A Blueprint forR.E.S.P.E.C.T.

Recognizing Educational Success, 

Professional Excellence 

and Collaborative Teaching

U.S. Department of Education

April 2013

Contents

I. Education at a Crossroads  1

II. Developing a New Vision of Teaching and Leading  3

III. A Policy Framework for Transforming Teaching and Leading: Seven Critical Components  5

IV. Laying the Foundation for RESPECT  9

V. Next Steps  10

Appendix A- Current Policy by Critical Component  12

Appendix B- RESPECT Grant Competition Overview  14

Appendix C- STEM Master Teacher Corps Overview  17

Appendix D- Envisioning a Teaching Profession for the 21st Century  18

Bibliography  26

“The time is ripe for teachers to reclaim our ideals 

and change our profession.”

—Teacher, New Mexico

I. Education at a Crossroads 

Every child in America deserves a high-quality education that prepares her or him for college, a career, and the responsibilities of citizenship. Teachers and school leaders work each day with our nation’s children to provide them with the knowledge, skills, and habits to succeed professionally and personally, and to give them an array of tools for leading productive and satisfying lives. 

Indeed, educators are the heart and soul of American education. Great teachers and principals are drawn to the profession because they want to nurture young people and watch them grow—not only academically, but also socially and emotionally. They teach because of their belief in the power of education to transform lives. Strong teachers can boost students’ academic achievement, improve their attitudes about school and themselves, and increase their ability to learn. Highly effective teachers accelerate student learning, close achievement gaps that have persisted for decades, and build habits of mind that change the trajectories of students’ lives, resulting in lower dropout rates, lower rates of teen pregnancy, and greater lifetime earnings and career satisfaction.[1] And strong school leaders enable effective teachers to grow and thrive.[2]

Yet—despite their hard work and commitment—educators know that their students are confronting unprecedented challenges and heightened competition in an increasingly knowledge-based, global job market. At the same time, on international assessments of student achievement, U.S. performance has been mediocre. According to the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), an instrument comparing the performance of 15-year-olds in 34 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries, American students rank 14th in reading, 17th in science, and 25th in math. Twenty years ago, the U.S. led the world in college completion, but in 2011, as many as 13 countries outpaced us.[3]

Within our own borders, a significant number of students are still not getting the education they deserve. Only 78 percent of students complete high school in four years, and even fewer African-Americans (66 percent) and Latinos (71 percent) graduate on time.[4] Right now, more than 60 percent of U.S. jobs require some form of higher education; yet almost one out of every four young adults cannot even begin to compete for these jobs.[5] At a time when jobs requiring only a high school diploma are increasingly scarce and fail to offer a pathway into the middle class,[6] too many students—especially those on the wrong side of our nation’s persistent achievement gaps—are simply not getting what they need to succeed.

Though well aware of the challenges, many teachers and principals remain cautiously optimistic. For them, the current situation provides a unique opportunity to rethink the existing systems that have not been meeting our nation’s educational goals. “It is time for sweeping changes to education,” a teacher in North Carolina told us. The American education system is situated at a historic crossroads where we have the ability to continue on our current trajectory or to chart a new course. “This is our Moon Landing moment,” a principal in Virginia said, urging her colleagues to take advantage of the opportunity to do something remarkable. 

Some countries have taken on education as a national mission.  Canada, China, and Singapore have renewed commitments and revised their education strategies in recent decades in ways that are bearing fruit.[7] President Obama has made education a priority in his administration and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said that “Accelerating college attainment is not just a policy . . . it is really an urgent national mission.” That is why the president has set a goal that, by 2020, the United States will once again lead the world in college completion. 

Teachers and principals also have ambitious goals for their students that extend beyond helping our country compete in the world and advance economically. “I’m teaching for more than the global standing of the United States of America,” a teacher in San Francisco reminded us. “The call to civics, ethics, and morality is incredibly important.” 

To achieve all of these goals, it is essential that accomplished, effective teachers guide every student’s learning and that schools are collaborative and innovative workplaces where teachers and leaders have the capacity to improve student outcomes and close achievement gaps. Working to ensure that this is true in all of our schools is an audacious, but vital, undertaking that requires us to fundamentally transform education in this country.  

To begin, we must acknowledge that educators in the United States should be treated as members of a highly regarded profession. Other respected professions—accounting, medicine, engineering, and law, to name a few—share attributes that are conspicuously absent from education. They set high standards for entry into the field and insist on strong preparation before licensure or certification. Most professions provide career opportunities for practitioners to specialize and to advance into leadership positions. Highly regarded professions offer competitive compensation and reward professionals for their accomplishments. In short, as educators themselves tell us, to transform our education system, we have to treat teachers and school leaders as professionals whose work is intellectually demanding, complex and important, and we have to hold them to high standards because they are entrusted with our nation’s most valuable resource, our children.

As American educators work within schools, districts, and states to reshape their profession, they caution against two common reform errors:  putting too much burden on any one element of the system to solve all of our nation’s education problems, and implementing piecemeal strategies in an ad hoc, uncoordinated way. Instead, we must take a comprehensive, integrated, and long-term approach to transformation, drawing on lessons from higher-performing countries and from the hundreds of schools across this country whose students excel academically despite significant challenges. 

Of course, the work of transforming the profession cannot be shouldered by our nation’s teachers and principals alone. That is why this Blueprint for Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence and Collaborative Teaching (RESPECT) is a framework for all of us—parents, students, educators, policymakers, business and community leaders, elected officials, and other partners—to use in guiding our collective efforts to strengthen America’s public education system by rethinking teaching and leading. 

Below we describe the collaborations and voices that shaped this blueprint, lay out the seven critical components that compose the RESPECT policy framework, connect this new framework with existing policy, and outline the next steps necessary to turn the RESPECT vision into reality. 

[1]  Chetty, R., Friedman, J.N., & Rockoff, J.E., National Bureau of Economic Research (December 2011). The Long-term Impacts of Teachers: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood. Working Paper 17699. Retrieved from http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/value_added.pdf.

[2]  McKinsey & Co. (2010). Closing the Talent Gap: Attracting and Retaining Top-Third Graduates to Careers in Teaching. Retrieved from http://mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education/Closing_the_talent_gap.pdf.

[3]  Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2012) Education at a Glance 2012: OECD Indicators.. (2012) Retrieved from http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/oecd-eag-2012-en.pdf.

[4]  U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.(2013) Public School Graduates and Dropouts from the Common Core of Data: School Year 2009–10: First Look (Provisional Data), “Public high school number of graduates and Averaged Freshmen Graduation Rate (AFGR), by race/ethnicity and state or jurisdiction: School year 2009–10.” Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2013309.

[5]Carnevale, A., Smith, N., & Strohl, J. (2010) Help Wanted: Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements Through 2018. Retrieved from  http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/FullReport.pdf.

[6]  Carnevale, A. , Rose, S., & Cheah, B. The College Payoff: Education, Occupations, Lifetime Earnings. (2011) Retrieved from http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/collegepayoff-complete.pdf.

[7]  OECD. “Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education: Lessons from PISA for the United States.”  (2011) Retrieved from http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/lessons-from-pisa-for-the-united-states_9789264096660-en.

II. Developing a New Vision of Teaching and Leading

Recently, individuals and organizations from across the field of education have increasingly called for a similar set of ambitious, comprehensive, and transformative improvements to the teaching profession. The work of a number of national organizations embraces shared notions of what must be done to advance the profession, including the work of the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), the National Education Association (NEA), and the National School Board Association (NSBA).[1]

Inspired by this growing consensus among leading national organizations, and an opportunity to focus on and galvanize the dialogue around teaching and leading, the U.S. Department of Education committed to developing a responsive and robust policy framework for transforming the profession—a policy framework supported by research and informed by the voices of teachers and school leaders nationwide. In developing this framework, the Department reviewed the relevant literature (see Bibliography) and engaged educational leadership at all levels in a collaborative dialogue. The Department, often with partners, hosted a series of convenings to crystalize consensus and inspire collaborative action around it, including two first-of-their-kind conferences: one on labor-management collaboration[2] in February 2011 that has been held annually since; the other, the International Summit on the Teaching Profession,[3] first held in March 2011 and now an annual event. 

At the same time, the Department undertook an extensive effort to seek input directly from educators by initiating a national conversation on the teaching profession and hosting roundtable conversations with teachers and leaders across the country. To help frame the national conversation and inform future policy, the Department took on the challenge of depicting a new vision of teaching, leading, and learning—a vision unconstrained and unprejudiced by the limits of today’s reality and guided solely by what the U.S. education system must accomplish in order to remain globally competitive, and provide students with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in their careers and in their lives. In developing and drafting this vision, the Department engaged educators and organizations at the local, state, national, and international levels in a deep discussion about the teaching profession.

