A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Part I:

Improving Schools: The Critical Role of Good Teachers and Good Teaching

The enclosed materials identify major U.S. Department of Education programs and resources that are available to support school, community, university, and state efforts to invest in good teachers and good teaching. This introduction places the issue of teacher quality -- and how these programs and resources can most effectively be used to promote it -- in the context of broad trends in public education and presents some of the key challenges identified by the President and by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future.

Elementary and Secondary Education in America: Promising Trends, But Progress is Not Fast Enough

New demands are facing our young people, our teachers, and our schools. Jobs in today's economy demand substantially higher levels of education, skills, and knowledge than ever before. The gap in lifetime earnings and opportunity between the well-educated and poorly educated is growing. And with an unprecedented 51.7 million students enrolled in K-12 education this year, many schools face the challenge of educating record numbers of students. Preparation for productive employment, good citizenship, and a high quality of life depends on strong schools.

To respond to these growing needs, parents, educators, businesses, communities, colleges, states, and the U.S. Department of Education are taking steps to improve teaching and learning in our schools. Many schools and communities are working together to raise expectations for children, make schools safe and drug free, and provide students with access to computers, the Internet, and other technologies that open new doors to learning.

But these promising efforts are still not enough to keep pace with the rising demands being placed on our schools. Despite positive trends, including steadily improving math scores, increased attendance in college, and tougher academic classes, a number of recent studies suggest that U.S. schools and students need to make even more progress. While there are high-performing schools setting and achieving the highest standards for students and teachers even in the most challenging circumstances, too many schools are not keeping pace.

High-quality public education remains the cornerstone of our democracy and economy and the key to realizing the American dream for those who are willing to work for it. Efforts must be redoubled to ensure high-quality teaching and learning in schools throughout the nation, helping all our students and teachers to reach the highest standards.

Quality Teaching: A Critical Element in All Efforts to Improve Schools

Without quality teachers and teaching, not even the most promising school improvement effort will succeed. Setting high standards for students, involving parents more in education, infusing the effective use of computers and technology into our schools, and turning schools into havens of safety, discipline, and learning all depend in large part on providing students with access to talented, knowledgeable, dedicated, and caring teachers.

The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future's recent report What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future describes this challenge, as well as important efforts to raise the quality of teaching in America. The Commission found that half the nation's aging teaching force will be replaced within 10 years and that there is inadequate preparation and support to ensure good teachers and good teaching for all of America's classrooms. The Commission also called on the nation to elevate the teaching profession and institute comprehensive strategies for helping teachers meet high standards. President Clinton joined the call for quality teaching, challenging the nation to ensure that every child has "dedicated outstanding teachers who know their subject matter, are effectively trained, and know how to teach to high standards and to make learning come alive for students."

To this end, the President challenged communities and states to recruit talented, diverse people into teaching, set challenging teacher licensure and certification standards, provide teachers with the training and support they need to meet these standards, reward good teachers, and identify low-performing or burnt-out teachers who need to receive intensive assistance or, if necessary, to be counseled out of the profession or removed.

Strategies in each of these areas will affect student learning and teacher effectiveness most significantly if they are integrated with local school improvement efforts aimed at raising the quality of teaching and learning. Moreover, they should be considered in light of the question: what strategies, partnerships, or allocation of resources will have the most powerful and enduring effect on the quality of teaching and learning immediately and in the long term?

Meeting these challenges will also require a commitment across America to supporting quality teaching. To help communities and states address these challenges, the President asked the Secretary of Education to make clear what U.S. Department of Education resources are available to address these challenges and support high-quality teaching throughout the nation.

Setting Rigorous Standards for Students and Teachers

At the heart of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act, the School-to-Work Opportunities Act, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and new educational technology initiatives is support for the development of rigorous academic standards and comprehensive efforts by communities and states to help all students reach those standards. Because student learning depends on quality teaching, enabling teachers to meet high standards is also essential. To improve the practice of teaching, we need:

• Tougher standards for licensing new teachers and more rigorous requirements in hiring teachers set by school districts. States vary widely in the processes and standards used to license classroom teachers. For this reason, the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC), through leadership from the Council of Chief State School Officers, is working with more than 30 states to develop high-quality performance assessments of knowledge and skills for beginning teachers. These teacher standards are related directly to academic standards for students. Requiring tougher licensing and certification standards for teachers is drawing significant support from the nation's teachers, with 86 percent supporting competency requirements before obtaining certification.

