Teaching Career Pathways: Curriculum Design and School Partnerships
Note: in November 2012, Accomplished California Teachers (ACT) released the policy report “Promoting Quality Teaching: New Approaches to Compensation and Career Pathways.” The following post is the second in a series of profiles showing how California teacher leaders are beginning to develop and follow diversified career pathways. California teachers, and our peers around the nation, are looking for opportunities to innovate and lead in our field, but without having to leave the classroom. Our argument is that educational leadership will improve the more its carried out by those still in the classroom, and that students will benefit from having more accomplished educators remaining the in classroom rather than taking on entirely non-teaching positions.This profile focuses on the Algebra Success Academy (see video, below), a project founded and directed by math teacher Wendy Gallimore, and funded in part by the California Teachers Association through its Institute for Teaching. The program has become a model of collaboration involving a district, union, and university. The policy recommendations in our report, if adopted, would pave the way for districts to staff similar programs, and to cultivate the conditions that lead to similar innovations aimed at improving student learning.
There’s a significant leap that takes place in mathematics education, right around the time students hit middle