Experts Urge Creation of 'America's Teacher Corps'
A high-powered panel of teacher-quality experts released a paper this morning proposing a new federal program called America's Teacher Corps that they claim would recognize the best teachers, reduce interstate barriers to teaching, increase access of students in high-poverty school to highly effective teachers, and make the profession more attractive to newcomers.
The paper's authors include some of the biggest names in teacher-effectiveness research and evaluation: Steven Glazerman, an analyst with Mathematica Policy Research; Dan Goldhaber, a researcher at the University of Washington; Susanna Loeb, a professor at Stanford University; Douglas Staiger, from Dartmouth University; and Grover Whitehurst, former director of the Institute of Education Sciences, now at Brookings.
The new federal program that the authors advocate would represent a change from current teacher programs such as the Teacher Incentive Fund, which require applications from interested districts. America's Teacher Corps would appeal directly to teachers, who would then be "nominated" by their districts, based on whether they earned an average evaluation score in the top quartile of teachers on their past three evaluations.
Successful applicants would be eligible for a $10,000 salary supplement from the federal government, contingent on working in a high-poverty school. They'd also receive a portable credential allowing them to bypass credentialing barriers in other states if they decided to move. The authors posit that such barriers, even
