This white paper, written in collaboration with Getting Smart and Digital Learning Now!, is the seventh installment of the DLN Smart Series. The paper and accompanying infographic explain how blended learning can help create better teaching conditions and expanded career opportunities for teachers.
Beverley Tyndall
Reformers: We Must Be Much Bolder to Reach Every Child with Excellent Teachers
As ESEA talk heats up, reform groups are tossing ideas on the table (e.g., see here and here). We can debate the details, but most have some merit. Here’s the problem: even if our nation fully implemented most of the recommended legislation in the next decade, we still would be far behind other nations that made bolder changes years ago. In contrast, of course, many conservatives want to leave education up to state legislators, on whose watch K-12 education has plateaued and declined.
Is there a bolder alternative that might actually induce our nation to achieve widespread learning excellence?
Reformers: We Must Be Much Bolder to Reach Every Child with Excellent Teachers
October 14, 2011 - Here’s a simple idea: put excellent teachers, the top 20 to 25 percent who achieve well over today’s “year of learning progress,” in charge of every child’s learning—consistently. In this Education Next blog, Bryan and Emily Hassel propose "a bolder...
Teacher Quality – What’s Next for the U.S.?
September 28, 2011 - Bryan Hassel spoke at the 2011 PIE Network Summit: Taking Stock on Teacher Quality Reforms: What's been accomplished in 2011? What's next? When asked about the biggest gains made over the past five years, Hassel said there has been a huge...
Shooting for Stars
When high-performing teachers across the country leave our classrooms each year, 750,000 children find themselves assigned to a less-effective teacher in each subsequent year. How could education leaders reduce this outflow? In this report, we examine the research and case studies outside education to reveal four key strategies organizations successfully use to boost high-performer retention.
How digital learning can (and must) help excellent teachers reach more children
Thanks to Michael Horn for letting us add onto his noteworthy post “Why digital learning will liberate teachers.” Here we want to second his point and add another: schools – and nations – that excel in the digital age will be those that use digital tools both to make teaching more manageable for the average teacher, and to give massively more students access to excellent teachers.
And not just in the obvious ways. Yes, directly through digital instruction. But also by freeing excellent teachers to reach more students in-person.
Today, only about 25 percent of U.S. classrooms have teachers whose students learn enough to close achievement gaps in a few years and make further progress like the world’s top students. Another 25 percent have lagging teachers whose students end up further behind. The rest have solid teachers – students on track stay on track, but students starting behind stay behind, and few get ahead. Overall, U.S. students end up pretty much where they started out in life, the antithesis of the American dream.
How Digital Learning Can (and Must) Help Excellent Teachers Reach More Children
September 13, 2011 - Schools - and nations - that excel in the digital age will be those that use digital tools both to make teaching more manageable for the average teacher, and to give massively more students access to excellent teachers. In this blog post, Bryan...
Using Competency-Based Evaluation to Drive Teacher Excellence
Many of Singapore’s lower-achieving students are learning at levels higher than gifted-student curricula in U.S. schools. What is the secret to Singapore’s success? Here we present a brief background on the state of teacher evaluation in the United States, the case for why we can learn much from Singapore, and key facts about Singapore’s competency-based teacher evaluation system.
Measuring Teacher and Leader Performance
A recent national push to use performance evaluations for critical personnel decisions has highlighted the shortcomings of our current systems and increased the urgency to improve them dramatically. This report, written with support from The Joyce Foundation, summarizes best practices and research from other sectors for education leaders who want accurate, reliable, and meaningful information about educators’ performance.
Teacher Tenure Reform
Could redesigned K-12 teacher tenure actually improve student learning? This paper examines lessons from higher education and the civil service and applies fresh thinking to offer new “elite” and “inclusive” tenure designs and a framework for policymakers who want to make tenure meaningful.