Beginning in summer 2011, the Department’s Teaching Ambassador Fellows (active classroom teachers who work with the Department of Education for one year) reached out to schools, districts, and teacher networks to conduct roundtable discussions about a new vision for teaching and leading (see Appendix D: The RESPECT Project Discussion Document). Their outreach was not only geographically diverse but also included teachers in a wide variety of content areas, roles, and levels of experience. 

In February 2012, Secretary Duncan officially launched The RESPECT Project: A National Conversation about the Teaching Profession and the Department redoubled its efforts to engage the field. Teachers and leaders across the nation were invited to join in local conversations on a vision for the profession, comment on it online, or lead their own discussions using the RESPECT Project tool kit prepared by the Department as a resource.[4] In each conversation, educators—including principals, school counselors, current and preservice teachers, and education professors—viewed the most recent iteration of the Department’s vision statement and provided honest and wide-ranging feedback on what they would retain, add, or eliminate. 

As of February 2013, the RESPECT Project had engaged more than 5,700 educators in the national conversation through more than 360 roundtables across the U.S. The result was a new vision for teaching and leading reflective of the insights, ideas, and expertise of educators in the field.  In the words of one Maryland teacher, “This is how you respect me. Ask me what I think and listen to what I have to say.” Today these conversations continue to take place with a new focus on how all stakeholders can help to realize the RESPECT vision in their unique school and community setting.

In May 2012, the Department was joined by AASA, AFT, CGCS, NEA, NSBA, FMCS, and CCSSO in hosting a second conference on labor-management collaboration that convened both district and state leaders to focus exclusively on Collaborating to Transform the Teaching Profession. In preparing for the conference, the co-sponsoring organizations assembled their best thinking on what is needed to truly transform the teaching profession. For the Department, this thinking was directly informed by its work on the RESPECT Project and by feedback received from educators through the roundtables. The outcome of this collaborative endeavor was a new, jointly drafted statement for transforming the profession signed by each organization. For the first time, national groups representing teachers, superintendents, school boards, and state leaders put forth a common vision for teaching and leading. Today this joint statement forms the backbone of the Department’s RESPECT policy framework. The statement’s seven critical components for transforming the teaching profession are laid out below.   

[1]  This includes a report written by the NEA’s Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching and the resulting NEA Action Agenda, the AFT’s Quality Education Agenda, the joint work of the AASA, AFT, NEA, and NSBA on the Guiding Principles for Teacher Incentive Compensation Plans, and the AFT and AASA’s initiatives on teacher development and evaluation.

[2]  In February 2011, the Department convened a first-of-its-kind conference on Advancing Student Achievement through Labor-Management Collaboration in partnership with the AASA, AFT, NEA, NSBA, CGCS, and FMCS. Together these co-sponsoring organizations put forth A New Compact for Student Success and developed 10 principles of labor-management collaboration that addressed, among other things, the way that teachers are supported, compensated, evaluated, and engaged in strategic planning and decision-making.

[3]  In March 2011, the Department hosted a second conference that brought the conversation to the international stage. The International Summit on the Teaching Profession was convened in collaboration with the OECD and Education International. The Department attended the summit with the NEA, AFT, and CCSSO, and together they shared and learned from the best practices of other high-performing countries. Based on the success of the first summit, the United States hosted a second one in March 2012, where leaders explored in depth concepts like developing school leaders, preparing teachers for the delivery of 21st-century skills, and preparing teachers to work and succeed where they are needed most.

[4]  The Department’s RESPECT Project tool kit is available at http://www.ed.gov/teaching/national-conversation.

III. A Policy Framework for Transforming Teaching and Leading: Seven Critical Components

The shared vision emerging from the conference on Collaborating to Transform the Teaching Profession is composed of seven critical components of a transformed education profession: shared responsibility and leadership, recruitment and preparation, growth and development, evaluation, compensation and advancement, school climate, and community engagement. Educators consistently identified these components as critical to transforming the profession and characteristic of the highest-performing school systems in the U.S. and abroad. A strong education system effectively fuses these components to build one comprehensive and coherent system. 

The Seven Critical Components of a Transformed Profession
    -  A Culture of Shared Responsibility and Leadership:  In a transformed profession, educators take collective ownership for student learning; structures of shared decision-making and open-door practice provide educators with the collaborative autonomy to do what is best for each student; and the profession takes upon itself the responsibility for ensuring that high standards of practice are met. In this professional culture, teachers and principals together make the primary decisions about educator selection, assignment, evaluation, dismissal, and career advancement—with student learning at the center of all such decisions.
    -  Top Talent, Prepared for Success:  Students with effective teachers perform at higher levels; students have higher graduation rates, higher college-going rates, higher levels of civic participation, and higher lifetime earnings. Thus, attracting a high-performing and diverse pool of talented individuals to become teachers and principals is a critical priority – whether these are new graduates or career switchers, and whether they enter the profession through traditional or alternative pathways. We must support the programs that prepare highly effective educators and offer high-quality and substantive curricula and clinical preparation experiences. We should expand the most successful programs, help other programs improve, and close down the lowest-performing programs if they fail to improve after receiving support. Preparation should include significant clinical opportunities that involve highly effective teachers or principals to oversee, mentor, and evaluate aspiring educators (preferably in the school environments in which the candidates will ultimately work). Further, aspiring educators must meet a high bar for entering the profession, demonstrating strong knowledge in the content they teach; have mastered a repertoire of instructional strategies and know when to use each appropriately; have the dispositions and aptitudes to work effectively with students and with colleagues; and be learners themselves who know how to plan purposefully, analyze student learning outcomes, reflect on their own practice, and adjust as needed. 

> 
“We need more rigorous teacher preparation programs.”

—Pre-service Teacher, Ill.

> 
“In a school culture where teacher work and leadership are valued and sought by school leaders, teachers work harder, better, and more purposefully.” 

—Teacher, Allendale, N.J.

> 
In Finland, teachers are recruited from the top 20 percent of high school graduates. However, it’s not enough for candidates to be academically gifted—they also have to demonstrate, through a series of interviews and a simulated teaching activity, that they have other traits essential to good teaching, such as communication and social skills.

> 
In Shanghai, teachers frequently observe each other and participate in daily, subject-based “teaching-study groups.” New teachers observe more experienced teachers to learn from them, and senior teachers observe other teachers to mentor them.  

    -  Continuous Growth and Professional Development:  Effective teachers and principals are career-long learners. Effective schools and districts are learning communities where teachers and principals individually and collaboratively continuously reflect on and improve practice. Such communities of practice thrive when there is structured time for collaborative work informed by a rich array of data and access to internal and external expertise. We must take seriously the need to evaluate the efficacy of professional development so that we can more methodically improve it, channeling our investments into activities and supports that make a difference. From induction for novice teachers designed to accelerate their growth and development, to replicating the practices of the most accomplished teachers, professional development is a critical lever of improvement. As a profession, we must develop greater competency in using it.
    -  Effective Teachers and Principals:  Effective educators have high standards of professional practice and demonstrate their ability to improve student learning. Thus, effectiveness must be evaluated based on measures of student academic growth, evidence from classroom and school practice, and contributions to colleagues and the school community. The results of the evaluations should guide professional support and development, and inform personnel decisions such as teacher and principal assignments, the granting of professional status (e.g., tenure), promotion to leadership roles, and dismissal for those who, despite receiving support, are ineffective. Good evaluation systems should provide feedback to educators from both colleagues and supervisors that is meaningful, credible, timely, and actionable, and should use evidence-based processes that are fair, accurate, and transparent.

> 
“To be an effective teacher, [there are] certain non-negotiable pieces....there are things that you need to be doing—practice it, work on it.”

—Teacher, Denver, Colo.

> 
“We need an evaluation system that ensures that the profession is a respectable one, with quality teachers being retained to teach the students who need us most.”

—Teacher, Centreville, Md.

    -  A Professional Career Continuum With Competitive Compensation:  Educators are one of our nation’s most valuable resources. We must create a profession that attracts great people into our schools and classrooms—and keeps them in the profession. To do this, we need to offer educators career pathways that provide opportunities for increasingly responsible roles, whether they choose to stay in the classroom, become instructional leaders or move into administration. And these roles must be coupled with compensation that is high enough to attract and retain a highly skilled workforce; reflects the effectiveness, expertise, and contributions of each educator; and is consistent with the societal regard accorded to comparable professions
    -  Conditions for Successful Teaching and Learning:  High-functioning systems can amplify the accomplishments of their educators, but a dysfunctional school or district can undermine the impact of even the best teachers. We need schools and districts whose climates and cultures, use of time, approaches to staffing, use of technology, deployment of support services, and engagement of families and communities are optimized to continuously improve outcomes for the students they serve. Further, we must be prepared to get the best teachers and principals to the highest-need students (including low-income students, minority students, English learners, and students with disabilities), and to ensure that all students have access to the other resources (such as technology, instructional materials, and social, health, and nutritional services) necessary to support their academic success.

