Teacher Fail

The “coolest map ever” award has to go to the Leaders and Laggards report on education innovation from AEI, Center for American Progress and the Institute for a Competitive Workforce. Besides being very slick, it presents some interesting information on education innovation. It will be really cool if they do this map again in a year or two to see if the billions spent by US DOE actually move any of the state grades on innovation.

We care about teacher quality and the report shows a pretty mixed bag. Note that there are 8 indicators that the teams looked at to give a grade in teaching innovation. Basic skills and subject knowledge tests, teacher evaluations, strength of alternative certification (yay!), percent alternatively certified teachers (double yay!!), national programs to recruit teachers, principal influence on teacher hiring and interstate portability of certification. Pretty thorough group of stats.

The interesting thing is that Florida received an F and Utah a D even though they are pretty progressive on the alt cert side. So they obviously need to work on other areas.

Other states of interest with a failing grade are Wisconsin, where we have a bill to allow ABCTE in that state, and Nevada which continues to water down any bill we support and eliminates chances for us to work in that state. Indiana took a lot of grief for trying to change ther teacher rules and they have a D grade right now – so look for that to move in the next year.

Other failing states include New Mexico, West Virginia, DC, Maryland and California. Not really surprising here. Other states with a D include Washington, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Ohio, Delaware and Massachusetts.

So if you are in any of those states, give us a call. We can come help you fix your alternative certification innovation problems and get your grades moving in the right direction.