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Parent Power! Helping You Make Sense of Schooling Today Managing Editor Caralee Adams Contributing Editors Anita Seline Kathleen Madigan 1001 Connecticut Ave., NW Suite 204 Washington, DC 20036 202-822-9000 800-521-2118 Fax: 202-822-5077 parentpower@edreform.com www.edreform.com Published eight times a year by The Center for Education Reform Jeanne Allen, President Bring Parent Power! to your home.  To subscribe, send our tax deductible donation of $9.95 to the address above.  Or receive a free e-mail subscription by logging onto www.edreform.com/ parentpower/signup.html Alternative certifi- cation programs, attracting mid-career professionals to teaching, formulating career ladders and creating pay-for- performance pay scales are among the variety of promising approaches that states are implementing to make sure that students have quality teachers in their classrooms. These ideas are all connected in a new school- based program called TAP — or Teacher Advancement Program — developed by the Milken Family Foundation, which goes a step further by seeking to restructure the entire teaching profession. Teachers in TAP can work their way up an expanded career ladder and be paid accordingly. Salary increases are tied to evaluations conducted by the principal and peer experts. Professional development, to help improve skills, rounds out the program. Five Arizona schools partic- ipating in TAP recognize the special roles that teachers play, such as mentoring novices, developing lessons plans, and serving as master teachers who help with curriculum and assessment improvements at their school, says Lewis C. Solmon, senior vice president at Milken. The foundation provides the technical support to schools that implement the program. TAP is also underway in Florida and may soon be rolled out in South Carolina, Arkansas and Indiana. Other states are raising the bar for teacher quality. In Pennsylvania this past September, rigorous reforms were phased in for colleges of education producing new teachers. Higher academic requirements (3.0. GPA) have been instituted for students to get into colleges of education. Once enrolled, students must maintain high academic aver- ages in their subject areas. This year, Pennsylvania also began testing all teachers in all subject areas every five years. Average test scores will show districts how teachers are doing overall and help identify training needs. States are also seeking to expand the pool of quality teachers by developing alter- native certification programs that recognize the experience and potential of skilled profes- sionals. Such programs compress the certification process period and help teachers avoid several years of study in schools of education. More than 40 states have such alternative certification programs. The first one was developed in New Jersey nearly 20 years ago and has been so successful that, now, about one- quarter of the state’s teaching corps is certified through the alternative program. Hand-in-hand with alterna- tive certification programs are ones that seek to attract college faculty to elementary and secondary school ranks and Troops-to-Teacher programs, such as those found in Kentucky. Parents demanding improved student achievement are advised to first look at the quality of the teaching corps in their schools. Reform, says Solmon, will not get results unless quality teachers are recruited and retained. “No matter what reforms you do, if you don’t have good teachers, nothing else matters,” he said. States try innovative strategies to enhance quality of teachers and have to tolerate incompe- tent colleagues, they move on to a world where excellence is recognized. TEACHER QUALITY Many parents advocate testing teachers in their subject matter to verify competence. While some tests have a lot to be desired, “it is a measure of accountability,” says Kathleen Madigan, exec- utive director of the National Council on Teacher Quality, in Washington, D.C. In Illinois, more than 5,000 teachers failed the state’s basic skills exams. The poorest children in the worst performing schools are five times more likely to have a teacher who failed the test. Test results are often not disclosed during the hiring process – a sure-fire way to prevent any form of account- ability at the front end. And, just as student performance is being scruti- nized, many are pushing for teacher pay to be linked to students’ test scores, to deter- mine the value a teacher adds to a child’s education.  As standardized testing continues to take root in schools across the country, the debate over teacher effectiveness and testing will likely continue. CONTINUED   FROM PAGE   1 The challenge of recruiting and retaining good teachers