The National Council on Teacher Quality has issued an interim-year State Teacher Policy Yearbook, updating its 2009 yearbook with state-specific profiles and detailed policy recommendations regarding teacher evaluation, tenure rules, and dismissal policies. The report, available via an online module, points to eleven areas critical to teacher reform—things like connecting tenure decisions to teacher effectiveness and broadening alternative-certification pathways and providers. And though states have made much progress on the teacher-quality front in the past year (thanks, in part, to reforms spurred on by Race to the Top), they still have a long way to go before meeting NCTQ standards. There are a full twenty-seven states that need to address at least nine of the eleven critical attention areas. To help states along, the Blueprint provides relatively concise state-specific policy briefs, pointing to policies in need of immediate overhaul as well as those which simply require small tweaks to see gains in teacher quality. Policymakers in Ohio, for example, should pay urgent attention to how state laws constrain the teacher pipeline (by not allowing for alternative certification pathways like Teach For America) and sever job security from teacher effectiveness. State policymakers, in Ohio and beyond, looking for a quick—and tangible—tutorial on how to improve teacher quality need look no further.
National Council on Teacher Quality, “2010 State Teacher Policy Yearbook: Blueprint for Change” (Washington, D.C.: National Council on Teacher Quality, January 2011).
