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Past Event

A Brookings Institution - Woodrow Wilson School Partnership

Excellence in the Classroom: Improving the Quality of Teaching in America's Schools

Education, No Child Left Behind


Event Summary

As Congress considers reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, policymakers, advocates, and parents are concerned about how to meet the requirement that states provide every student with high-quality teachers. To address these concerns, Brookings and Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School released the latest volume of The Future of Children journal, "Excellence in the Classroom."

Event Information

When

Wednesday, March 28, 2007
9:00 AM to 11:00 AM

Where

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20036
Map

Contact: Brookings Office of Communications

E-mail: events@brookings.edu

Phone: 202.797.6105

On March 28 a slate of panelists including members of Congress, journal contributors, and other researchers and administrators, discussed options for improving teacher quality including in-service training, mentoring, and the recruitment of new, high-quality teachers.

Transcript

BRIAN JACOB: I think, as the volume states, there really is no one silver bullet and the effort to improve teacher effectiveness is not simply going to be a one-time initiative. It must be an ongoing initiative, both at the state and district level but also at the individual school level, and continuing research is important as we implement any of these recommendations.

I think there is unusual -- I am hard pressed to think of any policy that is so clear cut and there is such overwhelming evidence. I would advocate the entire country switching to it tomorrow with no pretense of evaluation or further work. Professional development, as we develop strategies for professional development, should be evaluated in a rigorous manner. Certainly, different methods of evaluating teachers and handling tenure decisions are fraught with a lot of complexities and should be piloted and should be rigorously evaluated, but this work needs to be done.

Read the journal and related material

Participants

Moderator

Jens Ludwig

Nonresident Senior Fellow, Economic Studies

Ron Haskins

Senior Fellow, Economic Studies

Overview

Brian Jacob

Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Harvard University; Visiting Professor of Public Policy, University of Michigan

Panelists

Congressman Michael Castle

R-Delaware

Congressman George Miller

D-California

Deborah Jewell-Sherman

Superintendent of Schools, Richmond, VA Public Schools

Kate Walsh

President, National Council on Teacher Quality

Randi Weingarten

President, United Federation of Teachers

Thomas Kane

Professor, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University