NCTQ Publishes ESEA Recommendations
The National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington-based advocacy group famous for generating lots of controversial reports, has stepped into the fray again with a list of ESEA reauthorization proposals focused on the law's teacher-quality elements.
Before we dig into the recs, I should note that many Hill watchers don't put a lot of hope in getting a large-scale ESEA reauthorization bill done anytime soon. House Republican leaders, for instance, have indicated that they want to reserve teacher-quality discussions for this fall and work on smaller-scale bills in the meantime.
But that's not stopping NCTQ, whose recommendations are sure to produce some impassioned dialogue in the field. Among other things, it says the feds should:
• Require states to link teachers to students and to assessment results as a condition of receiving Title I funds.
• Transform the Title II State Teacher Quality grant into a competitive-grant program contingent on states' setting a definition of a "highly effective" teacher and evaluating all teachers each year, based partly on student
