NCTQ

I am late in blogging about this, but here is an excellent summary of the impact of public policy on teacher quality by Brooke Terry from the Texas Public Policy Foundation. I am a big fan of Brooke’s work because she is not a think tank person – she gets out and goes to the meetings and really works hard to advocate for students at all levels.

Another great plug for alternative teacher certification and for ABCTE in the Heartland Institutes monthly publication. This time Ben DeGrow reviews the latest alternative teacher certification study showing we need alternative quality routes to teaching in order to ensure that we have enough great teachers. The article has some great quotes (including mine) on where teacher certification is moving.

I have been asked many times in the last few weeks if we are ‘going for’ Race to the Top (RTTT) funds as if I could just jog down to the US DOE and grab a few bags of cash. But people are right to ask about having ABCTE in the mix because the guidelines specifically say that states must have alternative teacher certification programs that are not based in higher education.

Now comes this NCTQ report that specifically recommends that Colorado adopt ABCTE to better their chances of getting access to these funds.

From the previous post, math and science is not a full blown crisis yet. However, it does affect our homeland security and our collective expertise is on a significant downturn. So where can we find our next technical experts to help drive our economy and keep us as a world leader?