The Teaching Job:
Restructuring for Effectiveness
ERS, December 2010
Recent work on improving teaching effectiveness has focused on preparing and hiring better teachers and on identifying and removing the lowest-performing teachers. These efforts are critical, but by themselves they affect only a small percentage of the total teaching force and students. To improve teaching and increase student achievement at scale, districts need to fundamentally restructure the job of teaching — changing the working conditions, requirements, expectations of and rewards for the profession of teaching. This degree of restructuring means an overhaul of the whole system of funding, assigning, supporting, compensating, evaluating, retaining, and dismissing teachers.
This guide offers practical guidance for restructuring the teaching job tailored to your district’s situation.
- Use the Online Self-Assessment to determine whether your district is achieving its goals for improving teaching quality.
- Learn more about the five areas listed above as well as the causes of misalignment between resource allocation and strategic goals.
- Apply the methodology detailed in the worksheets in this guide to figure out the extent of misalignments in your district.
- Identify actions you can take.
- Determine your priorities for reallocating resources and leveraging federal dollars.
Also, consider checking out the other Practical Tools for District Transformation we have available:
- Seven Strategies for District Transformation
- School Funding Systems: Equity, Transparency, Flexibility
- Turnaround Schools: District Strategies for Success and Sustainability
- School Design: Leveraging Talent, Time, and Money
