What Matters Most : Investing in Quality Teaching for Colorado

Introduction

Quality teaching is the single most important factor in improving student achievement and strengthening the public's confidence in our schools. Without dedicated, high-quality teachers meaningful education reform is not possible.

"What Matters Most: Investing in Quality Teaching for Colorado" is a blueprint for recruiting, preparing and supporting excellent teachers. Colorado's blueprint was developed by teachers and presents the profession's view of quality teaching. It is based on a research document by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future entitled "Doing What Matters Most: Investing in Quality Teaching."

The national report includes recommendations for systemic reforms designed to ensure that every community has teachers with the knowledge and skills they need so that all children can learn. Achieving this important goal requires a departure from the status quo and a new focus on standards for educators and the teaching profession at the district, school and classroom levels.

Although the proposals in the national report are applicable to Colorado, many of the recommendations have been rewritten to reflect the specific circumstances of our state. Over the last year thousands of Colorado teachers have discussed these ideas at length and suggested further refinements to the recommendations. Finally, last spring at the 2000 Delegate Assembly of the Colorado Education Association, elected representatives of educators statewide debated, amended and adopted the report contained here.

Writing and adopting recommendations is easy; implementing them is much more difficult. The first step is recognizing that all the recommendations and action steps depend on each other, that they naturally complement each other and must all be part of the implementation plan.

The second step is a full commitment to implementation. The members of the teaching profession in Colorado believe that the recommendations contained here can make a real difference, both for students and for teachers. But they also recognize that implementation requires the support and involvement of everyone who is part of the education endeavor.

As the nation faces a major teacher shortage, it is essential to focus on developing high-quality teachers. Colorado must attract and retain the brightest and most qualified professionals possible if our students and our schools are to continue to thrive. The investment in quality teaching proposed here is an investment in quality education for our children and for our state.

The Premises

We have endorsed the three premises of the national report and added two more. These premises are the foundation for the recommendations that follow.

Within the school environment, what teachers know and can do is the most important influence on what students learn.

Recruiting, preparing and retaining quality teachers is the central strategy for improving our schools.

School reform cannot succeed unless it focuses on creating the conditions in which teachers can teach and teach well.

All education employees and education associations should be involved in school reform.

Investing in quality teaching requires funding schools at a level that will enable the full implementation of the recommendations.

Recommended Actions

Based upon the national report and its research, as well as significant input from teachers across the state of Colorado, we propose five major recommendations. Specific actions follow each recommendation. Explanatory information is provided in italics.

Support high standards for the teaching profession.

• Establish an independent, teacher-directed professional standards board.

Colorado has a professional standards board that is advisory to the State Board of Education. A majority of the members are teachers.

• Insist on accreditation for all schools of teacher preparation.

The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) has established high-level criteria for its voluntary accreditation process. Most of the state institutions that prepare teachers are NCATE-accredited.

• Support and promote implementation of rigorous standards for teacher preparation programs.

The curricula of teacher preparation programs should meet or exceed rigorous model standards.

• License teachers based on demonstrated knowledge of subject matter, as well as teaching knowledge and skill.

Colorado's licensure law requires this for all new teachers.

• Use the standards for National Board Certification as a benchmark for accomplished teaching.

Experts and practitioners have established the National Board Certification standards for 33 subject areas. The standards require both knowledge and demonstration of performance.

Redesign teacher preparation and professional development.

• Organize teacher education and professional development programs around standards for teachers and students.

Under Colorado law, the professional standards board sets the criteria for licensure. The board is working on aligning those criteria with student achievement standards. This work will impact teacher education and professional development programs across the state.

• Develop extended graduate-level teacher preparation programs that provide a year-long internship in a public school (pre-K through 12th grade).

Additional graduate-level training will help develop new teachers with stronger high-level skills. The "teacher-in-residence" program established in Senate Bill 99-154 and the alternative licensing program both provide for internships.

• Create and/or strengthen mentoring programs for beginning and continuing teachers.

The Colorado Licensure Act requires a basic mentoring program for new teachers. A program for continuing teachers would provide for peer coaching and other professional growth activities.

• Develop on-going, high-quality sources of professional development.

Professional development includes both licensure renewal activities and district in-service programs.

Improve teacher recruitment and advocate for licensed teachers in every classroom, qualified to teach in the content areas assigned.

• Insist that districts hire only qualified, licensed teachers and increase the ability of districts to pay those teachers.

All teachers should be fully licensed and professionally compensated, comparable to other professions with similar education requirements and responsibilities.

• Create and implement an effective recruitment and hiring process involving the district's professional educators.

Teachers should be involved in the recruitment and selection of their peers.

• Eliminate barriers to job mobility for teachers.

When moving to another district or into Colorado, teachers shall be given full credit for their years of experience, level of education, and non-probationary status.

• Recruit aggressively to fill positions in shortage areas with qualified, licensed teachers.

Shortage areas should be broadly defined to include more than subject areas.

• Develop high-quality avenues of entering the teaching profession for recent graduates, mid-career changers, and paraprofessionals already working in classrooms.

Colorado law currently provides a number of alternative methods of teacher preparation and certification.

Encourage and pay teachers for the on-going acquisition of knowledge and skill.

• Develop a career continuum for teaching linked to professional standards.

Colorado's three-tiered system of licensure provides a structure for a career continuum.

• Educate teachers about National Board Certification; encourage and support participation in the program

National Board Certification is a demonstration of teaching practice measured against high and rigorous standards.

• Provide support and assistance to teachers whose performance, through fair and objective evaluation, is deemed to be unsatisfactory.

Teachers who are not performing at a satisfactory level should be given both professional assistance and sufficient time to improve.

• Use fair due process dismissal procedures, based on good and just cause, to remove teachers who continue to perform at an unsatisfactory level.

If a teacher is unable to improve and perform at a satisfactory level, the teacher should be counseled out of the profession or dismissed under the due process provisions currently in Colorado law.

Organize schools to foster and support student learning and teacher success.

• Flatten hierarchies and reallocate resources to classroom instruction.

Adequate resources must be allocated to the creation of conditions that optimize classroom instruction, e.g. reduced class size.

• Provide time and other resources to school sites for professional development activities linked to school improvement, enhanced instructional practices, and student success.

Professional development should be school-centered and focus on instructional improvement.

• Select, prepare and retain principals who understand and support successful teaching and learning and who model effective leadership skills.

Building principals should be instructional leaders, not just facility managers.