While new teachers bring energy and passion into their classrooms and schools, they can find themselves incredibly challenged as they learn how to plan and implement lessons, collect and use data to inform their instructional practices, build relationships with students and families, manage classroom behavior, and meet the varying academic,…

While new teachers bring energy and passion into their classrooms and schools, they can find themselves incredibly challenged as they learn how to plan and implement lessons, collect, and use data to inform their instructional practices, build relationships with students and families, manage classroom behavior, and meet the varying academic,…

Given the importance of quality teaching for student success, it is clear that every child needs to be able to receive instruction from a teacher who possesses the knowledge and skills for quality teaching--an accomplished teacher. It is less clear, however, how current teacher development policies and practices can ensure that all students will…

Improving teacher preparation is critical to long-term improvement in teacher quality. More than 200,000 new teachers enter classrooms each year. Increasing student enrollment, the retirement of baby boom generation teachers, and high attrition in their first five years (between 40 and 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession) have…

For five years running, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) has tracked states' teacher policies, preparing a detailed and thorough compendium of teacher policy in the United States on topics related to teacher preparation, licensure, evaluation, career advancement, tenure, compensation, pensions and dismissal. The 2011 State Teacher…

Who should be accountable for what beginning teachers need to know? This article first explains and illustrates three sets of knowledge and skills beginning teachers should have acquired in their preparation programs: academic knowledge needed for teaching the field of their license, generic professional knowledge and skills needed for teaching…

This Massachusetts edition of the National Council on Teacher Quality's (NCTQ's) 2009 "State Teacher Policy Yearbook" is the third annual look at state policies impacting the teaching profession. It is hoped that this report will help focus attention on areas where state policymakers can make changes that will have a positive impact on…