BOSTON, MA – Celine Coggins, CEO of Teach Plus, issued the following statement after the U.S. Department of Education released its draft regulation on how schools can distribute federal education funds for low-income students under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA):
“As Title I teachers across the country know all too well, our current system of funding schools is anything but fair and equitable. A recent Teach Plus Flash Poll found that the majority of the over 1,000 Title I teachers we surveyed do not believe their schools are sufficiently funded to meet the educational needs of their students. If ESSA does nothing else to ensure student success, it is essential that pervasive funding inequities be addressed.
Earlier this year, over 600 Title I teachers sent a letter to Secretary King asking him to ‘issue regulatory language that honors the purpose of Title I and the intent of the Every Student Succeeds Act.’ We applaud the Secretary for listening to teachers and taking that action today. While the proposed regulation will not solve every problem facing every Title I school, it is clearly a positive step for their students. The proposal released today responds to input from teachers and many other stakeholders who have asked the Department to do more to address inexcusable funding disparities and ensure that low-income students and schools benefit from their fair share of funding. Teach Plus teachers – all of whom are high-performing and all of whom teach in high-poverty schools – look forward to submitting comments on the draft rule in order to ensure it does as much good as possible for the students they teach.”
About Teach Plus
Teach Plus empowers excellent, experienced teachers to take leadership over key policy and practice issues that affect their students’ success. Teach Plus programs are designed to place highly effective teachers at the center of improvements in schools as leaders of their peers and outside schools influencing policy decisions that affect their classrooms. The programs develop excellent teachers into leaders who achieve change and mobilize others in their school, district, state, and across the nation to bring change to scale. Since its inception in August 2007, Teach Plus has grown to a network of more than 22,000 solutions-oriented teachers across the country. www.teachplus.org
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