Extending the Reach

Using Competency-Based Evaluation to Drive Teacher Excellence: Lessons From Singapore

The complete recipe for Singapore’s educational success is not public, but one element stands out: the development and thorough use of performance-linked “competencies” to measure, reward, and develop teacher performance. This report by Public Impact explores Singapore’s successful teacher evaluation and development system—recognized by its education leadership and teachers as effective and fair.

Infographic: Extending the Reach of Excellent Teachers

This infographic by Public Impact summarizes the ideas of “Opportunity Culture” and illustrates ways schools can use job redesign and technology to put excellent teachers in charge of students’ learning. 

Turnaround Teacher Teams

The T3 (Turnaround Teacher Teams) Initiative at Teach Plus represents an innovative approach to recruiting, developing, and supporting teachers to serve in high-need schools. The T3 Initiative currently partners with schools in Massachusetts and Tennessee. The initiative creates cohorts of highly effective and experienced teachers, supports them in becoming turnaround specialists, and places them in teams in the schools in which they are most needed.

Redesigning Schools to Extend Excellent Teachers’ Reach

This Public Impact webpage provides an overview table and detailed descriptions of school models that redesign jobs, and in some cases, use technology in new ways, to extend the reach of excellent teachers to more students.

Teaching in an Opportunity Culture

This Public Impact webpage has links to a presentation and two short publications created specifically for teacher audiences. These resources illustrate what teaching and learning could look like in an Opportunity Culture, and they focus on the benefits for teachers and the potential to truly change the teaching profession.

Blended Learning Case Studies

The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation recently published a series of case studies on five school networks engaged in blended learning. These case studies provide deep insight into the following:

Beyond Classroom Walls: Developing Innovative Work Roles for Teachers

The job of “teacher” in most schools today remains centered on full-time classroom responsibilities that are defined by the location, timing, and schedule of the school day and a one-teacher-per-classroom model. But particularly in today’s budget climate, interest in quality-focused job redesigns is increasing among forward-thinking state, district, and charter school leaders. This report, prepared by Public Impact for the Center for American Progress, profiles two organizations—the Rocketship Education network of charter schools and the Fairfax County, Virginia, school district.

Seizing Opportunity at the Top

Public Impact’s report—and related policy brief, presentation, and checklist—explains why every child needs excellent teachers year after year; how schools can put excellent teachers in charge of more children’s learning while offering new roles to other teachers in which they, too, can be excellent; and what changes policymakers must support to make these ideas a reality.  

Opportunity at the Top

Public Impact’s report explores the potential impact of policy initiatives designed to improve student access to great teachers. Current policy initiatives overlook the most obvious, immediate source of improved teaching effectiveness: the great teachers we already have. The top 25 percent of U.S. teachers—more than 800,000 of them—already achieve results that would enable all of our children to meet and exceed standards.

Improving Teaching Through Pay for Contribution

Despite proliferating chatter about the need to reform teacher compensation, the bulk of teacher pay remains fundamentally unchanged. This report by Public Impact and published by the NGA Center for Best Practices sets forth a guiding principle for moving from talk to action—“pay for contribution.” Pay for contribution means investing more in teachers and teaching roles that contribute measurably more to student learning. Pay for contribution is particularly attractive to higher contributors.

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