Teaching quality and children of poverty

Children of Poverty Deserve Great Teachers is the title of a new report out from the National Education Association and The Center for Teaching Quality. To "transform every high poverty school in America into a high-performing school, fully staffed by effective teachers," the report offers four major strategies:

1. Recruit and prepare teachers for work in high-needs schools. One cannot be done well without the other.

2. Take a comprehensive approach to teacher incentives. Lessons from the private sector and voices of teachers indicate that performance pay makes the most difference when it focuses on “building a collaborative workplace culture” to improve practices and outcomes.

3. Improve the right working conditions. We need to fully identify the school conditions most likely to serve students by attracting, developing, retaining and inspiring effective and accomplished teachers.

4. Define teacher effectiveness broadly, in terms of student learning. We need new evaluation tools and processes to measure how teachers think about their practice as well as help students learn.

The full report is available here, and I plan to spend several days blogging its specific ideas. (Hat tip: Mona Ball at KEA)