  Meanwhile, some states have moved ahead with tougher licensing requirements for new teachers, requiring entering teachers to meet rigorous standards within their first few years of teaching and undergo performance assessment conducted by state-trained observers. Experienced mentors and special clinics help prepare teachers for these assessments. School districts can also set rigorous requirements for newly-hired teachers and work with local schools of education and universities to ensure graduates meet these requirements.

• Standards for advanced teaching skills and knowledge, especially standards developed by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Board members, the majority of whom are classroom teachers, oversee a process for granting advanced teaching certification to experienced, accomplished teachers. The certification process is performance-based and extremely rigorous, asking teachers to demonstrate their skills through classroom teaching, videotapes of their teaching, lesson plans, and samples of their own and students' work.

  Many school districts, teacher associations and unions, schools of education, and states have begun to help teachers gain national board certification and to reward board-certified teachers with incentives, bonuses, and salary increases. North Carolina, for example, will pay the fee for teachers to complete the National Board certification assessments, provide three days of substitute time for teachers to undergo the review needed for certification, and provide a four percent annual bonus to board-certified teachers; just this year, North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt has proposed providing a 12 percent pay increase for board-certified teachers. These master teachers also serve as coaches and trainers for other teachers in their schools.

  In St. Paul, the school district is collaborating with the teachers' union and the University of Minnesota to support teachers through the board certification process. The district pays the application fees, and the university and other partners develop and conduct professional support programs for the candidates.

• New standards for schools of education that prepare future teachers. In 1995, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) completed its latest revision of higher standards for schools of education. These standards are closely aligned with core academic and skill standards for student learning, and 40 percent of our nation's teacher preparation programs in colleges and universities have received this accreditation. Partly because of the new standards, and partly through their own initiative, a number of universities have begun to overhaul their undergraduate and graduate teacher education programs.

• Standards for rewarding teachers and for identifying teachers that need intensive assistance and review. School districts can work with teachers and others to set clear, high standards for rewarding knowledge, skill, and performance as well as for identifying teachers needing intensive assistance or, if necessary, removal from the classroom. In Cincinnati, low-performing teachers can be assigned to an intervention program where they gain assistance from colleagues and administrators, and if unable to improve, are counseled out of the profession or removed. The Rochester, New York, school district has used similar strategies, along with annual salary advancement for teachers that is linked to performance. Experienced, expert teachers in Rochester can also apply to become more highly paid "lead teachers" who consult with beginning teachers and develop curricula while they continue their own teaching.

Teacher recruitment

With nearly half of the nation's teaching force retiring over the next ten years, a critical factor affecting the quality of teaching will be how well schools, communities, and universities recruit talented people into the teaching profession. A number of promising recruiting strategies are being tried around the nation:

• Starting early. School districts and universities are working together to create middle and high school programs that expose young people to the teaching profession. For example, the South Carolina Center for Teacher Recruitment has reached thousands of academically talented high school juniors and seniors through its Teacher Cadet Program, offered in more than 140 high schools statewide. Teacher Cadets study education and have the opportunity to teach younger students under the tutelage of both school and university faculty. The Center also targets minority middle-school students, encouraging them to take rigorous courses in school and aspire to a career in teaching.

• Aggressive outreach to non-traditional sources of teachers and creating high-quality pathways to teaching. This includes outreach to the fields of business and engineering, to the military, and to recent college graduates who did not major in education. For example, large California businesses and a local university created the California Mathematics and Science Teacher Corps program, recruiting retiring engineers and scientists and providing them with intensive preparation for teaching in the classroom.

  Programs to prepare teachers' aides and other paraprofessionals to become teachers are also growing rapidly around the nation. Moreover, the organization Recruiting New Teachers, Inc. has conducted several national studies of teacher recruitment efforts and has several publications with practical information on how to improve such strategies.

