The TeachStrong campaign brings together teachers unions, teacher voice organizations, and education reform, civil rights, and education policy leaders to make modernizing and elevating the teaching profession the top education policy issue of 2016.
Washington, D.C. — Growing momentum for the TeachStrong campaign’s goals to modernize and elevate the teaching profession has drawn new partners to the TeachStrong coalition, as the campaign announced today that it has grown to 60 partners. TeachStrong, launched in November 2015 with 40 partners, is a national campaign focused on making modernizing and elevating the teaching profession the top education policy of 2016 and beyond. The diverse group of stakeholders is united by the fundamental belief that creating systems to attract and retain great teachers is the key to establishing an excellent and equitable education system and ensuring success for all students.
TeachStrong’s newest partners are:
- Bank Street College of Education
- Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence
- Profound Gentlemen
- Public Education & Business Coalition, or PEBC
- Southern Education Foundation
“Bank Street College has always elevated teaching,” said Josh Thomases, dean of innovation, policy, and research at the Bank Street College of Education. “We have a century of work supporting the kinds of positive changes in education that improve the lives of teachers, students, families, and communities. We are pleased to be part of a coalition that values teachers and schools on behalf of all of our children.”
“PEBC is proud to announce that they will be joining forces with TeachStrong’s national partners to cultivate a robust teacher workforce committed to the profession and improving student growth and success,” said Rosann B. Ward, president of PEBC. “PEBC is excited to support TeachStrong’s efforts on creating policy frameworks to drive the conversation around the recruitment, preparation, and development of diverse, highly effective educators across the continuum of their careers. We are looking forward to joining this innovative group of thought partners.”
“Ensuring that our most vulnerable students have access to highly effective teachers has been a principle of the Southern Education Foundation since our founding in the late 1800’s. We know that we cannot have drastic improvement in educational outcomes for children if we don’t recruit, support and retain a more diverse, high quality teacher workforce,” said Kent McGuire, president and CEO of the Southern Education Foundation. “We joined TeachStrong because we agree that we must modernize and elevate the teaching profession—the success of our children depends on it.”
The TeachStrong coalition believes that all students, especially those from low-income families, deserve to be taught by great teachers. To accomplish this goal, the coalition believes that the United States must modernize and elevate the teaching profession and strengthen the entire teacher career continuum. This will require investing in and developing policies that better recruit, prepare, support, and compensate teachers through all stages of their careers. The coalition has coalesced around nine policy principles:
- Identifying and recruiting more teacher candidates with great potential to succeed, with a deliberate emphasis on diversifying the teacher workforce
- Reimagining teacher preparation to make it more rooted in classroom practice and a professional knowledge base, with universal high standards for all candidates
- Raising the bar for licensure so it is a meaningful measure of readiness to teach
- Increasing compensation in order to attract and reward teachers as professionals
- Providing support for new teachers through induction or residency programs
- Ensuring tenure is a meaningful signal of professional accomplishment
- Providing significantly more time, tools, and support for teachers to succeed, including through planning, collaboration, and development
- Designing professional learning to better address student and teacher needs and to foster feedback and improvement
- Creating career pathways that give teachers opportunities to lead and grow professionally
More information about the campaign, including the full list of partner organizations, can be found at TeachStrong.org.
For more information or to speak with an expert, contact [email protected].
This release is sent by the Center for American Progress, a coalition partner to TeachStrong. The Center for American Progress is a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to promoting a strong, just, and free America that ensures opportunity for all. We believe that Americans are bound together by a common commitment to these values, and we aspire to ensure that our national policies reflect these values. We work to find progressive and pragmatic solutions to significant domestic and international problems and develop policy proposals that foster a government that is “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”