Day on the Hill- February 25, 2009

Teacher Preparation:  All teachers must be well-prepared and licensed in order to ensure quality. 

• Teacher professional preparation is a continuum that begins with teacher candidate recruitment and rigorous admission processes and continues throughout the professional career of a teacher through ongoing professional development and advanced certifications. Pre-service preparation, while comprehensive and complex, is just the first step in the preparation of teachers. Candidates must meet all the state's standards for subject matter and teaching knowledge before becoming a teacher of record.
• Quality preparation makes a difference and must include well-defined standards of both content and performance. Additionally, it must involve a substantial knowledge of child and adolescent development, and learning theory. Extended clinical experiences must support ideas and practices presented in coursework.

Teaching Conditions: Schools must be organized to support quality teaching in professional learning communities.

• Professional development must be driven by student learning and student performance, and should be primarily school-based. The development of a quality learning community involves teachers in the identification of what they need and the processes to be used to engage questions that are both practical and theoretical.
• Professional development is ongoing and incorporates evaluation of multiple sources of information on outcomes for students. Professional educators must use reliable and valid data to make instructional decisions.

 Teaching as a Profession: Rewarding career paths for teachers from induction to accomplished teaching must be developed with pay and pay systems that recognize teachers as professionals.

• Induction programs matter and are necessary for the continuation of strong pre-professional preparation. Induction programs must be based on teaching standards, supported by school leadership, include external stakeholders, and use mentoring as a cornerstone support system. Teachers must have time to collaborate on school-based student achievement problem solving activities.
• Retention of teachers in high need fields such as science and mathematics is a financial matter. Salary schedules need to be competitive for all teachers at the entry level, and they must be differentiated for hard to staff subjects and schools. Financial incentives for science and mathematics teacher candidates have the potential to increase the number of qualified teachers in these competitive fields.

*  Citation:  Misty Sato, University Minnesota Department of Curriculum and Instruction-Presentation to legislative committee Feb. 2009.