The U.S. Education Department has approved 16 state plans designed to improve students’ access to quality teachers. New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut are included in the initial round.The federal education department launched the Excellent Educators for All initiative last year to help states and school districts support the educators of students who need them the most.
“Access to strong teaching should never be connected to your child’s race, ethnicity, national origin, zip code, family income or first language,” Duncan said. “That’s educationally and morally bankrupt and it’s not who we are as a nation.”
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan joined other educational leaders on a conference call with reporters Thursday to announce the 16 states whose plans to meet the initiative were approved.
“Connecticut is providing grants to aid high-poverty and high-minority districts to support their development of multi-year, longterm plans designed to increase the number of black and Latino pre-college students who are interested in education careers become certified to teach and are recruited and hired,” said Duncan.
Massachusetts’ Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester says the state has identified three major gaps its plan aims to address: teacher effectiveness, experience and preparation.
“There are two components to preparation that we’re addressing through this plan,” Chester said. “One is our shortage areas. Areas where we’re not producing enough teachers – special education, STEM teachers, math and science as well as teachers who are prepared to work with English language learners.”
Massachusetts says it will increase the rigor of its teacher approval and monitoring process in preparation programs and current educator evaluations tailored to each district. The commonwealth will pilot the strategies in eight to 10 school districts yet to be named.
“Through the use of a student learning experience report that tracks data how often students are assigned during their education career to novice teachers, teachers who have high rates of absenteeism, teachers who have strong evaluations versus teachers who have weak evaluations – we’re using that date to flag for districts students who they should be paying particular attention to,” explained Chester.
Ann Whalen is the senior advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Education. She says New York intends to continue investing in teachers’ career ladders so educators see leadership opportunities within and outside their school.
“New York is going to continue strengthening their teacher leader effectiveness grant program which supports districts in creating educator pipelines to do professional development to make sure that they have excellent educators in front of every students said,” Whalen said. “This also includes using their annual professional performance review in order to give meaningful feedback to their educators to help inform their practice.”
Via the receivership of Lawrence Public Schools, Chester says he’s learned some teachers want to have a say in how their school is run, especially those in underperforming ones.
“It’s not always ‘Which students do I get to teach?’ that’s going to motivate teachers,” Chester said. “There are many teachers who are in this business because they want to address the students who most need their expertise. But, they also want to have the conditions, which isn’t always money, but it is the opportunity to take on additional responsibility and leadership and have the running room to help design the programs that they’re responsible for.”
All 50 states have submitted plans for approval. The U.S. Education Department expects to announce another round in the next three or four weeks.
The 16 plans approved by the U.S. Department of Education came from Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maine, Missouri, Minnesota, New York, Nevada, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.
Copyright 2015 WAMC Northeast Public Radio
