One of the most serious challenges, being inadequately addressed today, is making US school systems efficient, effective places for teachers to teach and for students to learn. Our failed top-down experiment to improve schools under “No Child Left Behind” has greatly damaged US education and made unpleasant work environments for far too many of our talented, dedicated teachers. Guided by groups of our best teachers, we urgently need new thoughtful, scientifically based experiments that are intensely focused on reversing this trend.
Writings by Dr. Alberts on this subject
- Empowering our best teachers: essential for producing more effective systems of education in the United States
Essay for the National Academy of Education 50th Commemorative Volume, August 22, 2015.
- Empowering great teachers
Science magazine editorial, January 15, 2016.
Some people and places currently making progress on this issue
- American Science Teacher Janet English’s ebook with videos on her Fulbright year in Finnish schools
- Ted Kolderie’s Split Screen Strategy
- The California Teacher Advisory Council (CalTAC)
- The National Academies’ Teacher Advisory Council (TAC)
- Center for Teaching Quality
- The Teacher Leadership and Compensation (TLC) System of the Iowa Department of Education
- The Leadership Institute of the Las Vegas’ Public Education Foundation