Teacher numbers are dwindling in schools and districts across the United States as many leave the profession and the popularity of teacher education programs wanes. As a result, the most qualified candidates can choose from an array of professional options. How do you make sure they will want to commit to your school? In "Make Your School…

Women in the Academy are raising issues of pay parity, equal representation on committees, increased leadership positions, stories of resilience, and mentorship espousing changes at all levels including teaching, research, and administration. These strategies demand interrogation, and larger questions are being asked about the place of women…

Teach For America (TFA) is an organization that aims to address educational inequity in part through a program of training and placing teachers in U.S. K-12 public schools that have the highest proportions of high-poverty students. In this report, the authors quantify the impacts of Teach For America Indianapolis (TFA Indy) on student and school…

Teacher evaluation is at the center of current education policy reform. Most evaluation systems rely at least in part on principals' assessments of teachers, and their discretionary judgments carry substantial weight. However, we know relatively little about what they value when determining evaluations and high stakes personnel decisions. The…

A forthcoming Association for Curriculum Development Task Force on Merit Pay and Career Ladders report contends that all teachers can be paid decent salaries and that any implemented plan must have the support and involvement of those to be affected, must ensure due process, and must develop trust in the evaluators. (DCS)

The Career Ladder Program, one aspect of Tennessee's Better Schools Program, includes a career ladder for all school personnel, substantial incentive pay for performance and responsibility, competency-based performance evaluation for all school personnel, professional development programs addressing needs identified in evaluation, and new…

Provides two teacher evaluation models for principals. Emphasizes teacher evaluation based on teacher's abilities rather than student achievement. (MD)

Describes a four-stage model for teacher career advancement in the institution whose present structure does not provide promotion for classroom excellence. (KS)

Ten suggestions for keeping good teachers are provided by the governor of Tennessee. These cover the career ladder concept, awards, honorary degrees, summer work, secretarial help, professional standards, short term teaching, community leadership, recognition of distinction, and recognizing teachers as opinion leaders. (TE)

To improve the chances of success of current master teacher plans, this article examines the strengths and weaknesses of earlier attempts. It focuses on the Temple City, California, master teacher plan, cites reasons for its demise, and suggests alternatives. Charts are included. (DCS)

The author responds to H. J. Freiberg's article on past master teacher programs in the December 1984-January 1985 "Educational Leadership" (EA 518 299), citing numerous disagreements, yet concluding that his observations are more true than false, and agreeing that current merit pay and master teacher plans won't bring needed…

To make merit-pay plans work, a district's teacher-evaluation system must be both summative and formative--evaluating both for teacher outcomes and for progressive improvement. Only peer-mediated self-appraisal systems seem able to meet such a challenge. Fairly rewarded merit-pay plans depend on accurate teacher evaluations. However, teacher…

In 1984, the Utah legislature enacted a career ladder bill encouraging all local districts to develop plans for restructuring teachers' compensation and promotion options. An independent, bipartisan taskforce then created a statewide, decentralized model that increases educators' power, minimizes merit and staff differentiation, and fosters…

Explains provisions of the career ladder section of Tennessee's Comprehensive Education Reform Act including teacher levels, implementation, certification, evaluation procedures, involvement of the Tennessee Education Association, and rationale of legislators sponsoring this education reform package. (NEC)

The expert system computer simulation detailed in this report is designed to investigate patterns of valuing in decision-making about dossiers of performance data used in teacher promotion evaluations. The knowledge base for the simulation consists of 111 questions organized into 117 rules. The questions and linked advice were derived from…