> 
In Singapore, the Ministry of Education tracks the starting salaries of other professions and adjusts teaching salaries to ensure that teaching is just as attractive to new graduates.  Effective teachers in Singapore can also significantly increase their salaries by earning retention and performance bonuses, and taking on new roles as they advance through a well-articulated career ladder.  

> 
“I love the classroom, but I need opportunities to advance that aren’t taking me away from being in the classroom.” 

—Teacher, Reno, Nev.

> 
“[We need time] ... to really collaborate ... restructure and reassess ... This is the one way we are going to make a difference.  It’s all about the time.” 

—NASSP Assistant Principal of the Year

    -  Engaged Communities:  Finally, no community can flourish unless its children are safe, healthy, well-nourished, and well-educated; and no school can be a strong pillar of a thriving community without deep community responsibility for and ownership of the school’s academic success. Thus, recognizing that the fate of communities and their schools are inextricably linked, we must make schools stronger by educators embracing community resources, expertise, and activities; and we must make communities stronger by anchoring them around highly effective schools. 

Working in concert, these seven critical components are essential for establishing a profession of educators who are recruited, selected, developed, supported, compensated, and treated with the respect necessary to ensure that our students grow into educated, productive, and engaged citizens.

> 
“We must all be active, supportive participants in the 21st-century education model.” 

—Teacher, Orlando, Fla.

IV. Laying the Foundation for RESPECT

Over the past four years this administration has begun laying the foundation for RESPECT, including by making some progress on the seven critical elements set forth in this blueprint. President Obama and Secretary Duncan recognize that accomplished, effective teachers and school leaders are at the heart of our education system. Their commitment and capacity are essential for ensuring that our students thrive in our continuously changing global marketplace. For that reason, this administration has been committed from the start to a systemic approach that incents states and districts to develop and support educators, and provide them with the tools and conditions necessary to improve, succeed, and maximize their impact on student learning. 

In 2010, the president laid out this approach in his proposal to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended (ESEA). The proposal, called the “Blueprint for Reform,” focuses on the importance of great teachers and leaders, and proposes strategies for building the comprehensive systems that must be in place for the profession to address the challenges faced by today’s students. It asserts that in order to prepare more students to graduate from high school college- and career-ready, we must invest in each of the critical elements of our education system, including data systems, standards and assessments, and teachers and school leaders. Likewise, to transform the education profession, we must invest in each of its critical elements, including educator recruitment, preparation, development, and advancement. 

With this fundamental frame in mind, we have committed to an approach that promotes alignment across district and state systems. This means that our federal programs and initiatives are advancing a consistent set of policies around the education profession. The result is the creation of programs like Race to the Top (RTT) and the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF), and initiatives like ESEA flexibility.  These efforts are all aligned in their support for district and state efforts to focus their evaluation systems on what students must know and be able to do, and thus on what teachers and leaders must accomplish in the classroom to improve student learning. This work at the federal level  supports and encourages investments in the critical building blocks necessary to make the RESPECT vision a reality, including performance-based compensation structures and career ladders, data systems to inform professional development and human capital management, pipelines for attracting new talent into the profession, time and structures for collaboration among teachers and school leaders in the service of improving student outcomes, and a range of new technologies that extend and enhance educators’ impact (see Appendix A: Current Policy by Critical Component). 

However, it’s time that we move beyond laying the foundation for our education system. Following the lead of programs like RTT-District (RTT-D), the TIF 2012 competition, Promise Neighborhoods, and ESEA flexibility, the RESPECT vision calls on districts and states that have successfully laid a foundation for systemic solutions to build on that base by transforming the education profession into one that unleashes the inherent joy in teaching and learning, nurtures the creativity and innovation in our schools and classrooms, and delivers the outcomes that our children deserve and our country’s future demands.  

V. Next Steps 

As evidenced by the diverse work of the schools, districts, and states currently touched by the Department’s programs, there will be no single pathway to implementing the elements of this vision. Instead, the solutions are likely to be as rich and varied as the districts, schools, principals, and teachers who implement them. The goal, however, remains the same: that every student exits high school prepared for postsecondary study, informed citizenship, and workforce participation. We will continue to judge our success in transforming teaching and leading by the student outcomes we seek, specifically: 
    -  High levels of student achievement, judged by multiple measures that assess students’ ability to understand and apply the knowledge and skills that matter most to their readiness for college, careers, and citizenship; 
    -  Increased equity, judged by continuously narrowing the gaps in achievement and opportunity between more- and less-privileged populations of students; and  
    -  Increased global competitiveness, judged by American students’ academic performance on internationally benchmarked measures. 

Though we have made increasing efforts as a country to improve these outcomes, our current strategies and investments are not comprehensive enough to produce the degree of change required. We call the elements of the RESPECT policy framework critical components because the success of any one component is inextricably linked to the success of the others. For example, we cannot expect educators to solve today’s increasingly complex and demanding educational challenges if we do not attract top talent into the profession or if we fail to adequately prepare candidates with the skills required to succeed. We cannot expect to attract the most talented and promising individuals into the field and retain the most effective ones until compensation is commensurate with the expertise required and the difficulty of the work. Increasing compensation and responsibility necessitates a meaningful system of evaluation and accountability—one connected with achieving results in student outcomes. But we cannot fairly or reasonably expect educators to achieve the necessary results and improve their practice without also improving the effectiveness of professional development and providing access to technology, instructional tools, and other resources. Finally, we know from experience that without appropriate school conditions and broader community support, even the most committed and effective teachers and leaders cannot sustain their efforts in the most challenging environments. The absence of any one of these critical components creates real impediments to the success of the teaching profession; in contrast, when all of these elements are in place, our nation’s teachers and school leaders will meet and exceed goals we have set for student success in the 21st century. 

Recognizing the need for comprehensive reform over piecemeal solutions, in February 2012, President Obama committed to making the RESPECT vision for transforming the teaching profession into a reality for our nation. To jump-start this process, he proposed investing $5 billion in a RESPECT initiative. The Department of Education would use these funds to award grants to states and consortia of districts to pursue comprehensive reforms that align with the critical components (see Appendix B: RESPECT Grant Competition Overview). In July 2012, the president further committed to spend a portion of the funds the administration requested for the RESPECT initiative to recognize and reward outstanding pre-K–12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers by way of a new, national STEM Master Teacher Corps (see Appendix C: STEM Master Teacher Corps Overview). While awaiting funding from Congress to launch the RESPECT initiative and build the STEM Master Teacher Corps, the Department is committed to continuing to integrate aspects of the critical components of the RESPECT initiative into existing programs and policies (see Appendix A: Current Policy by Critical Component). This blueprint builds on the Department’s framework for strengthening the teaching profession going forward.   

Still, the shared vision for transforming teaching and leading embraced by national education organizations and by the Obama represents only a framework for making progress on our country’s most important educational goals. For real change—and for the RESPECT vision—to truly take root in a decentralized school system like ours, local and state educators, elected officials, union leaders, and advocates must take up the cause as their own and apply the core ideas in the RESPECT vision to their unique circumstances. In fact, there are many aspects of the RESPECT vision that can be implemented by state and local leaders immediately, without any further action on the part of the Department, such as increasing educators’ opportunities for leadership and time for collaboration. Moreover, these are changes that we know teachers and school leaders are eager to own and drive themselves.  Though the educational needs of schools vary greatly, the dynamics of the profession are strikingly similar across districts—regardless of size, location, or demographics. All schools rely on good teachers to achieve positive results in the classroom and on strong school leaders to create the right conditions for teaching and learning.  

Our immediate hope and expectation is that America’s 4 million active teachers and principals will lead the effort to reshape their profession and the future of education in America. Our larger hope is that all Americans will recognize more than ever the profound and immeasurable contribution of our educators to our students and our country. They are the foundation of our national well-being and we owe them nothing less than our deepest admiration, support, and respect.

Appendix A 

Current Policy by Critical Component

Our approach to transforming the education profession ultimately aims to meet the challenge faced by our students in the emerging global economy, but it begins with a profound respect for the lasting effect that accomplished teachers and school leaders have on students’ lives as they work to meet that challenge. Below is a summary of the way our current policies are laying the foundation for RESPECT in each of the seven critical areas identified in this blueprint. 

