T he P lan
Ensure that an effective teacher is at the front of
every classroom in Tennessee by recruiting talented
new teachers, providing more support to increase
the capacity of existing teachers, and creating an
environment that makes high performing teachers want
to remain in the classroom.
Continuously develop, support, and retain effective existing
teachers while counseling or evaluating out low-performing
teachers who do not improve over time.
• Embrace teacher collaboration and teacher leadership as
demonstrated strategies to continuously improve instructional
quality and educational productivity.
• Fund districts’ differentiated pay plans and encourage districts to
use significant portions of these plans to fund teacher mentoring
programs and the creation of professional learning communities
within individual schools. The state can fund these differentiated
pay plans by maintaining the existing career ladder funding at its
current level and using these monies to fund differentiated pay
plans as existing career ladder teachers retire.
• Develop, pilot, and roll out a statewide teacher effectiveness measure
based on multiple measures including student achievement gains
and potentially principal evaluations, peer review, and parent and
student surveys. Ensure a significant component of this measure
is based on a combination of student achievement and student
achievement gains for as many teachers as possible. SCORE and the
Tennessee Education Association would jointly lead the creation of
this new measure, working closely with the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation-funded teacher effectiveness initiative.
• After this teacher effectiveness measure is created, connect it to
both tenure and compensation; specifically:
Increase efforts to recruit high-quality candidates into teaching,
especially in hard-to-staff schools and hard-to-staff subjects.
• Expand programs focused on recruiting high-quality candidates
into teaching, especially in hard-to-staff schools and hard-to-staff
subjects (e.g., Teach for America, The New Teacher Project, Teach
Tennessee, Distinguished Professionals, Chattanooga / Knoxville /
Memphis Teacher Residencies, UTeach, Math and Science
Scholarships).
• Launch a task force to assist higher education institutions in
recruiting higher quality candidates into teaching. As part of this
task force, develop common recruitment tools and update the
Tennessee Teacher Employment Resources website. Members of
the task force would include representatives from the Tennessee
Department of Education, Tennessee Education Association,
Tennessee Teacher Quality Initiative, higher education institutions,
Teach Tennessee, Teach for America, The New Teacher Project,
and other key stakeholders.
Recommendation #3:
Ensure Excellent Teachers
Ensure that an effective teacher is at the front of
every classroom in Tennessee by recruiting talented
new teachers, providing more support to increase
the capacity of existing teachers, and
creating an environment that makes
high performing teachers want to
rem