Thank you all for coming.

 I want to congratulate Pat Forgione, Marty Orland, John Rolfe and the entire team at the National Commission for Education Statistics. Teacher quality is a big issue that's tough to get your arms around, but a very important issue nonetheless. These biennial reports will help educators get a better handle on the challenges facing teachers in the new millennium.

 I'd like to put this data in a broader context. In recent years, school reform efforts have focused primarily on raising student performance. States are raising academic standards and developing tests to measure whether students can meet those standards.

 Increasingly, educators and policy makers are concluding that we need to focus on both student performance and teacher quality. To a great extent, top-notch student learning relies on challenging standards and equally challenging teacher learning and performance. 

As a result, some states and local schools are beginning to raise expectations and supports for teachers in order to raise student achievement levels further. State leaders, policy makers, and educators at all levels are beginning to rethink many practices used to prepare teachers and support their work in the classroom.

 The '80s and '90s produced some changes along those lines. What progress we've seen so far resulted largely from ad-hoc approaches to improving teacher quality that targeted narrowly defined issues in isolation. 

More often than not, these well-intended approaches have not treated the preparation, training and support of teachers as a continuum stretching from undergraduate studies through a teacher's career. 

The findings in this NCES study underscore this problem. The NCES study reveals several contrasts between teachers' needs and the policies and practices found in most states and local schools:
 
 

• The most common form of professional development activities continues to be the kind that teachers tell us are the least beneficial -- the "one-shot" workshops that typically last no more than a day and often carry little relevance to teachers' work in the classroom.

 

 

• New and veteran teachers alike say they do not feel very well prepared to teach effectively to the four fastest changing aspects of the nation's schools - raising standards in the classroom, students with special needs, students from diverse cultural backgrounds, and use of technology. The fact that newer teachers report as much unease as their veteran colleagues indicates that teacher education and professional development programs are not addressing the realities found in today's classroom.

 

 

• At a time when we seek to raise standards for teachers, I am disturbed that even the conservative statistical measure used by NCES found far too many teachers teaching out of their field of study. The data show this to be especially true at the middle school level.

 A primary cause for limited professional development opportunities is American custom. While doctors and lawyers routinely confer with colleagues, teachers often remain isolated in classrooms. Among teachers whose schools dedicate time for team planning, 40 percent say it improves their teaching "a lot," and another third say it improves their teaching "moderately." Yet, it is an uncommon practice. 

Through this study, teachers are telling us the kinds of support that they need and want - more peer collaboration, team teaching, common planning periods. If we don't listen to them, we will shortchange our children and our teachers by hanging on to comfortable but self-defeating practices.

 In the coming decade, America's schools will need more than 2 million new teachers. To cultivate a high-caliber teaching corps for the 21st century, American education must adopt three new R's - Recruit, Retain, and Respect. What do these terms mean in practice?
 
 

• Recruitment requires that we find new means of attracting bright teachers of all ages to the classroom, and prepare them to meet higher academic expectations and the challenges posed by an increasingly diverse student body.

 

 

• Retention means teachers need support systems that serve two purposes - to help conscientious but inexperienced teachers gain their footing in the classroom, and to provide growth opportunities that enable all teachers to enhance their skills and professional standing.

 

 

• Respect calls on us to regard teachers as practitioners of a noble profession, engage them as partners in reforming the profession, and reward excellence accordingly.

 I will discuss these issues in greater depth during my annual State of American Education address February 16 on the campus of California State University at Long Beach. I would now like to open the floor for questions.
 

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