Critical Component 1: A Culture of Shared Responsibility and Leadership
    -  For the past two years, the Department has made a nationally visible push for collaborative labor-management relationships in its major grant programs, including RTT and TIF, as well as in ESEA flexibility. All of these programs require approval from or consultation with district stakeholder groups, including teachers’ unions.
    -  Recognizing that engaging teachers and principals beyond policy “buy in” requires cultivating leadership to drive reform from within schools, the Department has developed a framework for technical assistance that recognizes four stages of educator engagement: 1) Developing professional knowledge of reformed practices; 2) applying professional knowledge to classroom practice; 3) collaboratively participating in reform efforts; and 4) taking ownership and leading reform.  

Critical Component 2: Top Talent, Prepared for Success 
    -  Faced with the retirement of many teachers from the baby boom-generation, along with high turnover rates among new teachers, our school leaders will hire more than a million teachers in the next 10 years. To help address this demand, in 2009, the Department began the TEACH campaign, which focused on making teaching the career of choice for high-achieving, recent college graduates. Meeting the challenge of attracting the next generation of professional educators is a substantial civic commitment, and the Department is proud that TEACH has become a true public-private partnership, anchored by Microsoft’s Partners in Learning Network and supported by other corporate leaders. 
    -  Given the premium the job market places on students with a degree in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), we have also focused attention on recruiting, preparing, and retaining 100,000 new STEM teachers over the next 10 years. In 2012, the president proposed creating a STEM Master Teacher Corps composed of the nation’s highly effective STEM educators. 
    -  Finally, the Department has proposed a systemic approach to changing teacher preparation that calls for a greater emphasis on the collection and use of performance data of graduates of teacher preparation programs (something we are already seeing in states that received an RTT grant) and the allocation of scholarships, called Presidential Teaching Fellowships, to students in preparation programs with track records of success.  

Critical Component 3: Continuous Growth and Professional Development 
    -  Continuous growth and professional development of teachers and leaders is important work, but it depends on making effective use of student performance and teacher evaluation data. For this reason, we are seeing early progress in RTT states, where there is a new focus on state and district systems of effective, data-informed professional development. 
    -  Improvement is also evident in many districts with schools in the School Improvement Grants (SIG) program, which requires relevant, ongoing, high-quality, job-embedded professional development.  

    -  Additionally, through ESEA flexibility, states have committed to using the results of teacher and principal evaluation systems to help improve instruction and guide professional development.

Critical Component 4: Effective Teachers and Principals
    -  Our approach starts with the understanding that, among school-related factors, the effectiveness of teachers and school leaders has the greatest impact on student achievement. 
    -  Since 2009, many of the Department’s initiatives—including the ESEA reauthorization proposal, ESEA flexibility, RTT program, SIG, and the TIF—have consistently called for teacher and leader evaluation and support systems that use multiple measures of effectiveness, including indicators of student growth as a significant factor, to develop a fair, rigorous, and evidence-based understanding of the difference that educators make. 
    -  We’ve included a focus on evaluation and support throughout our policies and programs because we believe they are the cornerstone of both effective professional development and human capital management. These systems enable schools to help teachers improve their practice by identifying their professional development needs. They also help school leaders recognize, promote, and retain their most effective educators by assessing performance.

Critical Component 5: A Professional Career Continuum With Competitive Compensation 
    -  The field is still working to strengthen many of the links between evaluation, professional development, and advancement that are essential to creating the professional career continuum with competitive compensation called for in this blueprint. The TIF program illustrates the direction of this work by encouraging the transition from a single salary schedule based solely on experience and credentials to a performance-based compensation structure with career ladders for effective teachers, teacher leaders, and school leaders.  
    -  States approved for ESEA flexibility are also required to use evaluation systems to inform personnel decisions, such as compensation, advancement, and tenure.

Critical Component 6: Conditions for Successful Teaching and Learning
    -  States use SIG program funds to support the transformation of dysfunctional school environments into ones where educators are well-supported and united in an effort to improve outcomes for students. The Department has also promoted state and district efforts to increase time for teachers to collaborate.  Under the SIG program, districts implementing the transformation or turnaround model are required to provide additional time for teachers to collaborate, plan, and engage in professional development within and across grades and subjects.  
    -  Through ESEA flexibility, the Department offered states a waiver of certain requirements of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) program in order to allow states to use 21st CCLC funds during the school day to support high-quality expanded learning time. This in turn can help provide additional opportunities for teacher collaboration and additional instruction for students.  
    -  The RTT-D competition, which made its first awards in December 2012, also has a strong focus on shaping school environments—including staffing, technology, and support services—to better meet the needs of individual students. 

Critical Component 7: Engaged Communities
    -  The most prominent example of the Department’s efforts to engage communities is its Promise Neighborhoods grant program. This program funds efforts to bring schools and community partners together in high-need areas in order to provide a continuum of services that target not only children’s educational needs, but also the physical, social, and emotional challenges that create barriers to their academic achievement. 
    -  Additionally, the RTT-Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) grant program includes a focus on states’ efforts to design and implement integrated systems of high-quality early learning programs and services, requiring strong community-school relationships.   

Appendix B 

RESPECT Grant Competition Overview

To realize the RESPECT vision, the president has proposed investing $5 billion in an initiative to transform the teaching profession.  Under this initiative, states and, in non-participating states, consortia of districts would compete for funds to pursue bold and comprehensive reforms of all aspects of the profession—from whom they recruit to how they prepare, develop, compensate, and advance teachers and principals.  Like RTT, this initiative would generate momentum for reform across competing states and districts, and the winners would develop reform strategies that would be shared with other states and districts.  

Recognizing the importance of STEM education, the president also proposed setting aside a portion of the RESPECT competition funds to support the creation of a STEM Master Teacher Corps. The STEM Master Teacher Corps would build on the RESPECT foundation while focusing specifically on strengthening the development and retention of highly effective STEM teachers. 

The RESPECT competition would award grants to states and districts to transform the teaching profession by addressing the seven key areas of reform discussed below. These areas reflect the growing consensus among education stakeholders about what it would take to transform teaching and learning in our schools. Moreover, the seven areas mirror those in the recent joint statement on transforming the teaching profession by the major national groups representing teachers, chief state school officers, district administrators, and school boards.  In signing the statement, these divergent groups came together for the first time to support a shared vision for elevating the teaching profession. As these groups recognize, the seven areas of reform are interdependent—the success of reforms in any one area depends on the success of those in the other areas. For this reason, the competition would require applicants to comprehensively address all seven areas.  

1. A Culture of Shared Responsibility and Leadership 

States and districts would empower educators in schools to take collective ownership and responsibility for student learning. Structures of shared decision-making and open-door practice would provide educators with the collaborative time and the autonomy to do what is best for each student, and the profession would hold its members accountable for ensuring that high standards of practice were met. To this end, states and districts could:    
    -  Create shared decision-making structures at schools that empower principals and teacher leaders to develop school goals and strategies for achieving them, and to make the primary decisions about educator selection, assignment, evaluation, dismissal, and career advancement.
    -  Provide school leaders and teachers with structured time to work collaboratively to solve the learning challenges their students face. They would be held accountable for results, but given the autonomy professionals need to do their jobs effectively.

2. Top Talent, Prepared for Success

States and districts would follow the example of the world’s leading education systems by developing comprehensive strategies for attracting talented individuals to careers in teaching and school leadership, and improving the quality of their preparation.  To this end, states and districts could:
    -  Provide multiple effective pathways for preparing teachers and leaders from diverse backgrounds. Each of these pathways would include a rigorous clinical training component that would allow aspiring teachers and leaders to practice their craft in real schools and classrooms under the guidance of effective mentor-teachers and leaders.
    -  Develop innovative partnerships between preparation programs and school districts. Through these partnerships, preparation programs and districts would work together to prepare teachers and leaders with the skills and subject matter expertise to meet the needs of the participating districts.

    -  Hold teacher and principal preparation programs accountable for results by tracking and publishing data on the success of their graduates in improving student achievement and other measures. Aspiring teachers and leaders would use these data to choose among programs.  States would use the data to identify and expand high-quality programs. They would also use the data to identify and assist weak programs and ultimately shut down those that do not improve. 

