The K-12 Education team recognizes that no education reform effort can be successful without teachers. High-quality teaching is essential to all efforts to improve students’ learning and has the greatest impact for students who are mostly likely to start school behind their peers academically. For too long, teachers have been an afterthought, underpaid and undervalued. We are working to modernize and elevate the teaching profession so that teachers receive the training, pay, and respect they deserve, and every student has access to high-quality teachers.See the K-12 Education team’s other core priority areas:
Teacher Preparation Shortcuts Won’t Solve the Teacher Shortage
Recently passed legislation that reduces training requirements for teachers will harm student learning, weaken the profession, and ignore the systemic issues that have long contributed to teacher shortages.
The Alternative Teacher Certification Sector Outside Higher Education
Enrollment continues to grow in alternative teacher certification programs operated outside of colleges, but the number of students completing these programs is declining.
Fact Sheet: Targeted Grants for Educational Excellence Program
This fact sheet outlines the details of a proposed grant program that would increase recruitment and retention of highly qualified educators in schools with the highest teacher turnover.
The Center for American Progress proposes a new grant program to address the working conditions that contribute to job dissatisfaction and high turnover among the nation’s K-12 teachers in order to increase equal access to highly qualified teachers.
Remote Learning and School Reopenings: What Worked and What Didn’t
As the United States recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic and schools return to in-person learning in the fall, it is key that educators learn from the successes of the past year and avoid making the same mistakes.
The Education Data That Matter Most to Parents and School Stakeholders
The current K-12 accountability system provides important information for education leaders, but local school communities need access to other timely and useful data to help improve the quality of education each child receives.
Successful Implementation of High-Quality Instructional Materials
Numerous studies underscore the effects of high-quality curricula on student achievement, but to achieve the intended goal of adopting such curricula, careful attention must be paid to the implementation process.
Student Debt: An Overlooked Barrier to Increasing Teacher Diversity
Black and Latinx students’ disparate experiences with student loan debt compared with their white counterparts may affect their choice to enter or stay in the teaching profession.
