Written at the request of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, this National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) report details LAUSD’s teacher policies and offers a passel of advice for improving them. Focusing on five teacher-quality standards (teacher assignment, evaluations, tenure, compensation, and work schedules), NCTQ organizes its reform recommendations into three categories: those that the district central office can undertake itself, those that require changes to the collective-bargaining agreement, and those that depend on changes in state policy. There’s a lot here. When looking at teacher assignment, and the related teacher hiring, for example, NCTQ calls out the district’s lack of selectivity (only one third of its faculty graduated from a either a “most” or “more” selective school, per the U.S. News and World Report rankings). In response, the authors urge the district to establish an earlier resignation-notification date to allow principals more flexibility in filling vacancies. At the state level, it urges the expansion of California’s “lemon law” to give principals the right of refusal to teacher transfers they don’t want. Consider this report not just a roadmap but an atlas to guide both LAUSD and other districts (in California and beyond) as they look to revamp the quality of their instructional workforce.
Emily Cohen and Priya Varghese, “Teacher Quality Roadmap: Improving Policies and Practices in LAUSD,” (Washington, D.C.: National Council on Teacher Quality, June 2011).
