President Obama and Secretary Duncan have made stronger teacher evaluation a key part of their education reform efforts. Under their signature plan, called 'Race to the Top,' states can win federal support for schools by improving teacher evaluations.
As a Member of Congress from one of the fastest growing States in the country, we hire close to 2,500 new teachers a year, close to 5,000 support staff and faculty.
In the depth of the near depression, that he faced when he came in, Barack Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress provided 'recovery funds' that literally kept our classrooms open. Two years ago, these funds saved nearly 20,000 teacher and education jobs - just here in North Carolina.
America needs education reform on all levels to expand quality schools, build on past successes, and lower college debt.
Few things are more important to our country's future than recruiting and keeping great teachers in our schools.
Liberals spend a whole lot of time trying to convince us they love teachers, but dig even skin deep into the matter, and it becomes evident that liberals hate teachers.
Our public education system does a great job. I don't think it's broken. We aren't interested in doing reform for reform's sake. I believe in public education; it did a great job for me. It deserves our support and encouragement.
In my mind, there is no reason public school reform should be a partisan issue.
We must question why the smartest students don't choose to become teachers.
Good education is linked with good teachers. We need to think how we can have good teachers. India has the capability to produce & export as many teachers to the World as it needs. We need to think about how we can create an environment where children want to become good teachers.
More than half of my former students teach - elementary and high school, community college and university. I taught them to be passionate about literature and writing, and to attempt to translate that passion to their own students. They are rookie teachers, most likely to be laid off and not rehired, even though they are passionate.
While I agree completely that attracting good teachers is difficult, and we need to spend more time doing that - in part by paying them more money - I don't think there's any evidence for the idea that somehow tenure attracts good teachers. In fact, I think the evidence is to the contrary.
Teachers make a difference, and we would serve our students better by focusing on attracting and retaining the quality teachers by raising teacher pay.
If bringing up the next generation is important, why aren't they the best qualified, the best paid? Why aren't we as concerned about their career progression as we are about those who work in the education or health services?
The good teachers are bailing out. Education is very important.... This should be the centerpiece on the table of Texas.
We have seen that, in another unfunded mandate, the so-called No Child Left Behind Act, which created tougher standards, and we all support that, but Congress did not provide the money to attract and hire the best teachers.
There has been a growing consensus across the country - from statehouses to the White House and the halls of Congress - that we need to take dramatic steps to improve our secondary schools.
You could argue that [the decline of public schools] is one of the major disasters in our lifetimes. We took one of the greatest successes in the history of the earth and turned it into one of the greatest disasters in the history of the earth.
My subjects were maths and physics. I truly appreciate the value in sciences, but understand the difficulty finding and retaining teachers for these subjects, especially when most of my Imperial cohort ended up as management consultants or in finance.
We know we've got a problem attracting to certain areas because of the cost of living, so we're thinking about things from how do we ensure key workers have accessible and affordable housing; also, how do we attract people into teaching as well.
Teaching is the profession that makes all other professions possible and yet we do not treat teachers as professionals.
Teaching is hard. It takes a lot of skill. Not everyone who tries can do it well. We need to admit that and act accordingly. We should reward and respect great teachers by paying them more, and we should stop rewarding seniority over effectiveness.
Realistically, I think we are not prepared to go home until we do get more teachers and lower class sizes.
We need to identify the least effective or ineffective teachers and for those people we need to either quickly accelerate their practice or move them out of the profession. That's what I believe and quite frankly I have never met anybody at least to my face who said they disagree with that notion.
No one is more important to the future of our state than our teachers.
