April 2012 Archives

Four teachers have been announced as the first recipients of the Fishman Prize from the New Teacher Project (TNTP), a teacher-training group. They'll each be awarded $25,000 and get the chance to participate in a summer internship with the organization. Before you say, "not another teacher contest," this one is interesting because TNTP has designed it with the idea of spreading effective teaching practices. The summer residency program—designed so the winning teachers don't miss any class time—will involve working with other teachers to improve technique and producing a paper to be published by TNTP. Shira Fishman,...

From guest blogger Hannah Rose Sacks Starting this fall, Mississippi's Ocean Springs High School will offer a two-year academic track for students interested in teaching as a profession, reports WLOX-TV. The program, Teacher Academy, provides firsthand experience and skills-based learning opportunities to prepare students for a teaching career. The objective is to better prepare students so they not only enter the teaching profession, but remain long-term educators, according to the State Secondary Teacher Academy. A framework document cites Mississippi's projected demand for elementary, secondary, and community college teachers greatly exceeding the number of students enrolled in teacher-preparation programs as the ...

Two AFT affiliates are dealing with tricky issues arising from efforts to reduce the weight given to seniority in personnel decisions.

The nation's largest teachers' unions have joined the super PAC movement.

Following a three-hour telephone call with negotiators during which consensus seemed frustratingly out of reach, the U.S. Education Department declined to extend the rulemaking process any further, meaning it will craft the rules on its own.

Bonuses appears to have helped seven school districts attract effective teachers to low-income schools, though the longer-term impact of the transfers on teacher retention and student achievement results remains to be seen, a recently released analysis concludes.

Negotiators creating new federal teacher-preparation rules have managed to convince the Education Department to consider giving them a little more time.

Negotiators seemed no closer to reaching consensus on new federal teacher-preparation rules, after another bewildering day of discussions that continued to expose fractures among the panelists.

The panelists charged with rewriting federal teacher preparation rules faced a grueling day today during which major tension points emerged with little resolution, all of which served to call into question whether they will be able to reach consensus by Thursday.

Two states have moved to shield teacher evaluations from broad public disclosure.