WASHINGTON, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, iNACOL
(@nacol) outlined a new vision for the future of the educator
profession, framing a role for federal policymakers to support the
alignment of the profession with the opportunities and demands of a
21st-century education system.
Developing a Modern Teacher Workforce: Federal Policy
Recommendations for Professional Learning and Supporting
Future-Focused, Competency-Based Education Systems, a new
issue brief, calls for federal policies that make the profession
more accessible to a diverse array of professionals; reimagines
higher education to support lifelong learning by teachers; and
promotes quality, accountability, and improvement. It responds to
the growing needs of states, schools and districts across the
country seeking to prepare students with the knowledge, skills, and
dispositions needed for an ever-changing workforce and economy.
The brief also articulates specific policy actions for each
recommendation. The recommendations laid out in this brief do not
necessarily need to be enacted in full or at once. However, federal
policymakers should aim to support policies that drive toward a
common vision of preparing a diverse and sustainable education
workforce for 21st-century learning and teaching. This
includes communicating clear priorities to states; providing
aligned incentives, supports, and funding; and addressing any
barriers from outdated or competing policies that exist in federal
statutes and laws today. Federal policymakers can use the levers
available to them – funding, eligibility and accreditation
criteria, incentives, and support – to enable quality, innovation,
and diversity in the teacher workforce.
"Preparing students for success in an increasingly complex
future demands that we support educators to develop contemporary
learning theory with deeper knowledge, strategies and skill sets
than that required of educators in the industrial age, which is a
model that still dominates our current school system," said iNACOL
President and CEO Susan Patrick
(@SusanDPatrick). "Moving to a future state of teaching requires
supporting educators, modernizing teacher and leader preparation
and focusing on inquiry, research and practice. And it means using
the policy levers we have under our control today to create
change."
The policy issue brief builds off a larger
report, Moving Toward Mastery: Growing, Developing and
Sustaining Educators for Competency-Based Education, and
provides three areas that federal policymakers can leverage right
now to begin better preparing and supporting teachers.
Federal policymakers should prioritize:
- Increasing affordability and instituting incentives to expand
and diversify the teacher workforce;
- Supporting innovation in teacher education to enable
21st-century learning; and
- Helping states build balanced systems of assessments.
Download a full copy of Developing a Modern Teacher
Workforce: Federal Policy Recommendations for Professional Learning
and Supporting Future-Focused Competency-Based Education
Systems here.
About iNACOL
The mission of iNACOL is to drive the
transformation of education systems and accelerate the advancement
of breakthrough policies and practices to ensure high-quality
learning for all. Visit our website, like us on Facebook, connect
with us on Linkedin and follow us on Twitter.
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SOURCE iNACOL