Teacher at Work: Improving Teacher Quality Through School Design (October 2009)
There is no question that high-quality teachers have an enormous impact on student achievement. Over the years, schools and districts have looked at a variety of ways to attract better teachers to public schools, especially those serving the poorest students.
“But these reforms are likely to disappoint if nothing is done to fundamentally overhaul the way the work of teachers is organized,” Elena Silva argues in Teacher at Work. Better teaching, she says, will in the long run come not only from attracting a strong pool of talent and giving them boosts in pay, but from “changing the nature of the job.”
In the report, Silva highlights promising models of school design, such as Generation Schools in New York City, which provides a school model that focuses on the strategic use of people and time, and calls for a new approach to addressing the teacher quality challenge in public education.
Education Sector: What drew you to this issue in the first place?