• Streamlining hiring procedures and making it easier for teaching candidates to find out about available positions and for schools to hire qualified teachers. Too often, inaccessible and belated information about job openings can make it difficult for schools to hire quality prospective teaching candidates. The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future has suggested that school districts create a central electronic "hiring hall" that provides relevant information on all qualified candidates and delegate more hiring and selection decisions to schools.

• Honoring good teachers and building public respect for the teaching profession. One of the most powerful strategies for recruiting talented, diverse people into teaching is to honor good teachers and encourage the public to value the teaching profession. While respect for the teaching profession must rest fundamentally on seeing good teaching in local schools, other steps include publicly recognizing good teachers and providing opportunities for exemplary teachers to talk and work with education, business, student, and community groups.

Helping Teachers Reach High Standards: Preparing Future Teachers and Providing Ongoing Training and Professional Development for Current Teachers

Setting high standards for teachers will affect teaching and learning only if teachers receive the preparation, support, and ongoing training they need to improve classroom practice. In every field, demands are being placed on the workforce for higher levels of knowledge, skill, and performance than ever before. Teaching is no exception.

This support includes rigorous, comprehensive, and clinically-based preparation for future teachers, ongoing opportunities for current teachers to learn and acquire new skills, such as the use of technology in the classroom, ensuring that school principals support good teaching, and organizing schools in ways that promote student and teacher learning.

• Teacher education: preparing the teachers of tomorrow. A number of universities have been working to upgrade the quality of their schools of education and are often working in close partnership with local schools and school districts. In San Antonio, for example, Trinity University has been working with several local schools to upgrade preparation for college students hoping to become teachers. Trinity replaced its traditional four-year education major with five years of tough course work in core academic areas integrated with courses in education. In the fifth year, Trinity students become student teachers, working with expert teachers and university faculty to hone their skills.

• Ongoing training and professional development for current teachers. Learning new skills cannot stop on entering the teaching profession. High-quality, sustained professional development for all teachers is essential, and it involves a commitment to providing teachers the time to work together and acquire the skills needed to accomplish a well-defined school mission and to help all students reach challenging academic standards. But teachers do not always receive good professional development; the recently released Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), for example, reports that U.S. teachers are provided with less time and training than teachers in other nations to learn and hone the skills needed to teach math and science. More attention is needed to provide teachers with the opportunity and time for acquiring the skills, knowledge, and professional development they need.

  Fortunately, some schools and school districts are doing just that. For example, the Woodrow Wilson Elementary School in Manhattan, Kansas, was established as a "professional development school" where current and future teachers can go for assistance in upgrading their skills in math, science, and technology. The school, which helps teachers understand and use the widely acclaimed math standards developed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, was recently named as one of five schools to win an award from the U.S. Department of Education for efforts to give teachers the skills they need to succeed. Please call 1-800-USA-LEARN to ask for brief profiles of these award-winning schools and school districts.

Rewarding Good Teachers, and Dealing with Low-Performing or Burnt-Out Teachers

While these are local and state decisions, federal funds can be used to support the development of systems and standards for rewarding good teachers and thoughtful and careful strategies for identifying -- and improving the skills of or removing -- incompetent teachers. Indeed, these strategies are drawing broad support from the nation's teachers, with 90 percent agreeing that making it easier to remove incompetent teachers would have a positive effect on the quality of teaching.

• Rewarding good teachers for knowledge, skill, and performance. Good teachers and good teaching should be rewarded, and many schools and school districts have begun to do so. For example, a number of states and school districts (including North Carolina, Ohio, and New Mexico, and the St. Paul school district) provide financial rewards and greater responsibilities to teachers who gain certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

• Identifying teachers in need of intensive assistance and, when necessary, counseling them out of the profession or removing them. The Cincinnati school district has been pioneering the use of a peer review of low-performing teachers. Teachers in these programs receive intensive assistance and support, with most improving their performance in the classroom. When performance does not improve, however, some teachers are counseled to leave the profession or are removed.

