Susana Velasco always thought she designed lessons for her kindergarten students to help them meet the academic standards for their grade. But now she feels better equipped to adapt instruction to meet the needs of all the children in her class--a skill she has developed through her school's participation in the Literacy Design Collaborative…

The relatively low status of teaching as a profession is often given as a factor contributing to the difficulty of recruiting teachers, the middling performance of American students on international assessments, and the well-documented decline in the relative academic ability of teachers through the 1990s. Since the turn of the 21st century,…

Teacher education and professional development prepare teachers with up-to-date knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for effective teaching. To sustain this, however, hinges on continued professional learning within schools. Research shows that establishing long-term conditions that allow teachers to learn continuously from one another…

This qualitative study explores the experience of specialist teachers specific to their individual roles within the coaching model (CM). Reasons for in-depth study include (a) Rochester's struggle to meet federal and state student achievement benchmarks, (b) practitioner frustrations from site-level resistance or CM use, and (c) shifting role…

This report summarizes main results from a national study of how leaders in urban school district central offices fundamentally transformed their work and relationships with schools to support districtwide teaching and learning improvement. All three study districts had been posting gains in student achievement and credited their progress, in…

Because they focus on the quality of instruction, teacher evaluations can be powerful catalysts for teacher and school improvement. But today, the typical teacher evaluation consists of a single, fleeting classroom visit by an administrator untrained in evaluation. Often he or she wields a checklist of classroom conditions and teacher behaviors…

Ongoing educational reform initiatives have ushered in significant changes in teacher-certification regulations. Many states no longer offer permanent certification, but instead require teachers to participate in career-long professional development (PD). Accordingly, increasing attention is being paid to the effectiveness of PD initiatives,…

The 2009 "State Teacher Policy Yearbook" provided a comprehensive review of states' policies that impact the teaching profession. As a companion to last year's comprehensive state-by-state analysis, the 2010 edition provides each state with an individualized "Blueprint for Change," building off last year's "Yearbook"…

This paper reports on an ongoing 3-year study of the current status of instructional supervision within New York City public schools. Under the influence of a centralized and bureaucratically managed system (i.e., top down initiatives), educational reform in New York City has had serious consequences for both the theory and practice of…

This report looks at and identifies emerging trends in the roles that teacher unions play in educational reform and improving the quality of teaching. A description of the efforts of six teacher unions to improve teacher quality within the context of the current systemic reform movement shows a range and depth of union initiatives beyond what is…

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…

The Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 mandates radical changes in curriculum, finances, and governance for all Kentucky schools and requires that all schools implement school-based decision making (SBDM). SBDM involves a cooperative problem solving approach to operational decisions. New York's Johnson City school district developed an…

This paper describes conditions and processes involved in implementing school-based decision making (SBDM), examining an outcomes-driven developmental model (ODDM) and describing the training components within Springfield, Missouri's and Kentucky's strategic plans. The Springfield Board of Education approved a plan to guide a schoolwide community…

This paper offers an action plan that facilitates the implementation of educational reform in New York State by taking into consideration the major recommendations of four recognized publications: "A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century,""The Revolution That Is Overdue: Looking Toward the Future of Teaching and…

This paper describes how one New York City school district uses staff development to change instruction system-wide, discussing the role local school districts play in systemic school improvement and the role of professional development in connecting reform policy to classroom practice. The paper emphasizes the district's sustained attention to…