The TeachStrong campaign brings together teachers unions, teacher voice organizations, and education reform, civil rights, and education policy leaders to make modernizing and elevating the teaching profession the top education policy issue of 2016.
Washington, D.C. — Less than a month after the launch of TeachStrong—a national campaign focused on making modernizing and elevating the teaching profession the top education policy of 2016 and beyond—the campaign announced that it has added 10 new organizations to its ranks, bringing the total number of partners to 50. This diverse group of stakeholders is united by the fundamental belief that creating systems to attract and retain great teachers is the key to establishing an excellent and equitable education system and ensuring success for all students.
“Demands and expectations for students, teachers, and schools have been raised substantially over the past two decades, but the systems for recruiting, supporting, developing and compensating teachers have not,” said Carmel Martin, Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress. “Members of the TeachStrong coalition agree that modernizing and elevating the teaching profession should be the top education policy priority for candidates and policymakers, and adding 10 new partners demonstrates that consensus is continuing to grow around these ideas.”
The 10 new partners joining TeachStrong include:
- Albert Shanker Institute
- Center on the Future of American Education
- Democrats for Education Reform
- EducationCounsel
- Education Reform Now
- Generation Schools Network
- Teaching Matters
- The Teacher Salary Project
- TESOL International Association
- Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
“Public education is critical to a democratic society, and high-quality, effective teachers are critical to the creation of an equitable system and the success of public schools,” said Jonathan Spear, Co-Founder and Chief Learning Officer of the Generation Schools Network, one of TeachStrong’s new partners. “Generation Schools joins TeachStrong’s partners to create the structures and practices that elevate the teaching profession and help ensure public education’s success.”
Ninive Calegari, CEO and founder of the Teacher Salary Project–another new TeachStrong partner–said: “TeachStrong is a powerful force, and I am thrilled The Teacher Salary Project is joining as a partner. Its nine principles are stellar and everyone—teachers, students, principals, parents, and legislators—should quickly find ways to turn the principles into reality. Students cannot maximize their learning and thrive until we take the teaching profession seriously, and I am grateful to TeachStrong for its leadership in this endeavor.”
Collectively, the coalition believes that all students, especially those from low-income families, deserve to be taught by great teachers. To accomplish this goal, the coalition believes that the United States must modernize and elevate the teaching profession and strengthen the entire teacher career continuum. This will require investing in and developing policies that better recruit, prepare, support, and compensate teachers through all stages of their careers. The coalition has coalesced around nine policy principles:
- Identifying and recruiting more teacher candidates with great potential to succeed, with a deliberate emphasis on diversifying the teacher workforce
- Reimagining teacher preparation to make it more rooted in classroom practice and a professional knowledge base, with universal high standards for all candidates
- Raising the bar for licensure so it is a meaningful measure of readiness to teach
- Increasing compensation in order to attract and reward teachers as professionals
- Providing support for new teachers through induction or residency programs
- Ensuring tenure is a meaningful signal of professional accomplishment
- Providing significantly more time, tools, and support for teachers to succeed, including through planning, collaboration, and development
- Designing professional learning to better address student and teacher needs and to foster feedback and improvement
- Creating career pathways that give teachers opportunities to lead and grow professionally
In addition to the 10 new groups listed above, the organizational partners in TeachStrong are: Alliance for Excellent Education, America Achieves, American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, American Federation of Teachers, ASCD, Center for American Progress, Council of Chief State School Officers, Deans for Impact, Digital Promise, Education Post, The Education Trust, the Education Policy Program at New America, Educators 4 Excellence, Educators Rising, Emerson Collective, Hope Street Group, Knowledge Alliance, Leading Educators, Learning Forward, National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, National Center for Learning Disabilities, National Center for Teacher Residencies, National Center on Time and Learning, National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future, National Council on Teacher Quality, National Education Association, National Institute for Excellence in Teaching, National Network of State Teachers of the Year, National Women’s Law Center, New Leaders, New Teacher Center, Public Impact, Relay Graduate School of Education, Stand for Children, Teach For America, Teach Plus, Third Way, TNTP, Urban Teachers, and The VIVA Project.
More information about the campaign can be found at TeachStrong.org.
For more information or to speak with an expert, contact Allison Preiss at [email protected] or 202.478.6331.
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