Center for Teaching Quality

Want a powerful source of teacher perspectives on policy and practice? We have the site for you: transformED. Looking for multiple perspectives on important ed topics? Visit Teaching Ahead: A Roundtable.

Working in five targeted communities, our New Millennium Initiative (NMI) seeks to advance student learning by encouraging teachers to play key roles in improving public schools. We are proud to elevate the voices of these teacher leaders, who advocate for bold but practical teaching policy reforms to benefit all students.

Restructuring the Teaching Profession
The current structure of the teaching profession often pushes accomplished and enterprising teachers out of classrooms, away from the students who most need them. Bay Area NMI teachers tackle this problem in their January 2012 report "Many Ways Up, No Reason to Move Out." The teachers suggest a new model that encourages effective teachers to use their expertise to solve our schools' most pressing problems, while continuing to work with students on a regular basis. They created this remarkable graphic to demonstrate how the profession could be restructured.

Measuring Learning, Supporting Teaching
As Illinois reforms its teacher evaluation system, Illinois NMI teachers have added their voices to the discussion. The team released a report titled “Measuring Learning, Supporting Teaching: Classroom Experts’ Recommendations for an Effective Evaluation System.” The document includes suggestions on how the state can best implement its Performance Evaluation Reform Act (PERA).

How Better Teacher and Student Assessment Can Power Up Learning
Washington NMI teachers draw upon their classroom experiences and more than a year of research in their report, How Better Teacher and Student Assessment Can Power Up Learning. They advocate for new measures of student learning and teaching quality—as well as systems that spread the expertise of effective teachers.

Making Teacher Evaluation Work for Students
The Denver NMI team's recent report, Making Teacher Evaluation Work for Students: Voices from the Classroom, offers research-driven, practical suggestions for all states and districts working to improve teaching and learning.

Teaching Effectiveness for the New Millennium
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently noted, "Teachers need and deserve more autonomy and respect--and they must become real participants and partners in reform if outcomes for children are to dramatically improve." We couldn't agree more. That's why we initiated behind-the-scenes conversations among 23 teacher leaders and U.S. Department of Education officials, including Secretary Duncan. The topic? Teaching effectiveness reforms. Drawing on research and their classroom expertise, this group of teacher leaders has now issued recommendations for how the Department can best identify, evaluate, and support effective teaching.  Check out their report, "Teaching Effectiveness for the New Millennium."

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Effective Teachers and Performance Pay
CTQ partnered with 17 of Florida's most accomplished teacher leaders to publish "Effective Teachers and Performance Pay" in February 2011. The report shares expert teachers' research-driven and classroom-based solutions for effective performance pay systems. Read more.

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Teacher Education for Tomorrow
It’s time to move past the tired “university-based programs vs. alternative certification” debates. Instead, we must identify successful strategies for robust teacher preparation — and the policies that can spread those practices. Barnett Berry addresses the link between teacher preparation policies and student success in “Teacher Education for Tomorrow,” a policy paper for NCATE (National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education).

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Past as Prologue: A Historical Overview of Teaching in America
We cannot transform teaching in America without understanding the past of the profession. This historical overview was initially developed to frame the forward-thinking ideas presented in TEACHING 2030. A brief version of this paper appears in our book, which was published by Teachers College Press and is available on Amazon.