![[Photos of teachers and children]](/images/photos.jpg){kind=small}
What We Know
Teaching Quality TopicsMentoring & InductionNo Child Left BehindPreparationProfessional CompensationProfessional DevelopmentRecruitment |
During the last decade, policy and business leaders have come to know what parents have always known — teachers make more difference in student achievement than any other single school factor. Thanks to new statistical and analytical methods used by a wide range of researchers, evidence continues mounting that teacher quality can account for the majority of variance in student learning and test scores.[1]
Research also demonstrates that the negative effects of teacher shortages and distribution challenges have a disproportionate impact on the nation’s most disadvantaged students. Poor children and students of color are far more likely to be taught by unqualified and under-prepared teachers. A recent analysis revealed that half of public schools serving minority children are filling long-term teaching vacancies with substitutes, many of whom lack even basic teaching qualifications. This analysis of federal data on the condition of teaching also found that poor high school students are twice as likely as their more affluent peers to be taught key subjects by teachers not certified in those fields.[2]
CTQ knows that reaching and teaching every child is a complex job, requiring complex skills. High quality teachers are individuals who not only know their subject matter, but also understand how to organize and teach their lessons in ways that assure diverse students can learn those subjects. They are teachers who can help each student reach higher academic standards, even when those students learn in different ways, have a learning disability, or do not speak English as their first language.
Teachers who are truly highly qualified teach well-designed, standards-based lessons, and they are able to teach those lessons successfully because they know how and why their students learn. They work effectively with their colleagues to push and lead school improvement and they work steadily to sharpen their skills and increase their knowledge because they believe it is part of their professional responsibility to do so.
Quality teachers are not simply born; they are also made and supported by the schools and communities in which they work. The working conditions under which teachers practice their profession and the supports they are provided to do their work effectively and grow professionally are absolutely essential. These conditions must be systematically addressed for our country to ever develop a critical mass of teachers who are well prepared to teach and will stay in our hardest-to-staff schools long enough to make a real difference for students and their families.
CTQ’s work documents the pressing need to redesign the way we recruit, prepare, induct, compensate, and evaluate teachers. CTQ is working closely with teacher leaders to promote a vision of teaching as knowledge-based, complex work that requires teachers to have specialized preparation, considerable autonomy, and collective responsibility for their work. We know that this view of a teaching force can help increasingly diverse students reach high academic standards.