Guide Provides Teacher Quality Tips

The newest Alliance release, Guide to Teacher Quality for Local Education Leaders, provides tips and resources to those who have much of the power and ability to affect the quality of the local teacher workforce.

As important as state level policy is to teacher quality in Colorado classrooms, the Guide recommends local policies and other supports for teacher quality. These include a list of questions to guide local discussion.  This easy-to-read resource is intended for school board members, teacher leaders, administrators and others with an interest in improving their local education.

Teacher Attrition & Diversity Highlighted in New Report

A new Alliance report addresses teacher quality in Colorado, and explores teacher attrition and diversity. 

Shining the Light II: State of Teacher Quality, Attrition and Diversity in Colorado links teacher attrition with student performance and tags the cost at more than $70 million in 2005 alone.

In addition, diversity of students is growing rapidly, but these students have little chance of benefitting from a teacher of the same race: the proportion of Latino students in Colorado is growing 5 times faster than that of Latino teachers.

Quality Teachers Commission Recommends Pilot Teacher/Principal ID

The Commission established by Senate Bill 07-140 recommended a pilot teacher and principal identifier. After spending six months hammering out the details, identifying positive uses and potential risks, establishing protections against misuse and specifics of how it would be used, the Commission voted unanimously to recommend the pilot to the legislature. The recommendation was given to the legislature in July.

More information about the Commission is available under the What’s New tab above.

For more information about data and unique teacher identifiers, see the 2007 Alliance report: Addressing the Need for Better Data on Teaching in Colorado: Unique Teacher Identifier Stakeholder Process Report. Full Report (1 mb)

Also see: Teacher data in Colorado: Considering Potential Opportunities and Risks of Recent Proposals, by Vincent Badolato.

READ the Allliance landmark 2006 report: Shining the Light: The State of Teaching in Colorado 2006 Full Report (5 mb) - Executive Summary (4 mb)

Please note that the Alliance is in transition. Watch for details in the near future.