                                                              
| 2003 - No Dream Denied: A Pledge to America's Children |
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| Written by Robert A. Southworth Jr. |
| Monday, 05 December 2005 09:09 |
In its 2003 report, No Dream Denied: A Pledge to America's Children, the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF) finds that high teacher turnover and attrition have become a national crisis that is undermining teaching quality in too many of our schools. To address this crisis, NCTAF calls for a national effort to improve teacher retention by 50 percent by 2006. To reach this goal NCTAF proposes three strategies:
In 1996 the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future challenged the nation to provide every child in America with what should be his or her educational birthright: compe- tent, caring, qualified teachers in schools organized for success. The Commission’s report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future, called for this objective to be met by 2006 and provided a series of action strategies to achieve this goal. Well-prepared teachers are the most valuable resource a community can provide to its young people. Thousands of communities across the country have responded to the Commission’s challenge, by providing their children with highly qualified teachers who are supported with strong professional teaching environments. Their schools deliver an education that ranges from good to world class, and their students are achieving at high levels. To support these efforts, NCTAF’s state Partnerships have grown to 20. Through their efforts and the work of countless policymakers and researchers, we have learned a lot about how to provide the nation’s children with quality teaching. We review what we have learned, and highlight promising practices that have developed since 1996, in this report. There is good news here. But we are now more than halfway to 2006, and the fact remains that we are still not providing every child in America with quality teaching. The shortfall is particularly severe in low-income communities and rural areas, where inexperienced and underprepared teachers are too often concentrated in schools that are structured for failure, rather than success. The price paid by students is unacceptable. We have learned something troubling since 1996. We have found that high rates of teacher turnover and attrition are undermining our efforts to achieve quality teaching for every child. Teacher retention has become a national crisis. We have concluded that “teacher short- ages” will never end and that quality teaching will not be achieved for every child until we change the conditions that are driving teachers out of too many of our schools. The first sec- tion of this report documents this crisis and the strategies presented in the following sections offer an action plan to reverse this alarming trend. (Executive Summary, No Dream Denied, National Commission on Teaching and America's Future) |