An Effective Teacher in Every Classroom: A lofty goal, but how to do it

Author/s
Kati Haycock
Eric A. Hanushek
Published Date
Summer 2010
Publication
Education Next
Details
10(3)
Pages
pp. 46-52
Proposals to reauthorize No Child Left Behind seek to ensure “equitable” access to effective teachers. The U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top fund rewards state plans for “ensuring equitable distribution of effective teachers and principals” and for “ambitious yet achievable annual targets to increase the number and percentage of highly effective teachers…in high-poverty schools.” These objectives pose a number of challenging questions. How readily can we identify effective teachers? And, perhaps most crucially, what are promising strategies for seeking to increase the number of effective teachers in high-poverty schools and communities? Addressing these questions are two of the leading authorities on the topic: Education Trust chief Kati Haycock and Stanford University and Hoover Institution economist Eric Hanushek.