Solutions
Recruit and Educate New Teachers
More Effectively
Framing the Issue
Poverty matters, and extreme
segregation by race and class
leaves its mark regardless of the
distribution of quality teaching.
That said, there’s no excuse for
inequity and inadequacy of
instruction.
Page 3
Support Teachers with What They
Need to Grow
The Arc of History: Where Are
We Now?
“What we’ve seen is that, in some
states, the waivers have actually
institutionalized disparities.”
Page 6
Just 24 percent of NY programs fully screened teachers for
academic caliber, only 5 percent fully trained candidates to
teach reading, and 3 percent met the standard for math.
Page 8
Overall teacher turnover has been declining, but teachers in
high-poverty schools transfer out “in large numbers.”
Page 14
Resources
Page 30
Increase Incentives and Paths to
Success
Credits
Page 32
It’s a profound injustice that school districts often pay
teachers more at prospering schools than at struggling ones.
Page 18
Empower Principals and Their Teams
Michael Wiltshire arrived at a school with a 63 percent
graduation rate, a reputation for violence, and a cloud of
apathy hanging over students and teachers.
Page 24
Create the Right Community Conditions
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“In the 30 years I have been researching schools, New York
State has consistently been one of the most segregated
states in the nation – no Southern state comes close to NY.”
Page 28
How big a challenge is it
to deliver great teaching to
every public school student
– so that family income and
geography don’t determine
scholastic results? A very big
one, and at the heart of our
practice.
Teaching Matters is in the
trenches trying to combat
the impact of zip codes on
opportunity. Our mission is
“to develop and retain great
teachers, and measurably
increase their ability to give
students in urban public
schools an excellent
education.” Doing so means
understanding social
problems, not just educational ones.
and some possible solutions.
Nationwide, teaching
excellence is distributed
quite unevenly. Despite a
long-standing mandate in the
No Child Left Behind Act to
equalize the quality of
We see the difficulties so
teaching all children
many children bring with
receive, a recent report by the
them to school, and we help
Department of Education’s
their teachers overcome what Office of Civil Rights shows
can be monumental odds.
that there are still huge
discrepancies in the
This Points of Practice – issue distribution of what they
number 2 – lays out the
term “effective teachers.”
educational equity problem
3