizing state pension plans.
Supporting New Teachers
– Develop and promote peer assistance programs to help seasoned educators and mentored induction programs for new teachers.
– To address teachers who continue to perform below expectations, outplacement processes should be established.
Promoting Teachers’ Continuing Growth
– All instructors should have access to flexible professional development opportunities. Acknowledging Successful Instruction
– Implement National Board certification incentives and assistance in each state and school district.
– Create attractive leadership roles for successful educators and pay incentives that incentivize instructors to improve their practices.
And, All Along the Way
– Teachers should be paid and given working circumstances that honor their position as professionals in American society.
An excessive number of schools are turning into revolving doors, losing as many instructors as they hire annually. High turnover rates result in a yearly rush to replace departing employees, which costs schools money. Teachers’ careers are short-circuited as a result of their disappointments. The greatest cost, however, is borne by students: less learning and unfulfilled goals. Students who have the most difficulties are frequently placed with teachers who are ill-prepared, teaching outside of their profession, have provisional certification, or are last-minute substitutes when deck chairs are shuffled in these schools. As schools fall into a downward spiral, student achievement falls and teaching quality deteriorates. The cycle of educational inferiority in these areas is perpetuated from one generation to the next.
It’s time to end this pattern. We must increase our efforts to ensure that every child has access to qualified, capable, and caring teachers in schools that are set up for success if we are to help America’s children realize their aspirations. Understanding that the demands of a heterogeneous society and a knowledge-based economy produce new expectations for teaching and learning is crucial. All teachers must have a thorough understanding of their subjects in order to help each child get ready for successful job and productive citizenship in the twenty-first century. To effectively instruct a diverse group of kids, they must possess an understanding of how children learn. To build engaging learning environments, they must be adept at using contemporary learning technology and able to collaborate closely with their peers. Schools must develop into powerful, laser-focused learning communities in order to support excellent instruction. That entails putting an end to the practice of teaching alone in remote classrooms. Small professional learning communities must become the cornerstones of school development; they can no longer be viewed as idealistic or visionary. Our schools must transform into professional workplaces if we wish to have professional teachers working there.
Megan Wilson is a teacher, life strategist, successful entrepreneur, inspirational keynote speaker and founder of https://Ebookscheaper.com. Megan champions a radical rethink of our school systems; she calls on educators to teach both intuition and logic to cultivate creativity and create bold thinkers.