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Federal Teacher
Quality Initiatives
Outside the Box
Inside the Beltway
Joel Packer, Principal
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Current Federal Programs• Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT) Requirement
• Improving Teacher Quality State Grants (ESEA
Title II)
• Teacher Quality Partnership Grants (HEA Title II)
• Teacher Incentive Fund
• Teacher and leader evaluation and support
systems
• State Educator Equity Plans
• Supporting Effective Educator Development
(SEED)
• Commit To Lead
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Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT)
Requirement
Under NCLB, each State receiving Title I
funding had to have a plan to ensure that,
by the end of the 2005-2006 school year,
all teachers teaching in core academic
subjects within the state be designated a
highly qualified teacher.
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Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT)
Requirement• The definition of an HQT has two basic
components.
– First, a teacher must possess full state teaching
certification as well as a baccalaureate degree.
• Exemption allows through the 2015-16 school
year, teachers participating in alternative
certification programs to be considered "highly
qualified" prior to completing their program.
– Second, is that an HQT must demonstrate
subject-matter knowledge in the areas that she
or he teaches.
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Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT)
Requirement
In 2012-13, HQTs taught 97.65
percent of all core academic classes
in elementary schools and 95.69
percent in secondary schools.
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Improving Teacher Quality
State Grants• Created by NCLB - formula program to States
– States distribute 95% of funds to school districts
– Current funding = $2.35 billion
• Allowable uses of funds:
– Recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers
and principals;
– Professional development in core academic areas;
– Mentoring, induction, and other support services;
– Testing teachers in academic areas; and
– Reducing class size
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Improving Teacher Quality
State Grants
• Majority of funds in 2012-2013 were used for
class size reduction (31%) and professional
development (44%).
• 64 percent of districts allocate at least some
funds for professional development for teachers
and paraprofessionals. 47 percent of districts also
use funds to hire highly qualified teachers to
reduce class size.
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Teacher Quality
Partnership Grants • Authorized in the Higher Education Act,
program provides grants to improve the quality
of teachers working in high-need schools and
early childhood education programs by:
– improving the preparation of teachers and
enhancing professional development activities for
teachers;
– holding teacher preparation programs accountable
for preparing effective teachers; and
– recruiting highly qualified individuals into the
teaching force.
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Teacher Quality
Partnership Grants • Grants go to partnerships among IHEs, high-
need school districts, their high-need schools,
and/or high-need early childhood education
programs.
• These partnerships create model teacher
preparation programs at the pre-
baccalaureate level and/or model teaching
residency programs for individuals with strong
academic and/or professional backgrounds
but without teaching experience.
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Teacher Quality
Partnership Grants
• FY 2014 funding = $40.6 million.
• This year's TQP grants were announced
last week and focus on preparing STEM
teachers, and increasing the participation
of underrepresented groups—women,
minorities and people with disabilities—in
teaching STEM subjects.
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Teacher Preparation
Regulations• New proposed regulations expected in
next few weeks. The Administration’s plan
is expected to:
– Encourage all states to develop systems to
identify high- and low-performing teacher
prep programs.
– Ask states to move away from current
input-focused reporting requirements,
incorporate more meaningful outcomes,
and improve the availability of relevant
information on teacher preparation.11/11/09 11
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Teacher Preparation
Regulations
– Rely on state-developed program ratings of
preparation programs – in part – to determine
program eligibility for TEACH grants, which are
available to students who are planning to
become teachers in a high-need field in a low-
income school, to “ensure that these limited
federal dollars support high-quality teacher
education and preparation”.
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Teacher Preparation
Regulations• The goal: To ensure that every state evaluates
its teacher education programs by several key
metrics, such as how many graduates land
teaching jobs, how long they stay in the
profession and whether they boost their
students’ scores on standardized tests.
• The administration hopes to steer financial aid,
including nearly $100 million a year in TEACH
grants, to those programs that score the
highest.
• The rest, Sec. Duncan said, will need to
improve or “go out of business.”
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Teacher Incentive Fund
• Exists solely through appropriations
process. First funded in FY 2006.
