Teacher Preparation and Performance

Teacher training other teachers

A strong education system is built upon effective teachers. Effective teachers must be supported by effective policies and practices across their entire career, beginning with preparation and recruitment, continuing through professional growth, evaluation, environment, and compensation through teacher leadership.

Related Topics

Principal Preparation and Performance

Our Work

AIR works in a number of areas to develop effective educators. We work to achieve solutions to complex policy and practice problems and to support effective approaches that help teachers thrive:

Teacher Preparation

Preparation programs provide teachers with the skills and experiences needed to be effective educators from the beginning of their career. Learn more

Recruitment, Supply and Demand, and Teacher Shortages

Teacher quality is impacted when there are shortage areas and job supply does not match the demand. Learn more

Professional Development, Growth, and Learning

Effective professional learning can improve teacher practice. Learn more

Teacher Evaluation

A well-designed evaluation system can serve to identify highly effective teachers, generate meaningful data and feedback, and improve teaching and learning. Learn more

Teacher Compensation and Incentives

An effective compensation system should directly support district recruitment, hiring, and retention goals by recognizing and rewarding effective teachers and teacher candidates. Learn more

Teacher Leadership and Career Pathways

Teachers shouldn’t have to leave the classroom and become administrators to advance in their career. Effective teachers need opportunities to grow in their role across their entire career. Learn more

Educator Environment

Teachers are more satisfied and excel when they teach in a supportive school environment. Learn more

Latest Work

Image of map of Arizona showing Chinle
11 Mar 2019
In the Field

Building Leadership Skills to Strengthen Schools in Chinle, Arizona

The Chinle Unified School District faced both leadership challenges and teacher retention problems prior to the 2016-2017 school year. In fall 2017, AIR began providing competency-based turnaround leadership coaching, focusing on the patterns of thinking, feeling, acting, or speaking that cause a principal to be successful.
28 Feb 2019
Q & A

Meet the Expert: Monique M. Chism

Monique M. Chism, Ph.D., a vice president for Policy, Practice, and Systems Change, leads AIR’s six federally funded comprehensive and content centers and District and School Improvement portfolios. Prior to joining AIR, she served as deputy assistant secretary for policy and programs in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education. She also brings experience from the Illinois State Board of Education, Learning Point Associates (now AIR), and her time as a teacher.
12 Feb 2019
ESSA

Navigating ESSA with the AIR Co-Pilot: 13 Key Resources

State and school district leaders, whether relative newcomers to ESSA or entrenched in implementation, will find detailed information on states’ plans, policy, and research on educational practices in AIR’s ESSA Co-Pilot. The following 13 resources were chosen by AIR experts as the best entry point into this broad and deep topic.
Image of kindergarten teacher and student
8 Jan 2019
Video

REL Midwest Documentaries

The Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest (REL Midwest), one of ten regional educational laboratories funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, serves the educational needs of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Explore these documentaries to learn more about the topics we cover.
Project

MyTeachingPartner-Secondary: Scaling and Sustaining a Research-Based Teacher Professional Development Program

Eeffective approaches to improving teacher quality are hard to find—particularly teacher professional development programs. Partnering with Teachstone and Learning Forward, AIR is leading an effort to scale, refine, and test a teacher professional development program: MyTeachingPartner-Secondary. Researchers at the University of Virginia created the program based on their work linking classroom environments to student engagement, and they have demonstrated the program’s effectiveness in randomized controlled trials published in 2011 and 2015.
12 Dec 2018
Service

IL-EMPOWER Launch Package │ The District and School Improvement Center at AIR

Many district and school leaders find it challenging to chart a course to meet continuous improvement goals. AIR’s IL-EMPOWER Launch Package was developed to help Illinois district and school leaders assess their continuous improvement needs and put plans into action to improve educator effectiveness and outcomes for students.
26 Oct 2018
Report

Beyond Accountability: Improving the Use of Information to Support Teaching and Learning Through Continuous Improvement Cycles

States and school districts have made significant investments in systems to measure teacher performance, with the ultimate goal of improving student learning. In this report, AIR experts share their findings from the two-year Beyond Accountability project, in which four school districts identified a specific problem of practice and used plan-do-study-act cycles, an iterative process, to develop, test, and revise their strategies to address that challenge.
24 Sep 2018
Brief

Strategies for Implementing the Teacher Leadership and Compensation Program in Iowa School Districts

The Iowa Teacher Leadership and Compensation (TLC) system was designed to provide career pathways and compensation structures to attract, retain, and reward effective teachers; to promote continuous improvement in Iowa’s teaching workforce; and to increase student academic achievement. As part of an independent evaluation, AIR conducted these case studies of six Iowa school districts to identify promising local strategies for implementing TLC.
Image of report cover
22 Jun 2018
Report

Improving Teaching Effectiveness: Final Report

The Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative was a multiyear effort to dramatically improve student outcomes by increasing students' access to effective teaching. This final report is the result of a six-year evaluation of the initiative conducted by AIR and RAND Corporation.
Image of teacher at chalkboard smiling at student raising hand
12 Jun 2018
In the Field

Better Data May Equal Better Prepared Teachers

The lack of easy data sharing between K–12 systems and teacher preparation may be costly, in terms of the quality of instruction by new teachers. In this report from the field, Jenny DeMonte describes the efforts of some states to actively share data.
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