American Enterprise Institute, February 8, 2019, by Frederick M. Hess and Amy Cummings

The very shape of the teaching profession has made it increasingly difficult to recruit or compensate educators in a fashion that both attracts and retains talent. Here are four ways to rethink it.

Frustration with teacher pay is widespread. This is true even considering that school spending (per pupil, adjusted for inflation) has grown by more than 30 percent since 1992.[1] A big part of the challenge is that it’s tougher to pay teachers more when school systems keep adding bodies. In recent decades, schools have added staff at a faster rate than they have added students. Between 1992 and 2015, for instance, student enrollment grew by 20 percent – but the teacher workforce grew faster still.

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EdNC, February 6, 2019, by Liz Bell

When children come to the first day of kindergarten, they come with a variety of needs, personalities, abilities, and backgrounds. The most important thing in those first few weeks is building a routine, said Annette Kent, a kindergarten teacher at Coker-Wimberly Elementary School in Edgecombe County.

“Routines are very important in kindergarten and building that stamina that they need when we start the reading process,” Kent said. “I really need them to be focusing and being on task the entire time and not losing any of their instructional time. So we’re trying to drill that importance of just being able to stay on that one task and keep that one task.”

The routine leads to more time to dive into academics.

“Kids now are expected to be able to read, write, answer comprehension questions, [in] their mathematics, they’re solving problems. I think people still think kindergarten is just counting, and it’s not,” said Coker-Wimberly Principal Katelin Row. “They’re doing addition, they’re doing subtraction, they’re doing almost everything. They’re doing foundations in geometry and working with 3-D shapes. Six year olds are doing 3-D shapes right now, and that’s not what kindergarten was 20 years ago, 30 years ago.” Read the full article…

Post-Crescent, February 1, 2019, by Jen Zettel Vandenhouten

During his first State of the State speech last week, Gov. Tony Evers announced several education priorities he’d like to address in the next state budget.

They include $600 million more for special education, restoring two-thirds funding to Wisconsin’s K-12 schools, closing the achievement gaps for low-income students and students of color, expanding early childhood and summer school grant programs and increasing mental health funding.

To make any of these priorities a reality, Evers and his fellow Democrats will need to work with Republicans, who control both houses of the Legislature. Read full article…

IndyStar, January 29, 2019, by Arike Herron

A study released Tuesday sheds new light on the depth and breadth of Indiana’s teacher pay problem – and it puts a price tag on the solution.

$658.1 million.

That’s how much the study from two reform-minded education organizations found it would take to raise the average pay for Indiana teachers to compete with neighboring states. The study attempts to quantify the size of the problem in Indiana and make recommendations for how to fix it.

Aside from raising teacher pay, the study from Stand for Children and Teach Plus stands firmly behind two initiatives to provide more support and opportunity for classroom teachers. Read the full article…

Chalkbeat, January 29, 2019, by Stephanie Wang

Indiana is so far behind neighboring states in teacher compensation that it would cost an estimated $658 million to make salaries more competitive, according to a new report released Tuesday.

That price tag for raising the average teacher pay in Indiana to $59,455, which the report says would put Indiana at a regional median for salaries, comes as state lawmakers search for ways to fund teacher raises.

“Teachers in Indiana are severely behind in terms of pay,” said Stand for Children Indiana executive director Justin Ohlemiller. “It’s clear Indiana must address this pay gap if we want to turn the tide on the shortage.” Read full article…

The Daily Dispatch, January 28, 2019, by Miles Bates

Stanford Wickham, a Vance County High School math teacher who also teaches Advanced Placement calculus to seniors, is part of a team of teachers that Maria Hernandez of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics is leading in a pilot program aimed at furthering access to excellent teaching across the state. Read the full article (article is behind paywall)…

The Daily Reflector, January 28, 2019

A public-private educational partnership will augment mathematics instruction at North Pitt High School this semester as part of a project to partner remote expertise with teachers on site at schools statewide.

The College Board and the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics are partnering with Chapel Hill-based Public Impact to reach rural North Carolina school districts with excellent NCSSM teachers, the partnership announced last week. The pilot project will focus on precalculus courses through June.

The effort will partner NCSSM teacher Maria Hernandez with North Pitt’s Sarah Donaldson as well as teachers at three other schools: Stanford Wickham at Vance County High School; Jocelyn Thammavong and Ashley Knox at New Bern High School; and Corrette Miller of Lexington Senior High School. Read the full article…