State education leaders across the country are rightly prioritizing efforts to improve elementary student reading outcomes. However, too often these initiatives do not focus enough on the key component to strong implementation and long-term sustainability: effective teachers. Only when state leaders implement a literacy strategy that prioritizes…

For states to succeed in their efforts to improve reading instruction, they must ensure teachers are prepared to implement and sustain scientifically based reading instruction. The states most successful in leveraging policy to improve reading outcomes for students have taken a cohesive and comprehensive approach focused on improving teachers'…

Creating a strong clinical practice experience for every teacher at scale requires that three core actors--prep programs, school districts, and states--work together. This framework sets out the six focus areas of clinical practice backed by research and supported by the field as the most important to build a quality clinical practice experience.…

Teachers of color have a positive impact on all students and make a particularly pronounced difference in the lives of students of color. For students of color, having a teacher of color can increase academic achievement and advanced course-taking, reduce discipline incidents, improve attendance, increase high school graduation and college-going,…

The purpose of the Teacher Prep Review is to guarantee teachers have expertise in reading instruction (as well as other essential areas NCTQ assesses) before being trusted to teach children to read. By regularly reviewing the reading coursework provided by nearly 700 elementary teacher preparation programs, the National Council on Teacher Quality…

Up until 2020, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading scores had increased only slightly since the early 1990s with large achievement gaps for students of color and students living in poverty. Modest gains in fourth grade reading proficiency since 1992 were erased during the pandemic. The insufficient progress in reading even…

Years of cognitive research has shown background knowledge in key subject areas, like science and social studies, is essential to reading comprehension, helping students not only understand the meaning of a text, but also interpret new words and ideas. Failing to provide the opportunity to learn to read has devastating effects on children and…

Salaries are one of the most powerful policy levers states and school districts can use to attract qualified, effective, and diverse teachers. What role do states play in supporting strategic use of salaries? This report examines the state teacher compensation policies that influence districts' potential strategic use of teacher pay. It analyzes…

Strong teacher and principal evaluation systems have the potential to help teachers and principals improve their practice, to exit teachers who are perennially ineffective, to retain teachers who are effective and learn from them, and to increase the overall quality of a district's teacher workforce. As states respond to widespread concerns (both…

When Congress reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Schools Act in 2015, it intended to send a strong signal: any further encroachment of federal authority on the nation's K-12 schools needed to end. Compared to its more prescriptive predecessor in 2000, known as No Child Left Behind, the new law, dubbed "ESSA" for the Every Student…

Improving instruction in elementary mathematics is critical to supporting better academic and life outcomes for our students. While weak elementary math instruction is not a new challenge, the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have exacerbated the issue. Many states have reported that students have lost more learning in math than in reading over the…

Over the last couple of years, we have seen increased concerns about the teacher workforce and intensified news reporting describing teacher shortages. In response, many states have enacted policies largely in the absence of data on the precise nature of their staffing challenges, such as lowering standards across the board for entry into…

New to the "Teacher Prep Review" in 2021 is a standard measuring the contributions teacher preparation programs make to the diversity of their state's and local community's teacher workforce. Formerly titled Selection Criteria, the Admissions standard has been a part of the "Teacher Prep Review" since its inception in 2013.…

For any labor market to function properly, clear information is needed to guide decision making; its absence invariably leads to less than optimal decisions and inefficiencies. While the broader labor market is riddled with imperfect information, the teacher labor market is particularly vulnerable--largely for the lack of the most basic…

Most states continue to lack a comprehensive set of policies to improve teacher knowledge of evidence-based early reading methods. This excerpt from NCTQ's "State of the States 2021: Teacher Preparation Policy" examines state policy trends that govern requirements for early reading instruction knowledge in teacher preparation and…