Teacher leadership is about empowering teachers to take a more active role in school improvement. Current pathways to teacher leadership, namely the Teacher Leader Master (TLM) degree program and teacher-led professional development, mainly target in-service teachers. Less attention has been paid to teacher leadership training in current teacher…

The problems of public education are not that America's classrooms are filled with too many bad teachers or too few smart ones. Instead, policy makers are paying too little attention to mobilizing the many experts teaching today who could lead in powerful ways. Enter the teacherpreneur, who teaches students for a career and has "the…

In this summary, authors and co-directors of "Public Impact," Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. Hassel, state that, in most locations, the relationship between organized teachers and reformers remains at best a tenuous truce and at worst a pitched battle. None are really getting what they want. Teachers are no closer to achieving the…

Many teachers desire--but have a hard time obtaining--the training and support they need to lead others and expand their circle of influence. Like having a conversation with a successful teacher leader, this practical guide will help teachers strengthen their leadership skills, optimize student learning, and enhance the profession. Research…

This article describes a teacher-led school "Mathematics and Science Leadership Academy" (MSLA) that is part of the Denver Public Schools. At MSLA, teachers collaborate to make authentic and substantive decisions about how the school operates and seek to meet each student's needs. At teacher-led schools, teachers hire their own…

When teachers collaborate in schools, taking collective responsibility to improve instruction and achieve goals, student performance improves and good results happen. Wyoming is one example of a state that uses peer-to-peer professional learning with notable results. Teachers joined together to form a statewide professional community and saw the…

Drawing on the author's experience as director of a long-lived school-university partnership, this essay describes how one such organization can "do it right" and enhance the development of teacher leadership in schools. It also provides a cautionary tale about how that same organization can "do it wrong" and achieve the…

Leadership matters. Principals are the primary drivers of school improvement and the best long-term investment to ensure effective teaching and learning at scale. Principals are central to State efforts to implement new college and career-ready standards, execute teacher evaluation and support systems and turn around low-performing schools. These…

For over a decade, researchers at NIET [National Institute for Excellence in Teaching] and around the country have studied TAP™: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement. This document summarizes recent internal and external research, including three new studies demonstrating TAP's effectiveness at raising student achievement, improving the…

"Great teachers and school leaders hold the key to America's children getting a first-rate education, but we do a spotty job of preparing them." Citing these words of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Vivien Stewart plunges into a fascinating account of how top-performing countries are developing strong school leaders. While…

"It's always been a promising time for teacher leadership. It's just never been a successful time," writes noted educator Roland Barth. Why? Barth points to five obstacles: administrator resistance, the taboo in teaching against elevating oneself higher than one's peers, the fact that teachers' plates are full, the…

Extended learning opportunities have emerged as a useful way to rethink how schools are organized and funded. That includes reconsidering who teaches and how they go about their work. That effort should be guided by four key policy considerations and goals: 1. Reengineer the role of teacher. 2. Rethink K-12, higher education, and community-based…

This is a story about teachers engaging in mathematics teacher leadership. The focus is on the teachers' learning, and the purpose is to illuminate the process. The setting is a semester-long graduate class called Teacher Leadership in Mathematics Education, and the characters are elementary and middle school teachers. Those in this group…

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…

Relying on teachers as culture leaders is a solution embraced by many high-performing charter schools. This profile focuses on the design of the Grade Level Lead roles at Pritzker College Prep, a member of the Noble Network of Schools in Chicago. The successes of this school and network are well-documented: Of non-selective public high schools in…