This third release of data from the Retaining Teacher Talent study, Convergence and Contradictions in Teachers' Perceptions of Policy Reform Ideas, seeks to draw teachers into the debate, to bring nuance and experience to the conversation. This report describes the implications of the results of the nationwide survey for policymakers and teachers who want to influence policy.
“As we enter this new decade, teachers stand at the center of this policy vortex,” said Sabrina Laine, Ph.D., chief program officer for educator effectiveness at Learning Point Associates. "Democratizing the national policy conversation by getting teachers involved provides a bridge between policy and practice. Ultimately, grounding this debate with the voices of experience and evidence is of critical importance. The success of these reforms rests in large part on the support of those who will be most directly affected—teachers.”
“There’s a conventional wisdom that teachers uniformly resist the idea of measuring teacher effectiveness, but in fact, teachers are open to a number of different ways of doing it, including looking at how much their own students learn compared to other students. And most teachers agree that making it easier to take ineffective teachers out of the classroom would improve education,” said Jean Johnson, director of Education Insights at Public Agenda. “It’s way past time to get teachers themselves involved in these crucial discussions about how to judge teacher effectiveness.”