3. Effective Teachers and Principals

States and districts would develop rigorous teacher and principal evaluation systems.  In implementing these systems, they would use multiple measures of performance, including student growth data as a significant factor, to differentiate between educators.  Rather than treating evaluation as an end unto itself, they would use evaluation as a tool for managing and supporting their education workforce. They could, for example, design and use their evaluation systems to: 
    -  Assess the professional development needs of teachers and school leaders at all levels and provide them with targeted feedback, professional learning, and other support.
    -  Identify and share the best practices of the most effective teachers and school leaders.
    -  Inform personnel decisions, including hiring, promotions, placement, tenure, and dismissal.  States and districts could, for example, recognize and promote highly effective teachers to increase their retention rates and expand their impact on students and other educators. They could also not renew the contracts of teachers who, despite receiving support, are ineffective with students. 
    -  Promote systems of peer assistance and review where expert teachers evaluate and support their colleagues and are themselves evaluated partly based on their impact on their colleagues’ development. 

4. Continuous Growth and Professional Development

States and districts would strengthen professional development for teachers and school leaders. As noted above, this begins with anchoring professional development to strong evaluation systems by using evaluation data to target professional development to the needs of educators. To further improve professional development, states and districts could also:
    -  Assess the impact of professional development activities, eliminate activities that yield few benefits relative to their cost, and replace those ineffective activities with evidence-based forms of professional learning. 
    -  Provide teachers with ongoing and job-embedded forms of professional development, including opportunities to observe each other’s classrooms, co-teach with peers or mentors, and collaborate with other teachers to plan lessons, design assessments, and analyze and improve their individual and collective practice. 
    -  Give teachers and school leaders access to a rich array of data on their schools and students, as well as training on how to use the data effectively to improve student achievement. 

5. Professional Career Continuum with Competitive Compensation

States and districts would redesign their certification, human capital management, and compensation systems to attract, develop, and retain talented teachers and school leaders, particularly in high-need schools. As part of this work, they could, for example:
    -  Offer highly effective teachers and leaders in high-need schools recognition, financial incentives, and other forms of support, such as more flexible roles or increased autonomy. 
    -  Make teachers’ salaries more competitive with those in other highly regarded professions.
    -  Develop career pathways for teachers and school leaders. Such pathways could provide educators opportunities to enter the profession in supervised, well-supported roles and to progress to more-advanced and higher-paying positions over the course of their careers. For example, educators could enter the profession as “residents” or “apprentices,” working under the supervision of mentor-teachers until they are certified. Once they are certified, they could receive beginning teacher status and serve as the teachers of record in their classrooms. Beginning teachers would continue to receive guidance from mentor-teachers and would have the opportunity to earn professional status or tenure after demonstrating their effectiveness with students over multiple years. After gaining professional status, teachers who are highly effective could earn higher pay, “distinguished” or “master” educator status, and opportunities to take on leadership and hybrid roles. Teachers who excel in these roles could be afforded opportunities to advance to higher levels of leadership, such as the principalship. Similarly, highly effective principals could receive higher pay, recognition, and opportunities to share their leadership strategies with other principals.

6. Creating Conditions for Success

States and districts would work with schools to ensure their climates and cultures, uses of time and resources, approaches to staffing, deployment of support services, and engagement of families are optimized to continuously improve student outcomes. They would work to ensure that high-need schools in particular provide students with the intensity of instruction and support services needed to succeed academically. For example, states and districts could:
    -  Encourage schools to organize their faculties into like-minded teams committed to meeting specific ambitious academic goals. They could also grant the teams autonomy to meet their academic goals and to use multiple measures of school climate as well as academic performance to assess progress toward those goals.
    -  Restructure the school day, week, or year to improve teaching and student outcomes. For example, this might include providing the most effective teachers with release time or hybrid positions enabling them to mentor other teachers. 
    -  Implement innovative and flexible approaches to staffing to meet the different needs of students and teachers and to increase the impact of effective teachers. For example, this might include providing the most effective teachers with release time to mentor other teachers. It might also involve offering these teachers higher pay to teach larger classes with the support of apprentice or resident teachers, allowing them to reach more students.
    -  Leverage technology to further expand the reach of highly effective teachers and to enable teachers to tailor their instruction to their students’ individual needs and interests. 

7. Engaged Communities

States and districts would help their schools form strong partnerships with local communities. These partnerships would aid teachers in improving student achievement and well-being by creating supportive conditions for students in their schools and communities. As part of this work, states and districts could:
    -  Partner with businesses to improve student achievement and motivation. For example, such partnerships could create career academies—school programs with career themes that show students the connection between their education and career aspirations, and offer them hands-on learning opportunities, such as internships at local businesses. 
    -  Create community schools by partnering with local businesses, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies to offer academic, health, and social services at school sites to support students and their families.

Appendix C 

STEM Master Teacher Corps Overview

The president has proposed setting aside a portion of the RESPECT funds to support a STEM Master Teacher Corps. The Corps would recognize and reward the most accomplished STEM educators by offering them membership in a national community of talented STEM educators, an annual stipend of up to $20,000 on top of their base salary, and opportunities to serve as instructional leaders in their schools and communities. The program would advance the RESPECT vision for STEM educators by improving the retention of the most effective STEM educators, expanding their impact on their colleagues, and increasing the attractiveness of the teaching profession to high-achieving college students and professionals in STEM fields. 

The STEM Master Teacher Corps would be supported by the Department of Education and established in collaboration with nonprofit organizations and public-private partnerships between STEM-related businesses and school districts. Key parts of the plan include:

1. A rigorous selection of the most accomplished STEM teachers from across the country

The president’s budget request for 2014 includes $35 million to launch a pilot of the STEM Master Teacher Corps that would initially support up to 1,000 teachers, and over four years, with additional funding from the RESPECT competition, the Corps would be expanded to reach 10,000 master teachers. Teachers would be selected through a highly competitive process, based on their demonstrated effectiveness in improving student achievement in one or more STEM subjects, their content knowledge, and their demonstrated ability to lead their STEM teacher colleagues. The selection process would be administered locally or regionally, but aligned to a set of national guidelines, and it would leverage the evaluation and human capital management systems of participating districts. 

2. National recognition and rewards, including compensation to keep Corps members in the profession

STEM Master Teacher Corps members would make a multi-year commitment to the Corps. In exchange for their expertise, leadership, and service, they would receive an annual stipend of up to $20,000 on top of their base salary, which would make their compensation more commensurate with the salaries they could earn as STEM professionals outside of teaching. This recognition would further raise the prestige of the Corps members, enabling America’s schools to attract, secure, and retain the best talent in the STEM teaching profession.

3. Corps members as a national resource for their schools and for other STEM educators

STEM Master Teacher Corps members would build a community of teaching practice where they live, helping students excel in STEM subjects while taking on leadership and mentorship roles in their schools, communities, and the STEM teaching field. Corps members would lead professional development activities, assist their schools and school districts in evaluating and providing feedback to other teachers, and validate and disseminate effective practices to improve STEM instruction. Some Corps members would also create online instructional videos and materials that other STEM teachers could use in their classrooms to improve student learning. In addition, Corps members would participate in regular convenings with their colleagues in the Corps to share best practices and deepen their instructional leadership skills and subject matter expertise.

Appendix D 

The RESPECT Project Discussion Document: Envisioning a Teaching Profession for the 21st Century

The following discussion document has been used in conversations about transforming the teaching profession with teachers and school leaders around the country. As these conversations have progressed, the vision for the profession has been updated to reflect the ideas and experiences of those who serve in our classrooms and schools. 

I. Introduction  

The Challenge:  In order to prepare our young people to be engaged citizens, to compete in the global job market, and to keep up with both persistent and emerging challenges facing our country, the United States must ensure that teaching is a highly respected and supported profession, that accomplished, effective teachers guide students’ learning in every classroom, and that effective principals lead every school. 

Despite the fact that teaching and leading schools is intellectually demanding, rigorous and complex work, too often educators are not acknowledged as professionals with unique skills and qualifications. They receive little classroom experience before certification, and once in the field, they are not supported, compensated, or promoted based on their talents and accomplishments. Too often teachers and principals operate at schools with a factory culture, where inflexible work rules discourage innovation and restrict teachers’ opportunities to consult with others, to work together as a team, and to take on leadership responsibilities. As a result, the field of education is not highly regarded – many of America’s brightest young college graduates never consider entering the profession,[1] and others leave prematurely, while too many of our students are left without the education they need to thrive in the 21st century. 

The Vision:  It is time for a sweeping transformation of the profession. We must develop innovations in the way we recruit, prepare, credential, support, advance, and compensate teachers and principals. As in other high-performing countries, our schools of education must be both more selective and more rigorous. To attract top students into the profession and to keep talented teachers from leaving, we must dramatically increase potential earnings for teachers. We must create career and leadership opportunities that enable teachers to grow their roles and responsibilities without leaving the classroom, and we must intentionally develop teachers who are gifted managers into school leaders and principals. Rather than linking compensation solely to years of service or professional credentials, teachers’ pay should reflect the quality of their work and the scope of their professional responsibility. To ensure that the students who need the best teachers and principals get them, salaries should also reflect taking on the additional challenges of working in high-need schools (urban and rural) or in hard-to-staff subjects. Care should be given to ensure that teachers in these schools are well supported by principals who respect their expertise and create positive school cultures with high expectations for everyone.

