Improving Science Achievement: The Role of Teacher Workforce Policies

Those concerned with educational policy face a stark reality: the students failing to achieve even minimal levels of educational achievement typically are taught by individuals whose qualifications are relatively weakest and often inadequate. These same students are most dependent upon their teachers and schools for academic learning, as nearly all of them come from disadvantaged home and community environments. This reality raises a set of questions: What is the extent to which teacher quality differs across student groups? What are the underlying causes and consequences for student learning? How can public policies best address the challenge of assuring that all students are taught by the high quality teachers needed for their educational success? We address these questions in this chapter. Teaching in traditionally hard-to-staff and low-performing schools needs to be made far more attractive. Urban districts must institute policies that make it possible to attract and retain sufficient numbers of high quality teachers for their needs in general, including sufficient numbers of highly effective teachers willing to teach in the schools traditionally hardest to staff. Even though current research does not allow us to say with a high degree of confidence how dollars can best be spent to achieve this outcome, there are a number of strategies which we believe offer substantial promise in addressing the underlying causes of the problem, including salary increases targeted to hard-to-staff schools, hard-to staff-subjects, increasing the nonpecuniary rewards of teaching, and a “grow your own” strategy of teacher recruitment.