Modernizing and Elevating the Teaching Profession

The Center for American Progress 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.

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Teacher Preparation Shortcuts Won’t Solve the Teacher Shortage Article
Photo shows an empty classroom with chairs stacked on top of the desks.

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.

Loren Welles

The Alternative Teacher Certification Sector Outside Higher Education Report
Photo shows a group of adults seated around tables in a classroom.

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.

Jacqueline E. King, Jessica Yin

Fact Sheet: Targeted Grants for Educational Excellence Program Fact Sheet
 (An educator teaches integrated math at a high school in Pasadena, California, April 2021.)

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.

Bayliss Fiddiman, Lisette Partelow

How To Ensure Equitable Access to Great Teaching Report
 (The Los Angeles Unified School District interim superintendent spends time with a kindergarten student to celebrate the first day of in-class instruction at an elementary school in Los Angeles, August 2021.)

How To Ensure Equitable Access to Great Teaching

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.

Bayliss Fiddiman, Lisette Partelow

Remote Learning and School Reopenings: What Worked and What Didn’t Report
 (A high school freshman returns to campus for the first time since schools closed due to the coronavirus, as students return for in-person instruction at a high school in Long Beach, California, March 2021.)

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.

Megan Ferren

A First 100 Days Agenda for K-12 Education Report
 (A school bus drives down a street in Waitsfield, Vermont, February 2013.)

A First 100 Days Agenda for K-12 Education

The next presidential administration must take immediate, bold action to provide a quality education for every child.

Scott Sargrad, Khalilah M. Harris, Lisette Partelow, 2 More Neil Campbell, Laura Jimenez

Successful Implementation of High-Quality Instructional Materials Report
Teachers gather for a training session at SATO Academy of Math and Science in Long Beach, California, as they get ready for the first day of school. (Getty/Brittany Murray)

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.

Amanda Fuchs Miller, Lisette Partelow

Student Debt: An Overlooked Barrier to Increasing Teacher Diversity Report
A principal visits a classroom at a New Orleans elementary school, January 2015. (Getty/Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor)

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.

Bayliss Fiddiman, Colleen Campbell, Lisette Partelow

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