To transform the profession, we envision a school model and culture built on shared responsibility and ongoing collaboration, rather than on a top-down authoritarian style. Our call for historic improvement in the professional opportunities for and compensation of teachers and principals is matched by an equally dramatic effort to rethink how teaching is organized and supported. We see schools staffed with effective principals who are fully engaged in developing and supporting teachers, who involve teachers in leadership decisions, and who provide teachers with authentic, job-embedded professional learning. Likewise, we see families working in partnership with schools, where parents are welcome and where they respect the efforts of educators to teach their children. Finally, we see schools made stronger by leveraging community resources, expertise, and activities, and we envision communities that thrive as they are anchored around highly effective schools.

Teachers and school leaders work every day with our nation’s children—an intrinsically rewarding and joyful job. We need to redesign the profession so that we unleash the inherent joy in teaching and learning, nurture creativity and innovation in our schools and classrooms, and deliver the outcomes that our children deserve and our country’s future demands. Moving toward this vision will require tough choices and a willingness to embrace change, but the urgency and the opportunity for real and meaningful progress have never been greater.

The RESPECT Project. To support this vision, the U.S. Department of Education has begun working with educators—teachers, school and district leaders, teachers’ associations and unions, and state and national education organizations—to spark a national conversation about transforming education for the 21st century. We call it the RESPECT Project. RESPECT stands for Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence, and Collaborative Teaching. Educational Success recognizes our commitment to improving student outcomes. Professional Excellence means that we will continuously sharpen our practice and that we will recognize, reward, and learn from great teachers and principals. Collaborative Teaching means that we will concentrate on shared responsibility and decision-making. Successful collaboration means creating schools where principals and teachers work and learn together in communities of practice, hold each other accountable, and lift each other to new levels of skill and competence.

There is no one path to success. Different districts, schools, principals, and teachers will take different approaches to achieving the vision. Our goal is for a national conversation about the RESPECT Project to serve as a catalyst for remaking education on a grand scale. To do so, we must lift up the accomplished teachers in our classrooms and bring in a new generation of well-prepared, bright young men and women. Together these teachers will make education a valued and respected profession on par with medicine, law, and engineering. We must staff our schools with strong principals who nurture and develop great teaching. And we must take a whole-system approach to support these teachers and principals in our schools. By transforming the teaching profession, this country’s most important work will become our most valued work. 

II. A New Vision of Teaching and Leading

A truly transformed education profession requires us to think boldly as a country about how we might redesign our educational systems to attract, prepare, support, retain, and reward excellent teachers and principals. Just as critically, we must think about how the classroom, the school environment, and the school day and year might be reshaped to support and sustain this transformation.  

A Reorganized Classroom

A new vision of education begins with the recognition that teachers are passionate, skilled professionals whose focus is on effectively engaging students, ensuring their learning, and shaping their development. Teachers know that to productively engage in our democracy and compete in our global economy, students will need strong, well-rounded academic foundations; cultural and global competencies; the ability to collaborate, communicate, and solve problems; and strong digital literacy skills. We would like to see the classroom transformed into a place where accomplished teachers creatively apply their knowledge and skills to meet these goals, and where their expertise is acknowledged by parents, students, and administrators. To this end, we envision inclusive schools and classrooms that are configured based on students’ needs and teachers’ abilities, rather than on traditionally prescribed formulas.  In these schools, teams of teachers, instructional leaders, and principals collaborate to make decisions about how schools and classes are structured, creating spaces where faculty members can visit one another’s classes to learn from each other and to work together to solve common challenges.

Structuring classrooms to maximize instruction could take many different forms. For example, classrooms with many high-need students might contain fewer students than other classes. The most accomplished teachers might be asked to serve a larger number of students per class, with teams of Resident or Beginning teachers extending the reach of the most accomplished teachers, while offering newer teachers the opportunity to learn by observing and assisting a Master teacher. Likewise, the format and mode of instruction might differ according to students’ needs and the technology available. The traditional physical classroom space might shift to clustering arrangements or stations where groups of students engage in distinct tasks, some collaborative and some individual, that use a variety of activities to continually engage students in different modes of learning.

In this new vision, classroom learning is guided by rigorous academic standards and high expectations, while being supported by data and technology that are student-centered and teacher facilitated.[2] High-quality data measuring student learning is made available and accessible to teachers on an ongoing basis—in real time, where appropriate. Teachers are prepared to use the data to inform and adapt instruction hour-to-hour, day-to-day, and year-to-year. 

Technology also plays a strong role in personalizing learning and supplementing classroom instruction so that students can learn at their own pace and with a wider array of approaches and resources. The introduction of technology into more classrooms is accompanied by additional support (e.g., classroom aides and extensive guidance on how to best utilize the new technology to meet learning objectives) to ensure that new instruments truly enhance – rather than diminish—the teacher’s instruction. To the extent that technology facilitates teachers’ ability to engage more students simultaneously, the use of technology can support flexible student-teacher ratios, freeing up some teachers to provide additional support to students who need more of their attention.

A New School Day and School Year

In a transformed education profession, the academic needs of the student body determine the structure of the school day, week, and year, and the current school calendar is replaced by a calendar developed with sustained student learning in mind. Students are no longer held in lock-step, age-based cohorts (grades), but instead progress through the system based on what they know and can do. Using this type of individualized approach, coupled with dynamic grouping, some students may need a longer school day or school year, while others performing at or above grade level might be able to learn within the time traditionally allotted or at an even faster pace. For teachers, this means that the hours of instruction might vary depending on the student population. Teachers working with students in need of additional learning time might have extended hours of instruction to provide every student with time and support to master the content. Principals and other instructional leaders, such as master and mentor teachers, work with their colleagues to determine the most effective strategies to utilize time.

To get the job done, teachers work professional weeks and days—as many do already—that extend beyond the traditional school day. Removing the outdated time schedule that currently exists in many schools provides teachers with more choices and greater flexibility in how they use their time to accomplish their goals. More flexibility in the school day also affords teachers time needed for reflection, for planning and collaboration, for the review of student data, and so on.  Sufficient time for collaboration is especially needed for teachers of students with disabilities and teachers of students who are English learners. In some cases, time spent on duties out of class exceeds the amount spent in the classroom. Even when the hours of direct instruction remain roughly the same, many teachers work year-round to provide additional instruction for certain students, to collaborate with colleagues, and to engage in meaningful professional learning. For example, a cohort of teachers who focus on remediating students who are falling behind might have a lighter load during the normal school schedule, but they might use additional periods to help students who need more time. Others might participate in strategic planning for the school, extracurricular activities with students (e.g., college tours, summer field trips, etc.), or curriculum development during the extended time. Principals maximize use of the additional time, not by adding to teachers’ workloads, but by teaming with teacher leaders at the school to provide the structures, schedules, and systems needed to support great teaching.

Finally, to provide the flexibility that teachers might request at different points in their careers, part-time teaching opportunities are available so that some teachers may work fewer hours a day, fewer days a week, or fewer months a year. Teaching is uniquely suited to this type of flexible staffing, and it could be an option offered to teachers and schools with unique needs, for example those in rural areas and in hard-to-staff or specialty subjects. 

An Environment of Shared Responsibility Among Teachers and Principals

Today’s schools are still places where, by and large, a set number of students and one teacher work at individual desks behind a closed door. Too many teachers remain in isolated classrooms, lacking collaboration and feedback from their peers and school administrators. We envision a shift in philosophy away from the closed-door approach and toward greater communication and cooperation. Similarly, the NEA Commission on Effective Teaching and Teachers (CETT) proposes a change in the culture of teaching and calls for teaching professionals to boldly challenge the status quo by teaching, collaborating, and leading in new ways.[3]

Strong Principals. Research has shown that leadership is second only to teaching among school influences on student success and that the impact of leadership is most significant in schools that have the greatest needs. Effective principals, along with other instructional leaders, recognize the potential they have to create a school environment where teachers want to work and where effective teachers can thrive. They maintain a constant presence in the school and in classrooms, listening to and observing what is taking place, assessing needs, and getting to know teachers and students. They mobilize the school around a clear mission, high expectations and shared values, and school improvement goals. With the aim of meeting clear performance goals, principals find creative ways to maximize the time and productivity of their most precious resource—their teachers. They create spaces in the workday for teachers to collaborate, to view each other’s classrooms, to solve problems as a team, and to build their expertise. In a transformed profession, principals recognize effective teaching and know how to facilitate professional development and career paths for educators. Principals and other school-based instructional leaders are evaluated based in part on how well they select, prepare, develop, and support excellent teachers, just as superintendents and other administrators are measured partly by how well they support effective schools and principals.  

