The seventh installment of the National Council on Teacher Quality’s State Teacher Policy Yearbook, which analyzes and grades state policies bearing on teacher quality, struck a guardedly optimistic tone. Between 2011 and 2013, thirty-one states strengthened their policies on teacher-quality standards. And since 2009, thirty-seven states have raised the bar for teacher qualification. Florida’s B+ earned it the highest overall score, and twelve more states earned a respectable B- or higher. However, not all the news is rosy. Montana earned an F for the third straight year. Worse, there seems to be a widening gap between states at the bottom and the top of the rankings. Still, NCTQ contends that there has been considerable improvement overall, especially in the areas of elementary-teacher preparation (twenty-four states have improved since 2011), evaluation of effectiveness (twenty-two states made progress), and elementary-teacher preparation in mathematics (twenty states bettered their grade). That can only be good news.
SOURCE: Sandi Jacobs et al., 2013 State Teacher Policy Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: National Council on Teacher Quality, January 2014).
