The Problem

Every child deserves an excellent education, yet our nation's public school systems are fraught with educational inequities. In particular, schools serving poor and minority students--especially those in urban areas--have long struggled to provide their students with an education equal to that of their counterparts in the suburbs. Armed with the knowledge that such disparities are not irredeemable, we have focused our work on these "high-need" schools and, more specifically, on influencing what research has shown to be the single most important factor in improving student achievement: the quality of the teacher in every classroom.

The Approach

Today, The New Teacher Project is playing an important role in increasing teacher quality in high-need schools across the country. We approach this problem in four ways:

• We create innovative programs that bring high-quality teachers into hard-to-staff schools;
• We identify the policy barriers that keep schools from hiring the best teachers possible and advocate for necessary reforms;
• We work hand-in-hand with school districts to optimize their teacher hiring and school staffing functions; and
• We develop new and better ways to prepare, develop, and certify teachers for public schools