These readings are intended to help participants prepare for the 2007 Research to Action Forum: “Advancing Research, Policy, and Practice for Teacher Quality.” This forum—to be held January 24–25, 2007, in Rosemont, Illinois—provides a critical platform for developing ideas and strategies for improving state teacher quality policies and practices.

Such strategies are anything but clear cut, a fact made evident late this summer when the U.S. Department of Education rejected all but nine state No Child Left Behind (NCLB) teacher quality plans. In their plans, states were to have detailed the actions they will take to measure the qualifications of their teaching force to ensure that all teachers are highly qualified by 2007, and to publicly report plans and progress toward meeting their teacher quality goals.

These requirements came in response to research demonstrating that the quality of teaching makes a tremendous difference in student performance and that certain qualifications such as deep content knowledge of the subject taught are predictors of a teacher’s quality. Further research demonstrated that in general the least well-qualified teachers—those with the fewest years of experience and/or those teaching outside of their area of certification—are more likely to be assigned to poor, minority, low-achieving, and limited-English-proficient children. The presumption is that students would be performing at higher levels if all teachers were highly qualified and if struggling students were assigned the most effective teachers.

NCLB is not the only motivator for changing teacher policies. States are responding to the research by looking at the teaching profession and determining ways to promote high-quality teaching. The following two major challenges face states:

• There is limited research to support decisions about policies to increase the effectiveness of teachers. The field lacks knowledge about effective teaching practices various types of educational environments. The field lacks knowledge about effective ways to redistribute teachers and the real impact of perceived barriers to changing inequitable teacher distributions.

• States lack authority and capacity to address many of the core issues being researched. Teacher hiring and assignment have traditionally been considered a local right and responsibility. Because these have not been state responsibilities, states lack data systems to track teacher qualifications and assignments. Perhaps more difficult to overcome, they lack the tradition of involvement in many matters of teacher quality and assignment—and in many cases, the authority and capacity to intervene.

To address these challenges, the Research to Action Forum will investigate three topical strands in order to answer the overarching question: What can states do to increase the quality of the teaching workforce overall and reduce the concentration of less-qualified teachers assigned to the students who are struggling the most?

Teacher Recruitment

Readings for this strand of the forum address the need to attract more than 2.2 million teachers by 2008, as well as the challenge of providing teachers the background they need to be effective. Click here.

Teacher Assignment

Readings for this strand look at how policies on teacher assignment can help to create an equitable distribution of highly qualified teachers across every school, such that poor, minority, special education, and limited-English-proficient students are just as likely as other students to be taught by experienced, highly qualified teachers. Click here.

Teacher Effectiveness

Readings for this strand show that by current measure, there is not necessarily a correlation between teachers being “qualified” to teach and being effective. Policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels are experimenting with definitions and measures of effectiveness for use in teacher compensation and accountability schemes. Click here.