Smart Charter School Caps

By primarily focusing on quantity, charter school caps do not always address the greater concern of quality. Education Sector Co-director Andrew J. Rotherham offers an innovative solution to managing both the growth and quality of charter schools

Fair Trade: Five Deals to Expand and Improve Charter Schooling

Andrew J. Rotherham offers policymakers five win-win solutions to address the challenges created by charter schools and to help high-quality charters expand

Challenged Index: Why Newsweek's List of America's 100 Best High Schools Doesn't Make the Grade

Some schools on Newsweek's list of America's Top 100 high schools have large achievement gaps, grossly shortchange disadvantaged groups, and have a substantial number of drop-outs

Friends without Benefits: How States Systematically Shortchange Teachers' Retirement and Threaten Their Retirement Security

Americans are often reminded that it's never too soon to start saving for retirement. Many of the nation's public school teachers are doing just that -- buying into their state pension system with plans to retire comfortably. However, this new study estimates that nearly 50 percent of all public school teachers will not qualify for even a minimal pension benefit, and less than 20 percent will stay in the profession long enough to earn a normal retirement benefit.This Joyce-funded report demonstrates the consequences of poorly structured state and city policies that can exacerbate retirement insecurity for our nation's teachers. For example, an individual teacher could forfeit up to 6.5 percent of her annual salary for one year, or, due to compound interest, 22.6 percent of her annual salary after three years according to Bellwether's analysis. To put these penalties in dollar terms, a hypothetical teacher earning $40,000 a year could face a savings penalty of$2,601 for teaching only one year and $9,035 if she left after three years. This money stays with the pension funds and is used to supplement the pensions of the remaining teachers.Tackling the pension system is critical for reducing teacher turnover and retaining the profession's most talented educators. Several policy solutions are offered

States' Evidence: What It Means to Make 'Adequate Yearly Progress' Under NCLB

States will soon announce the schools or districts that did or did not make "adequate yearly progress," or "AYP" under NCLB. But the question that provides the most insight into a school's performance is not whether a school made AYP, but rather how a school did or did not make AYP

Better Benefits: Reforming Teacher Pensions for a Changing Work Force

Explains how defined-benefit pension plans create barriers to attracting, retaining, and distributing effective teachers equitably. Proposes reforms including changing the benefit formula or structure, limiting political pressure, and phasing in changes

A Sum Greater Than the Parts: What States Can Teach Each Other About Charter Schooling

States with a significant charter sector know firsthand that the success or failure of a charter school is not a matter of chance, but subject to variances in state laws and a state's educational, political, and regulatory climate. In this report, Sara Mead and Andrew J. Rotherham draw on the experiences of 12 states, proposing those lessons that are necessary for charter school quality and growth

Achieving Teacher and Principal Excellence: A Guidebook for Donors

Discusses the need to invest in high-quality teachers and principals and the best opportunities for donors to help improve human capital. Profiles current initiatives, proposes strategic priorities, and lists promising ideas requiring financial support

Waiting to Be Won Over: Teachers Speak on the Profession, Unions and Reform

In the national conversation on teacher quality, there is considerable debate about what teachers think and what they want. Too often assumptions guide the discussion rather than actual evidence of teachers' views. In a new report, Education Sector and the FDR Group provide that evidence, detailing findings from a national survey of public school teachers

Genuine Progress, Greater Challenges: A Decade of Teacher Effectiveness Reforms

Until recently, teacher quality was largely seen as a constant among education's sea of variables. Policy efforts to increase teacher quality emphasized the field as a whole instead of the individual: for instance, increased regulation, additional credentials, or a profession modeled after medicine and law. Even as research emerged showing how the quality of each classroom teacher was crucial to student achievement, much of the debate in American public education focused on everything except teacher quality. School systems treated one teacher much like any other, as long as they had the right credentials. Policy, too, treated teachers as if they were interchangeable parts, or "widgets." The perception of teachers as widgets began to change in the late 1990s and early aughts as new organizations launched and policymakers and philanthropists began to concentrate on teacher effectiveness. Under the Obama administration, the pace of change quickened. Two ideas, bolstered by research, animated the policy community: 1) Teachers are the single most important in-school factor for student learning. 2) Traditional methods of measuring teacher quality have little to no bearing on actual student learning. Using new data and research, school districts, states, and the federal government sought to change how teachers are trained, hired, staffed in schools, evaluated, and compensated. The result was an unprecedented amount of policy change that has, at once, driven noteworthy progress, revealed new problems to policymakers, and created problems of its own. Between 2009 and 2013, the number of states that require annual evaluations for all teachers increased from 15 to 28. The number of states that require teacher evaluations to include objective measures of student achievement nearly tripled, from 15 to 41; and the number of states that require student growth to be the preponderant criteria increased fivefold, from 4 to 20 This paper takes a look at where the country has been with regards to teacher effectiveness over the last decade, and outlines policy suggestions for the future