Using U.S. Department of Education Resources to Address Critical Challenges Affecting the Quality of Teaching

Since only a small percentage of funding for K-12 education comes from the federal government, communities and schools should first examine how well they use their own resources to recruit, prepare, and reward good teachers while holding teachers accountable to high standards.

Once a local community or state has conducted this analysis and has begun to develop strategies for helping teachers reach high standards, it can explore what federal resources are available to help. Some U.S. Department of Education programs can be used either directly or indirectly by teachers and other educators, colleges, communities, and states to help bring excellence and accountability to the teaching profession.

Using federal funds to complement state and local resources to improve the quality of teaching should be done thoughtfully, ensuring that funds are used in a way that is consistent both with local and state school improvement strategies and with the underlying purposes of the relevant federal programs. For example, funds from the bilingual education program might be used to help recruit and prepare teachers who can help students with limited English proficiency to reach high academic standards that a district or state has set for all students. Staff knowledgeable about federal programs at the school district, state, or U.S. Department of Education can help explore in greater depth how to tailor these programs to your needs.

Have you thought about the use of Title I schoolwide programs to invest in professional development and improving teaching quality throughout the school? Many high-poverty schools receiving Title I funding are eligible to become "schoolwide programs," where they can - - if they develop a plan for helping all of their students meet high academic standards - - further combine funds to provide sustained professional development so their teachers are fully equipped to help students meet high standards.

Thinking About Comprehensive Strategies to Invest in Quality Teaching and the Use of Federal Funds to Support These Strategies

Investing in quality teaching depends on public recognition of the extraordinary demands placed on our teachers today, a willingness to accord respect and honor to teachers across America, and leadership from teachers, schools, and communities to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure our students have access to the talented, dedicated, and well-prepared teachers they need and deserve.

Efforts to support good teaching can be bolstered by critical steps identified by the President and discussed in this document: recruiting new teachers, setting the highest standards for teachers and helping them reach those standards, rewarding good teachers, and identifying low-performing teachers in need of assistance or other forms of intervention. However, these steps should not be considered in isolation from one another or from broader local and state efforts to improve schools and boost student achievement. Moreover, the design and implementation of strategies to improve teaching, learning, and schooling should rely heavily on the leadership of classroom teachers and principals that work every day to motivate and educate their students.

Communities and states have an opportunity to draw on an array of U.S. Department of Education resources to support a comprehensive strategy to ensure that students have access to good teachers and teaching.

Explanation of Following Materials and Conclusion

The materials that follow have been prepared to help the public understand how the many U.S. Department of Education programs and resources can support strategies to invest in quality teaching.

• Part II of this Guide presents important, general information about these programs and how they can be used most effectively to promote state and local efforts to support teacher excellence and accountability. It also contains charts of the Department's principal grant programs that can help meet each of the key challenges to improving the quality of the nation's teachers.

• Part III provides brief descriptions and contacts for the programs identified in those charts as well as for the Comprehensive Regional Assistance Centers. These centers can further help schools, school districts, universities, and states in their work to use the Elementary and Secondary Education Act programs to improve the quality of teaching. Each program and resource description also provides the name, phone number, and Internet address of a contact who can provide further information or assistance. In addition, the section of Part III on "Competitive Grant Programs" identifies those programs for which the Department has scheduled or planned new competitions in the near future as well as how the Internet may be used to obtain copies of program application notices and program priorities published in the Federal Register directly from the Department's home page.

The Appendix to this Guide contains descriptions and contacts for other resources that can support efforts to improve teaching. Many of these research programs, technical assistance centers, and information clearinghouses focus on particular subject areas or promoting increased achievement among students with special needs.

In addition, the Department has established a new Teacher Excellence desk to assist anyone with more general questions or comments about these materials or how federal programs and resources can help them to meet the key challenges for improving teaching. Please call or write:

Working together, our nation can provide all of our students with the talented, caring, diverse, and well-prepared teachers our children need and deserve. As part of broad efforts to improve schools, meeting this challenge can help all students reach high academic standards and be prepared for the 21st century.

April 1997

[Letter from Secretary Riley]

[Part II: Using Department Programs to Support Excellence and Accountability in Teaching]