As countries aim to ensure high achievement for all students, improving and sustaining the quality of the teacher workforce is a vital policy priority. Several studies have found that well-designed teacher evaluation systems, aligned with professional learning and development, can contribute to improvements in the quality of teaching and raise…

To celebrate Kappa Delta Pi's Centennial anniversary, educators were invited to reflect and write about significant changes in the field of education over the last century and about how education may evolve as we move into the 21st century. Submitted essays were considered through a blind review process, and the winning essays are presented in…

This "Professional Growth & Support Spending Calculator" helps school systems quantify all current spending aimed at improving teaching effectiveness. Part I provides worksheets to analyze total investment. Part II provides a system for evaluating investments based on purpose, target group, and delivery. In this Spending Calculator…

This resource was prepared in response to a request for information about the innovations and lessons learned as the result of the investments States have made in transforming their workforce using their Race to the Top -- Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) grants. These strategies and accomplishments will be helpful to other States as they…

Moving teacher evaluation systems from measuring teachers' performance to improving their practice requires much greater attention to communication and support. In the fall of 2012, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) instituted a sweeping reform of its teacher evaluation system with the introduction of REACH Students (Recognizing Educators Advancing…

Alabama Best Practices Center (ABPC) was formed to help educators spread innovation and scale up successful teaching and learning practices. ABPC is the professional development arm of A+ Education Partnership, a statewide business/community/education nonprofit founded in 1991 to advocate for excellent public schools. Since 1999, ABPC has…

The PDS partnership between the Cleveland State University Master of Urban Secondary Teaching (MUST) program and the Cleveland School of Science and Medicine (CSSM) has an established history of preparing educators to teach in urban schools. Recently awarded the NAPDS Award for Exemplary Professional Development School Achievement, this…

This paper presents a checklist that serves as a guide to the key considerations policymakers must address as they develop policies to improve teacher effectiveness. It articulates state roles and responsibilities, national progress toward fulfilling these demands, and the ability to chart how individual states stack up. The "National Landscape"…

Recently, teacher evaluation has become a major focus in educational policy debates and research efforts. This increased attention to teacher evaluation has raised questions about the relationship between evaluation and student outcomes. Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain (2005) and others have demonstrated with value-added research that there are…

With the increased focus on both inquiry and 21st-century skills such as collaboration and problem-solving, teachers at all levels are looking for engaging ways to create more student-centered classrooms in which students can learn more than "just" science content. Discovering and developing creative science activities designed to accomplish…

This article explores how insights from the broader education literature on threshold concepts and conceptions can be applied to improve the teaching of undergraduate introductory management courses. The authors propose that these courses are underpinned by the threshold conception, or "underlying game," that management is a practice…

Focused on the use of teacher evaluation data, this case was designed for use in two principal licensure courses, one on data literacy and the other on supervision and personnel. The principal of Baker Middle School has been instructed by the superintendent to use data from the state's new teacher evaluation system to determine which teachers…

Collaborative learning teams are improving teacher practice and student learning results in the Dallas Center-Grimes Community School District near Des Moines, Iowa. Since 2009, all teachers and principals in the district have participated in collaborative learning teams to study a process known as assessment for learning, in which formative…

One form of professional development available to faculty is the opportunity to co-teach. Studies of team teaching report increased communication between teachers and students and improved retention and achievement. This article describes a multiyear collaboration between two faculty members that began with a training relationship and expanded…

In the summer of 2012, thousands of teachers across the United States attended several days of professional development workshops. The workshops, which focused on the Common Core State Standards, were part of a Tennessee Department of Education initiative in teacher leadership. The department recruited and trained 200 highly-effective teachers to…