Join the Coalition on Teacher Quality

While the corporate ed reformers give lip service to the importance of great teachers, they are working overtime to replace professionally-trained teachers with temporary missionaries armed with Doug Lemov's bible who learn to teach on poor people's children before moving on to their real careers.  

Below are the Seven Principles of the Coalition on Teacher Quality, along with the list of 84 organizations that have endorsed these principals.  Click here to view a briefing sponsored by Senator Sanders and the 84 organizations of the Coalition on Teaching Quality.

 Principles to Ensure Student Access to Fully Prepared and Effective Teachers Under ESEA and HEA Title II

Research indicates that teacher quality is the most important school factor impacting student achievement. Yet, students in low-income and minority schools are far less likely to have access to well-prepared and effective teachers, as are students with disabilities and English learners. In many communities, students experience a revolving door of untrained and under-supported novice teachers who cannot sustain a high-quality education.

To promote and support the creation of a stable supply of qualified, effective educators for all communities, we put forward the following principles for ESEA and HEA Title II reauthorization.

FULLY PREPARED AND EFFECTIVE TEACHERS FOR ALL STUDENTS

1.       All students are entitled to teachers who are qualified (fully prepared and fully certified), as well as effective. The requirement that qualified teachers should be assigned to all students – and that states and districts make progress to ensuring that all of their teachers are qualified --should be continued.  To meet the “qualified” standard, teachers must have completed a full preparation program and have met full state certification standards in the field they teach.

2.       Teachers in training, if assigned as teacher of record, must be accurately identified, equitably distributed, and adequately supervised. Where fully prepared teachers are not available, teacher trainees may be hired.  In these cases, parents must be informed that their child’s teacher has not completed preparation and has not yet fully met state certification standards, and states and districts must report on the distribution of such teachers, by teaching field and school, and be required to distribute these teachers equitably.  In addition, districts must ensure that such teachers and their students are closely overseen by a fully qualified and experienced Supervising Teacher who coaches and observes regularly in the classroom, reviews and signs off on lesson plans and assessment practices, tracks the progress of students, and ensures that the needs of all students, including students with disabilities and English learners, are being adequately met. The Supervising Teacher must be identified to parents and provided with release time and training to serve in this role. 

3.       Teacher effectiveness should be evaluated based on valid measures of teacher performance. For Entering teachers (whose classroom performance cannot be fully evaluated for some time), we recommend that, in addition to full preparation, effectiveness be evaluated by passing a robust, field-specific teacher performance assessment that validly and reliably measures whether a teacher can successfully teach diverse students in the classroom.

      Experienced teachers should be evaluated by trained assessors on the basis of professional teaching standards, their joint efforts to improve learning within the school, and appropriate and multi-faceted evidence of their contributions to student learning.  The results of these multi-faceted evaluations should be used to guide professional development and personnel decisions: Teachers who do not meet standards of effectiveness should be offered the support necessary to improve, and those who do not improve should be removed.    

4.       Any determinations made about the status of an individual teacher (e.g. qualified, effective) should be based on that individual teacher’s demonstrated skill, knowledge and ability. An individual’s status should not be based on the preparation program or pathway he/she is enrolled in or previously attended.

EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OF PREPARED AND EFFECTIVE TEACHERS 

5.             ESEA comparability provisions should be strengthened and enforced in order to ensure equitable resources and equally qualified teachers across schools serving different populations of students.  ESEA should strengthen and enforce comparability requirements to ensure that poor and minority students, and students with disabilities, do not experience disproportionate numbers of uncertified, inexperienced, or out-of-field teachers. In addition, teachers identified as “trainees” (i.e., less than fully prepared teachers) or “not effective” should not be disproportionately concentrated in poor and minority schools.

POLICIES TO DEVELOP EFFECTIVE TEACHING

6. Preparation programs should be held to common, high standards. Credentialing programs should provide general and special education teachers with the content and pedagogical knowledge, skills and expertise needed to support learning for all students.  Traditional and alternative route certification programs should be held accountable for both program quality and multiple indicators of graduates’ ability to teach successfully. Programs that do not meet standards should have an opportunity to improve, and if no improvement is shown over a reasonable period of time, they should be closed.

7.   7.  Investments should be made in proven methods to recruit, prepare, develop and retain fully prepared and effective teachers in shortage fields and hard to staff schools.

Coalition for Teaching Quality

National Organizations

Alliance for Multilingual Multicultural Education

American Council on Education 

American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education

American Association of People with Disabilities

American Association of State Colleges and Universities

American Council for School Social Work

Association of University Centers on Disabilities

ASPIRA Association 

Autistic Self Advocacy Network

Autism National Committee 

Center for Teaching Quality 

Citizens for Effective Schools

Communities for Excellent Public Schools 

Council for Exceptional Children

Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates

Disability Policy Collaboration, A Partnership of The Arc and UCP Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Inc

Easter Seals

Education Law Center 

FairTest, The National Center for Fair & Open Testing

First Focus Campaign for Children

Gamaliel Foundation  

Helen Keller National Center

Higher Education Consortium for Special Education

Knowledge Alliance

Latino Elected and Appointed Officials

National Taskforce on Education

Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law 

Learning Disabilities Association of America 

Movement Strategy Center

NAACP 

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

National Alliance of Black School Educators   

National Association of School Psychologists 

National Association of State Directors of Special Education 

National Center for Learning Disabilities 

National Consortium on Deaf-Blindness 

National Council for Educating Black Children 

National Council of Teachers of English 

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics 

National Disability Rights Network 

National Down Syndrome Congress 

National Down Syndrome Society 

National Education Association

National Indian Education Association 

National Latino Education Research & Policy Project

National PTA

National Urban League 

League of United Latin American Citizens 

Parents Across America 

Public Advocates Inc.

Public Education Network

Rural School and Community Trust

School Social Work Association of America

South East Asia Resource Action Center

TASH - Equity, Opportunity, and Inclusion for  People with Disabilities 

Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children

United Church of Christ Justice & Witness Ministries

State and Local Organizations

Action Now – Illinois

Action Now– North Carolina

ACTION United 

Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) 

Arkansas Community Organizations 

Bay Area Parent Leadership Action Network 

Brighton Park Neighborhood Council – Chicago 

California Association for Bilingual Education

Californians for Justice 

Californians Together

California Latino School Boards Association 

Campaign for Quality Education

Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning 

Coalition for Educational Justice 

Delawareans for Social and Economic Justice 

Grow Your Own Illinois 

Inner City Struggle 

Justice Matters 

Legal Advocates for Children and Youth 

Philadelphia Student Union

Parent-U-Turn 

Parents for Unity 

RYSE Center

San Francisco Teacher Residency

Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education 

Youth On Board – Somerville, MA 

Youth Together