The following is a list of recent resources for those focused on the professional improvement of teachers, principals, and other educational leaders.

iNACOL’s CompetencyWorks initiative released a new report, Moving Toward Mastery: Growing, Developing and Sustaining Educators for Competency-Based Education, which re-imagines professional learning for educators who are moving into competency-based education systems.  This publication re-envisions professional practice, learning and development for educators in competency-based education. As school districts transition to new, more powerful student-centered learning models, it’s critical that educators leading the transformative practice are equipped for their new roles. Moving Toward Mastery describes a teaching profession that is equity-oriented, learning-centered and lifelong; it recommends 15 strategies that can help school districts successfully make this paradigm shift.

Policy Snapshot: School and District Leadership  A review of 2018 legislative activity revealed states are working to increase the ability of school and district leaders to enter the field, perform their jobs, and advance their careers.

Sustaining Effective Teacher Practice: The Impact of the EL Education Language Arts Curriculum and Professional Development on Teachers’ Instruction  Teachers play a crucial role in helping students develop the skills needed for success in school, career, and life. These skills – which are a focus in the Common Core State Standards – include higher-order thinking and complex literacy skills, such as reading, writing, and citing evidence from texts. To address the need for high quality and lasting professional learning for teachers, EL Education developed the Teacher Potential Project, which includes the Common Core-aligned Education Language Arts Curriculum in combination with intensive professional development. The authors examined middle grades teachers’ instructional practices after one and two years of the project. They found that significantly more participating teachers encouraged students’ higher-order thinking skills–such as inference, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation–in both the first and second years. In addition, significantly more participating teachers asked students to cite evidence from texts in discussions and their writing. Furthermore, students taught by participating teachers engaged significantly more often in reading, writing, and speaking about texts in the second year of the program. (Mathematica Policy Research)

50-State Comparison: Teacher Leadership and Licensure Advancement  On the path to strengthen teacher pipelines, support excellent teaching and improve retention, many states have developed opportunities for teacher leadership and advancement. While most states offer advanced licenses to encourage ongoing learning and growth within the teaching profession, many are now also including supports and incentives to encourage more teachers to become leaders in their classrooms, schools and communities. Though district and school leaders drive teacher development and career progressions, state policymakers are creating structures and incentives to support high-quality systems.

Non-White Teachers Have Increased 162 Percent Over the Past 30 Years, but They Are Also More Likely to Quit  Part of the reason for the higher turnover rate is a side effect of the effort to recruit more non-white teachers. … Forty-four percent of new teachers leave within five years. (Hechinger Report)