Distributed Leadership. A handful of effective educators in a dysfunctional school cannot make a sustained difference for children. Principals and other leaders must systematically create opportunities for participation by all stakeholders to develop a plan that is values driven and data informed. A culture of shared responsibility requires principals who bring together coalitions of teacher-leaders who have the skills to meet the school’s objectives and create a culture of continuous learning and shared decision-making. Teams of teacher-leaders and principals work in partnerships to identify challenges, propose solutions, and share in distributed leadership and decision-making at all levels, including hiring, structuring the school day and school year, and designing professional learning. 

A Teaching Career That Attracts, Prepares, Supports, and Rewards Excellence

At present, too many teachers enter the classroom unprepared. Some fail to become effective but still remain in the profession, while other effective teachers leave because they feel unsupported and underpaid.[4] Moreover, many of our nation’s highest performing college students never consider entering this rewarding and important field. 

A new vision of the teaching profession revises each step of the current career trajectory:  raising the bar for entry, preparing teachers well during pre-service programs with high standards for exiting successfully, and supporting and rewarding effective teachers at each stage of their careers so that they continue to grow, be recognized for professional accomplishment, and ultimately stay in education. Leaders in this profession continually assess teachers’ effectiveness and accomplishments, simultaneously empowering school leadership to personalize professional development, to deliberately reward contributions to the larger community, to provide opportunities for advancement, and to dismiss teachers who are ineffective despite ample support. 

Entering the Profession. Currently too many teacher preparation programs fail to attract and select highly qualified candidates with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to take on the challenge and complexity of teaching today’s students. Moreover, once in a program, many candidates don’t receive the clinical preparation they need to manage classrooms and teach students with a range of needs and abilities. In addition, individuals who may wish to become teachers later in their careers often find themselves excluded from the profession because they haven’t pursued traditional pathways into the field, even though they may have the aptitude and knowledge to do an exceptional job. Finally, certification for all new teachers, whether entering teaching through traditional paths or not, sets a low bar that is often disconnected from classroom performance. 

In a 21st-century profession, teacher preparation programs set a high bar for both entering and exiting their programs successfully. To enter programs, aspiring teachers come from the top tier of students in the country, demonstrate subject-area expertise (or be in the process of becoming experts in their subject area), and display dispositions associated with successful teaching, such as an ability to connect with students from a wide variety of backgrounds, perseverance, and effective communication skills with teachers, students, principals, and community members. The student teaching experience itself is taken very seriously, with student teachers supervised by highly effective classroom teachers who have been trained as mentors. Likewise, supervisors from the student-teacher’s preparation program carefully consider the feedback of the classroom teacher when deciding whether teachers have successfully completed the precertification program. To successfully complete a preparation program, preservice teachers demonstrate strong subject-area knowledge, proficiency in improving student learning through research-based practices, solid understanding of pedagogy, and the ability to work effectively with peers towards common goals. Successful completion of student teaching indicates that the student-teacher has accomplished something significant, meeting an important bar for entry into the profession, and preferably earning the student teacher a position in the school or district where the student teaching took place.   

In our vision, traditional teacher preparation programs provide one among several paths into the profession. Alternative pathways might include obtaining an advanced degree or working extensively in another field, then gaining certification from the state and entering the classroom as the teacher of record upon demonstration of satisfactory performance. All teacher preparation programs track and publish data on how successful their graduates are as teachers (through ratings of principals and other measures, including student learning) and how long their graduates stay in the profession. These data are considered by aspiring teachers deciding among preservice programs and by school districts making informed hiring decisions. There are also pathways for career changers who have extensive content knowledge and experience in another field, but who need an entryway into the classroom that matches their professional history.

Though teachers enter the profession through different avenues, all preparation pathways require demonstrated effectiveness in the classroom. For example, candidates following a traditional college or university trajectory participate for one to two years as Resident teachers under the aegis of a Master teacher. Career changers with significant subject-area expertise might be able to demonstrate proficiency in other ways and step in as Beginning teachers focused on building their pedagogy and teaching repertoire. In all cases, teachers move along the career trajectory, based on demonstrated performance, and continue receiving support as needed. 

Career Pathways and Professional Advancement. A significant challenge in retaining effective educators has been finding ways to offer teachers satisfying career paths, avenues that allow them to take on significant roles and responsibilities and earn higher salaries without leaving the classrooms they love. Teachers long for opportunities that recognize their talents and allow them to contribute to transforming their schools into more effective centers for learning. Moreover, teachers who may have interest in moving to an administrative role would benefit from avenues that allow them to cultivate their skills over time while still serving as effective teachers. As Madeleine Fennell, chair of the NEA-sponsored Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching, has said, it is “ ... time to blast open the glass ceiling or glass door of advancement in the [teaching] profession.” A new vision of the profession would offer accomplished teachers multiple pathways to advance their careers without leaving the classroom. Development and advancement could occur at every stage of a teacher’s career, based on demonstrations of effectiveness with students and colleagues. 

One vision of such career pathways might look like this. New graduates—or perhaps those still in preparation programs—might enter the profession as Residents, working under the supervision of Master teachers until certified. Once aspiring teachers demonstrate basic proficiency in the classroom and are certified, they become Beginning teachers. In the Beginning status as teacher of record, teachers might continue developing knowledge and skills for several years, working with a Master teacher or mentor, before earning full Professional status and receiving substantially higher pay. Earning Professional teacher status would require a teacher to demonstrate effective teaching, including successive years of improving student outcomes. Beginning teachers unable to demonstrate effectiveness in a reasonable amount of time would not remain teachers.

Once Beginning teachers advance to Professional status, they could remain in the classroom for the rest of their careers if desired, but they would have other options. Some may want to remain teachers but mentor Beginning or Resident teachers for part of the day as Master teachers. Others may prefer to spend part of their day taking on leadership responsibilities, such as planning community outreach, developing curriculum, or planning professional development, as Teacher Leaders. Teachers would be offered a career lattice that recognizes varying professional strengths and interests and matches experience, desire, and expertise with commensurate levels of responsibility and compensation. For an example, please see the Sample Teacher Role Structure on p. 24. 

In our vision, principals also are selected based on their ability to be instructional leaders and to manage the complex dynamics of schools. Leaders in districts look for teacher-leaders who would make excellent principals and develop their repertoire of skills. If a teacher decides to become a principal, he or she secures additional preparation to be certified as a principal, including significant clinical experience in a leadership capacity. 

Teacher Evaluation and Development. The majority of teachers report that teacher evaluation systems have been broken for decades. Even as the metrics in many states and districts have improved, most teachers are still assessed in very distinct events once or twice a year, rather than through a process that affirms their strengths and helps them to improve their practice. For teaching to be truly transformed, educators need integrated and useful evaluation systems with results closely aligned to professional learning. Teachers and principals should contribute to designing and implementing equitable and transparent evaluation systems with multiple measurements of effectiveness. 

The evaluation systems we envision include a range of summative and formative components, such as an analysis of teacher responsibilities and accomplishments, measurements of student growth data, results from the formal and informal observations, self-evaluations, and feedback from students and peers. Observations are made by skilled evaluators who are knowledgeable about both content and pedagogy. These evaluations are more meaningful and useful for informing decisions related to all aspects of advancement, including compensation, tenure, and dismissal. 

In a transformed profession, all teachers and principals are fully evaluated at least annually, regardless of tenure status. Furthermore, the professional learning that springs from the results of evaluations is used to transform teacher training. Professional learning is an important priority in school learning communities, with learning plans inextricably linked with current classroom practice, and with teachers observing and helping to sharpen each other’s methods. Instead of primarily sending teachers out of the building for expensive professional development that helps only a few, schools become learning communities that promote collaborative work and align teacher development with high, nationally recognized standards for professional learning. As a result, teachers’ continued development includes ongoing, job-embedded professional development that is informed by data and that integrates innovative theories with efficacious practice, emerging educational research, and models of human learning to achieve outcomes for students. Teachers share in decision-making around their professional learning, so that teachers in one school decide to work on how to best implement their state’s newly adopted state standards, while others focus on strategies to connect with the community and parents more effectively. For example, teachers could engage in professional development to build their skills using technology to engage students, personalize instruction, or enhance their communication with parents and the educational community. 

