Everyone agrees that teacher quality is the key to education reform. The latest State Teacher Policy Yearbook grades each state for it programs to prepare, recruit, support and maintain good quality teachers and to remove ineffective ones. Unfortunately there is no really strong states but hopefully this report will provide the baseline for continued improvement. Much of it is in line with the Reach for the Top criteria.

1. Taken as a whole, state teacher policies are broken, outdated and inflexible.
While the focus on teacher quality and human capital has never been greater, the broad range of state laws, rules and regulations that govern the teaching profession remains in need of comprehensive reform.

2. Evaluation and tenure policies do not consider what should count the most about teacher performance: classroom effectiveness.
Although states control most features of teacher evaluation and tenure, student learning is noticeably absent from the conversation.

3. States are complicit in keeping ineffective teachers in the classroom.
States fail to articulate that poor classroom performance is grounds for dismissal, create obstacles for districts seeking to dismiss poor performers and provide loopholes that allow ineffective teachers to remain in the classroom.

4. Few states' alternate routes to certification provide a genuine alternative pathway into the teaching profession.
Instead of offering a real alternative, most states' alternate routes either mirror traditional routes or appear to be little more than emergency certificates in disguise.

5. States' requirements for elementary teacher preparation ill equip teachers of the youngest students to teach the basic building blocks of all learning: reading and mathematics.
Few states are doing enough to make sure that prospective elementary teachers know how to teach reading or mathematics, arguably the most important job of an elementary teacher.

6. States' requirements for middle school teachers do not prepare these teachers to transition students to more advanced secondary-level content.
Middle school grades are critical years of schooling, a time when far too many students fall through the cracks. Yet many states fail to distinguish the knowledge and skills needed by middle school teachers from those needed by elementary teachers.

7. States' requirements for the preparation of special education teachers are one of the most neglected and dysfunctional areas of teacher policy.
States' low expectations for what special education teachers should know stand in stark contradiction to state and federal expectations that special education students should meet the same high standards as other students.

8. States fail to exercise appropriate oversight of their teacher preparation programs.
States do not hold their teacher preparation programs accountable for their admission standards, efficiency of program delivery or, most importantly, the quality of their graduates.

9. States cling to outmoded compensation structures, providing few financial incentives to retain effective teachers.
States do not encourage—or in some cases even allow—districts to move away from traditional "step and lane" salary schedules and toward compensation structures that reward high-performing teachers.

10. State pension systems are not flexible or fair, and many are in questionable financial health.
States continue to provide teachers with expensive and inflexible pension plans that do not reflect the realities of the modern workforce and that they may be unable to sustain.


I offer a snapshot of one state, Massachusetts, whose students do quite well but whose grade on this evaluation is a D+.