Policies and Practices to Watch

Professional Compensation
The most promising professional compensation initiative to date is the Denver "ProComp" plan - a comprehensive approach to compensation that recognizes the complex variables associated with teacher effectiveness.

Teacher Preparation
Academy for Urban School Leadership, recognizes the importance of preparing prospective teachers more deeply for the challenges they will face. The recruits enter a program designed to prepare teachers for working in low-performing schools by placing them under the guidance of accomplished and experienced mentors in high-functioning schools serving disadvantaged students.

Teacher Recruitment
The South Carolina Teacher Cadet Program is a powerful recruitment program to attract academically able high school and college students to teaching. The state enrolls approximately 2200 students in the program annually, of whom 37 percent indicate that they intend to enter teaching