Teach Plus teacher leaders share ideas for transforming education in new book
Seventeen high-performing urban teachers weigh in on critical education issues.
BOSTON – Seventeen teachers are the co-authors of Learning from the Experts: Teacher Leaders on Solving America’s Education Crisis, published this week by Harvard Education Press. The teachers work in urban district and charter schools in Boston, Chicago, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Memphis and Washington, DC, and are affiliated with Teach Plus, a national non-profit based in Boston.
In Learning from the Experts, readers hear directly from teachers whose ideas are transforming urban classrooms and schools nationwide. In response to questions posed by district, union and non-profit leaders—including Paul Toner, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association and Kati Haycock, president of The Education Trust—the teacher authors bring their experiences to bear on critical issues facing their profession, and advocate for innovative changes that policymakers should implement tomorrow.
Teach Plus founder and CEO Celine Coggins, who co-edited the book with Heather Peske and Kate McGovern, says Learning from the Experts showcases the potential of teacher-led change. “Ownership over key problems facing the field is a hallmark of professional work,” Coggins explains in her introduction. “In most cases, actual teachers are not even invited to the table when key decisions that will affect their classrooms are deliberated and decided. This book proposes an alternative: If you want to figure out how to fix American schools, ask teachers.”
Learning from the Experts focuses on seven issues that Teach Plus believes can make an impact both on teachers’ decisions to remain in the classroom, and on student outcomes:
Using data meaningfully in schools;
Measuring effective teaching;
Improving access to high-performing teachers;
Building a performance-driven teaching profession;
Engaging earlier-career teachers in the unions;
Nurturing effective teaching through great school leadership; and
Raising the status of the profession.
In her essay on engaging with the union, Boston Public Schools teacher and coach Karen McCarthy writes, “If there is one thing I have come to realize in my 10 years of teaching, it is that the expertise and brainpower in our schools is woefully underutilized to solve the problems within them.”
Learn more about Learning from the Experts.
Read an excerpt from Celine Coggins’ introduction.
Read an excerpt from Chapter 1: Creating and Using Data in Schools.
