Education Trust
September 3, 2003
In this ten-pager, the Education Trust takes off the gloves and harshly pummels "Paige's team at the Department" for what it sees as their neglect of the "teacher quality provisions of NCLB." Besides their general meanness of spirit, Ed Trust's authors are dead wrong on at least one point: faulting the Department for excessive flexibility in interpreting NCLB's "highly qualified" teacher provision. Not only is this criticism misplaced; it's also out of whack with several of EdTrust's other gripes, which have to do with TOO LITTLE flexibility. But six recommendations are spot on: gather better data on teacher quality; press states to redistribute more good teachers to the classrooms of disadvantaged children; press on higher ed to relieve spot shortages in the teaching ranks; give parents better information regarding their kids' teachers; attend to value-added analyses of teacher effectiveness; and make the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act further the teacher-related goals of NCLB. You can find the whole thing, right and wrong, online at http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/6FF0031F-EEFC-4415-9E0D-1C0432F29FF8/202/TeacherQuality1.pdf.