• Competitive 5-year grants to SEAs, LEAS
and eligible non-profits to support efforts
to develop and implement performance-
based teacher and principal compensation
systems in high-need schools that raise
student achievement and close
achievement gaps.
• Currently funded at $289 million.
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Teacher and Leader Evaluation
• Key Debate now is teacher
effectiveness versus teacher quality.
• Race To The Top grants defined an
“effective teacher” as:
– a teacher whose students achieve acceptable
rates (e.g., at least one grade level in an
academic year) of student growth. States, LEAs,
or schools must include multiple measures,
provided that teacher effectiveness is evaluated,
in significant part, by student growth.
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Teacher and Leader Evaluation
• ED established five requirements for
teacher evaluation systems:– Teachers must be evaluated at least annually,
– Evaluation procedures must include several
classroom observations,
– Teacher performance must be measured in significant
part on growth in student achievement,
– Systems of evaluation must differentiate teachers
among multiple categories of effectiveness, and
– The results of teacher evaluations must inform
important school staffing decisions (e.g., promotion
and dismissal).
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Teacher and Leader Evaluation
• ESEA/NCLB waivers exempt states and school
districts from HQT requirements.
• In return, ED required that States and school
districts commit to develop, adopt, pilot, and
implement teacher and principal evaluation and
support systems that:
– will be used for continual improvement of
instruction;
– meaningfully differentiate performance using at
least three performance levels;
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Teacher and Leader Evaluation
– use multiple valid measures in determining
performance levels, including as a significant factor
data on student growth for all students (including
English Learners and students with disabilities),
and other measures of professional practice;
– evaluate teachers and principals on a regular
basis;
– provide clear, timely, and useful feedback,
including feedback that identifies needs and guides
professional development; and
– will be used to inform personnel decisions.
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Teacher and Leader Evaluation
• This summer, ED announced that States with ESEA
waivers can request a one-year delay until the 2015-
16 school year in the deadline for using student test
results in teacher evaluations.
• Change was based on issues with transition to
Common Core aligned assessments.
• According to ED Week, 16 states and DC are likely to
ask for the new flexibility (AL, AR, CT, DE, GA, ID, KS,
MD, MI, MS, MO, OH, OR, RI, SD, and UT).
• At least 11 States say they aren't likely to seek the
extra time, including AZ, CO, FL, KY, MA, MN, NM,
NY, NC, PA, TN, and VA.
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State Educator Equity Plans
• NCLB requires that highly-qualified teachers
be equitably distributed among classrooms
and schools.
• In August 2013, ED announced that States
with waivers must, by October 2015, use
teacher-evaluation data to ensure that poor
and minority students are not taught by
ineffective teachers at a higher rate than their
peers.
• But in November 2013, ED dropped that as a
requirement for ESEA waiver renewals.
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State Educator Equity Plans
• In July of this year, ED instead announced
that in April 2015, each SEA (regardless of
waiver status) must submit to the Department
a new State Educator Equity Plan that
describes the steps it will take to ensure that
“poor and minority children are not taught at
higher rates than other children by
inexperienced, unqualified, or out-of-field
teachers”.
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State Educator Equity Plans
• The Obama administration plans to develop a
new, $4.2 million "technical assistance"
network—called the Educator Equity Support
Network—to help states develop their plans
and put them in place.
• The network will come up with model plans to
guide states' work, and give educators a
space to share information about how they
have approached the teacher-equity problem.
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Supporting Effective
Educator Development • Provides funding for grants to national non-
profit organizations for projects that are
supported by at least moderate evidence to
recruit, select, and prepare or provide
professional enhancement activities for
teachers, principals, or both.
• Funded as a set-aside from Teacher Quality
State Grants ($29.8 million in FY 2013).
– 2013 Awardees: National Institute for Excellence in
Teaching, Teach For America, WestEd, National
Writing Project and National Board for Professional
Teaching Standards
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Commit to Lead
• In August, ED and the National Board for
Professional Teaching Standards unveiled
Commit to Lead, “a new online community
that makes it easy for educators to share
ideas for teacher leadership and collaborate
to bring these ideas to fruition.”
• Invites members to post ideas—in under 300
words—that advance teacher leadership in
their school, district or state to address a
pressing problem in education and improve
student outcomes.
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