Word: teacher
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...Such efforts have been encouraged by the Bush Administration, which in 2006 started a program that awards $99 million a year in grants to districts that link teacher compensation to raising student test scores. Merit pay has also become part of the debate in Congress over how to improve the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), triggering an outcry from teachers' unions, which oppose federal intrusion into how teachers get paid and evaluated. The subject is a touchy one for the Democrats, who count on support from the powerful teachers' unions. Last summer, Barack Obama endorsed merit...
...never forget our best teachers-those who imbued us with a deeper understanding or an enduring passion, the ones we come back to visit years after graduating, the educators who opened doors and altered the course of our lives. I was lucky enough to encounter two such teachers my senior year in a public high school in Connecticut. Dr. Cappel told us from the outset that his goal was not to prepare us for the AP biology exam; it was to teach us how to think like scientists, which he proceeded to do with a quiet passion, mainly...
...public schools, but, according to projections by economist William Hussar at the National Center for Education Statistics, the nation will need to recruit an additional 2.8 million over the next eight years owing to baby-boomer retirement, growing student enrollment and staff turnover-which is especially rapid among new teachers. Finding and keeping high-quality teachers are key to America's competitiveness as a nation. Recent test results show that U.S. 10th-graders ranked just 17th in science among peers from 30 nations, while in math they placed in the bottom five. Research suggests that a good teacher...
...Leaky BucketThere's no magic formula for what makes a good teacher, but there is general agreement on some of the prerequisites. One is an unshakable belief in children's capacity to learn. "Anyone without this has no business in the classroom," says Margaret Gayle, an expert on gifted education at Duke University, who has trained thousands of teachers in North Carolina. Another requirement, especially in the upper grades, is a deep knowledge of one's subject. According to research on teacher efficacy by statistician William Sanders, the higher the grade, the more closely student achievement correlates to a teacher...
...Other essential skills require on-the-job practice. It takes at least two years to master the basics of classroom management and six to seven years to become a fully proficient teacher. Unfortunately, a large percentage of public-school teachers give up before they get there. Between a quarter and a third of new teachers quit within their first three years on the job, and as many as 50% leave poor, urban schools within five years. Hiring new teachers is "like filling a bucket with a huge hole in the bottom," says Thomas Carroll, president of the National Commission...