Compensation. Most educators enter the profession because they want to nurture young people, to watch their students learn, grow, and thrive. Many see teaching as a calling. Because they believe that education can propel a child out of even the most hopeless of life circumstances, they teach to enable all students—regardless of their zip code—to create futures full of possibility and promise. Without diminishing these intrinsic rewards, most teachers and principals tell us that compensation really does matter. This complex, demanding, and critically important profession demands a compensation structure commensurate with that of other professions that are highly valued by society. That is what it will take to attract and retain the highest caliber of talent in education, and that is what the profession is worth.

In our vision, starting salaries for fully licensed professional teachers should be $60,000–65,000, adjusted as appropriate to the cost of living in different regions. Additionally, salaries would increase faster than they do today, and maximum salaries would be higher, so that Master teachers and other teacher-leaders would have the ability to earn as much as $120,000–150,000 after about 7–10 years. Principals would earn comparable salaries. Whereas today’s compensation tends to be linked solely to years of service or professional credentials, under this new vision, salary would reflect the quality of a teacher’s work, his or her effectiveness helping students to grow academically, and the scope of the teacher’s responsibility. 

To attract the best teachers and principals to work with the students who need them most, competitive salaries might be paired with other incentives such as bonuses, tuition subsidies, portable licenses, and loan forgiveness. These same inducements might be used to attract and retain teachers in high-demand subjects like STEM, English language instruction, and special education. 

It takes more than just salary to create high-performing schools. Teachers need supportive and effective principals and strong school cultures if students are to succeed. They need appropriate resources and support. And they need buildings that are physically and technologically suited to teaching and learning. But we do not expect other professionals—doctors, engineers, architects—to work multiple jobs to cover basic expenses, to afford a home, or to send their children to college. We are entrusting the future of our nation to our educators. Their compensation matters.

This is our vision for P–12 education: That our students graduate from high school as creative and critical thinkers who are well-prepared for college and careers, and ready to participate as responsible and engaged citizens in our country and in the world. Certainly, our students have a part in the responsibility for their own growth and learning, and we adults have much progress to make motivating them to make good choices. But our vision will be realized only when we as a nation take seriously our obligation to prepare all of our young people for the opportunities they will have and the challenges they will face, and when we treat our principals and teachers as the professionals that they are.  When we make a commitment to recruit, train, develop, support, and pay our educators well, and when these educators share responsibility for ensuring every student’s learning, our children, our economy, and our country will reap the benefits for generations.

Sample Teacher Role Structure

There are numerous structures that might offer teachers meaningful career lattices that could support excellent teaching and leadership. Ultimately, it will be up to schools and districts to work with teachers to develop these arrangements and determine the right mix of roles and responsibilities that will work for them and for their students. We offer one example below.

A. Entering the Field:  The Resident Teacher

The Resident teacher is a beginner who, still in (or perhaps fresh out of) a teacher preparation program, engages in a highly supported teaching practicum or residency. Unlike current student teaching experiences, Residents would be paid for their work (perhaps $20,000). Paired with a Master teacher who has content-area expertise and provides support, feedback, and coaching, Residents are not yet teachers of record. Rather, under the Master teacher’s supervision and tutelage, they continually reflect on and develop more fully their skills, including preparing effective lessons, analyzing data, communicating with parents, and managing classrooms. 

Most teachers, though not all, will experience a residency program for one year and move on to be certified as Beginning teachers only after meeting a bar of minimal proficiency set for entering the profession. Some teachers, unable to achieve this goal at the end of a second year, will not be granted entry.

B. Developing Greater Effectiveness: The Beginning Teacher

The Beginning teacher is a certified educator who is ready to take on the challenges and joys of running a class independently as the teacher of record but who is still developing into an effective instructor. Beginning teachers demonstrate that they have learned essential teaching skills that allow them to effectively instruct and monitor the progress of students, but their development is still monitored, nurtured, and evaluated, and progress proceeds in a planned and intentional way. School leaders encourage their growth and development by pairing them not only with a quality Master teacher from the same content area, but also by engaging them with a variety of energetic and experienced colleagues. These collegial interactions expand the Beginning teachers’ perspective and include them as important contributors to school life. Successful school leaders will continually watch for the Beginning teachers’ areas of passion and interest and encourage them. 

Teachers in the Beginning role are considered pre-tenure instructors, but unlike pre-tenure colleagues from the old system, who were instructed to “keep quiet until tenure,” Beginning teachers will be consciously and systematically encouraged to contribute to the larger school community. Beginning teachers may earn salaries akin to today’s beginning teachers—between $35,000 and $50,000 per year for their service—and they will spend two to five years honing their skills before being promoted to Professional teacher, a title earned by demonstrating sustained effectiveness—perhaps after receiving two years of  effective ratings in a row. Tenure may also be conferred at this point in a teacher’s career. Those Beginning teachers who do not meet this high bar will not continue in the profession. 

C. Earning the Full Respect and Responsibility of the Profession:  The Professional Teacher

Professional teachers are tenured professionals who focus the majority of their energy on teaching and learning. Such teachers thrive in a classroom where creative, collaborative, and engaged instruction is the norm. Professional teachers are exemplary lifelong learners whose fascination with academic content is paired with their ability to use data to promote academic growth. They are reflective practitioners who are informed by the ongoing, professional feedback of peers and students. Unlike solo fliers, Professional teachers actively seek to involve school leaders, colleagues, parents, students, and community partners as important sources of information and expertise. The Professional teacher is also a tireless academic advocate and coach who manages the myriad resources in the school and community to support student success.

Professional teachers receive an immediate and significant salary increase when they are promoted from Beginning status, having demonstrated their effectiveness with students. Salaries for Professional teachers might range from $65,000 to $120,000, depending on teachers’ skills and continued effectiveness over time. Professional teachers may remain in this role for their entire careers, assuming that they continue to demonstrate effectiveness through their evaluations, or they may choose to advance into leadership roles. 

D.  Developing Teachers and Students:  The Master Teacher

A Master teacher is a classroom-based, exemplary educator who models effective teaching practices for Resident and Beginning teachers, and who serves as a teaching resource for the entire professional team. As highly effective educators and lifelong learners who use research-based techniques, the Master teacher is a “teacher of adults,” one who possesses the skills and disposition to support and inspire colleagues, as well as the ability to offer constructive feedback and evaluation of Beginning teachers and Resident teachers. Master teachers are key members of a school’s leadership team; they focus on cultivating and supporting a culture of reflection and continuous improvement. 

Master teachers could remain in the classroom on a part-time basis (e.g., three to four teaching hours/day) to allow them the remaining time to support colleagues appropriately. Master teachers are likely to have spent five or more years in the classroom and to have been rated as highly effective for at least three. Master teachers may remain in the role as long as they are highly effective for at least three out of every five years of continued practice. Master teachers, in short, are exemplary teachers of students and of their colleagues who, if desired, might make excellent principals in the future. Salaries for Master teachers may range between $80,000 and $150,000.

E. Sharing School Leadership:  The Teacher-Leader

Like Master teachers, Teacher-Leaders function in hybrid or specialty roles that sometimes have them teaching classes to students and at other times have them working with the principal or leadership team on any number of school-based initiatives. For example, a Teacher-Leader might share distributed leadership with the principal, direct a site-based research project, develop communities of practice, or design a peer evaluation and review system.

Whatever the unique job description, Teacher-Leaders are crucial members of a school or district leadership team, and are personally and professionally responsible for a school’s success. Teacher-Leaders model the most important professional practices and habits of mind, including the school’s core values. To this end, they lead school teams to examine the impact of teaching practice on student growth, and they are experts at working with adults to build a culture of learning and continuous improvement. Teacher-Leaders are not selected because they are popular with other teachers or administrators. To be eligible to become a Teacher-Leader, teachers may, for example, have spent at least five years in the classroom and have demonstrated that they are effective classroom teachers for at least three consecutive years. Teacher-Leaders may remain in the classroom on a part-time basis and may earn between $80,000 and $150,000. As with Master teachers, with further development Teacher-Leaders could become effective principals.

[1]   McKinsey & Co. (2010). Closing the Talent Gap: Attracting and Retaining Top-Third Graduates to Careers in Teaching. Retrieved from http://mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education/Closing_the_talent_gap.pdf

[2]   U.S. Department of Education (2010), Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology, National Education Technology Plan 2010. Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010

[3]   Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching (2011). Transforming Teaching: Connecting Professional Responsibility With Student Learning: A Report to the NEA. Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/Transformingteaching2012.pdf

[4]   McKinsey & Co., Ibid.

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