Enrollment in teacher preparation programs has been declining since 2010 and the teacher workforce is aging; meanwhile, K-12 enrollment is growing. But, AIR's Alex Berg-Jacobson, Jesse Levin, and Jim Lindsay argue in this blog post that those commonly quoted statistics about teacher supply and demand don't tell the whole story. ...
Recognizing that human capital is the most important asset to teaching and learning, states and districts are rethinking their approaches to evaluating teachers’ performance. This white paper is intended to assist states and districts in strategically combining measures into a summative score in a way that reflects their goals and ...
Teacher shortages are making headlines. In this blog post, AIR senior researcher Ellen Sherratt asks, Do we really know why fewer college students are interested in becoming educators?
The initiatives to enhance adult learning program accountability and assessment systems of the following states are described in this paper: Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Oregon, Texas, Washington, West Virginia.
In 2012–13, Newark Public Schools ratified a new teacher contract, the main goal of which is to implement a high-quality measure of teaching effectiveness and use it to support and manage teachers in ways that improve student outcomes. An evaluation of the contract and associated initiatives found that teachers and ...
This research and policy brief seeks to help state-, district-, and school-level leaders more fully understand the Generation Y workforce so that they can better create a system of management and support for the ultimate goal of improvement in teaching and learning.
Many schools across America must take the budget bull by the horns and decide whether cutting class size is the right way to do it. In this blog post, Michael Hansen suggests how creating larger classes with smart teacher-assignment policies, may make students better off while simultaneously reducing costs. ...
Because no single measure of educator practice or student outcomes can adequately capture the wide range of knowledge and skills an educator employs to demonstrate effectiveness, states and districts should consider incorporating multiple measures of performance and outcomes into their performance-based compensation systems. This report offers a broad overview of ...
How well do classroom observation scores help us understand how much a teacher has added to his or her students’ achievement? As Rachel Garrett describes in this blog post, new research raises questions about the wisdom of basing high-stakes, summative teacher evaluations chiefly on classroom observations. ...
Title II, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act aims to increase academic achievement by improving teacher and principal quality. In this blog post, Jane Coggshall describes her recommendations to ensure that states, regions, and districts work more strategically both to develop individual teachers and leaders and to ...