State-Level Student Teacher Compensation Programs
As a recent survey indicates, unpaid student teaching requirements present significant financial stressors that affect 88% of aspiring educators to an extreme or considerable degree. Additionally, opportunities for college students to pursue career paths with paid internships and higher future salaries tend to attract potential aspiring educators into other careers. The financial realities of pursuing teacher certification negatively impact recruitment into the teaching profession.
Back to Basics: Public School Teacher Recruitment & Retention
The current teacher shortage is a reckoning of decades of anti-teacher public policies and neglect of teachers’ voices by school administrators and policymakers. Even before the pandemic, teacher retention was a problem in urban, rural, and highpoverty schools as well as in the subject areas of math, science, and special education.
Playful Learning: Enhancing Education in the Early Grades
Play is essential to a child’s development. Children learn about themselves, others, and the world around them primarily through play. Play helps children learn interpersonal skills and fosters curiosity, imagination, and creativity.
Redesigning Education and Student Assessment
Our reliance on standardized tests to measure student learning and school quality has resulted in few gains while causing harm to schools and students. Federal testing requirements resulting from No Child Left Behind (2001) and Every Student Succeeds Act (2015) have not translated into durable academic gains or narrowed achievement gaps, nor are students in the United States more globally competitive today than they were a decade ago.
Additional Documentation
Back to Basics: Public School Teacher Recruitment & Retention
Summary of Policy Recommendations