Responding to Teacher Quality and Accountability Mandates: The Perspective of School Administrators and Classroom Teachers

摘要

In this article, we examine how the federal, state, and district policy environments affect the decisions and work of principals and teachers. Specifically, we examine principal and teacher perceptions of policies and practices focused on: (1) increasing the overall supply of qualified teachers; (2) recruiting qualified teachers; (3) distributing qualified teachers to hard-to-staff schools and subject areas; and (4) retaining qualified teachers over time. This paper draws on interview and focus-group data from multilevel case studies of teacher policy to better understand how principals and teachers function in the current teacher policy context. It is part of a broader research effort to explore practitioner perspectives on the array of policies and practices aimed at enhancing teacher quality across all levels of the education system in three states: Maryland, Connecticut, and New York. In the article, we consider the implications of our findings for salient policy concerns, including the highly qualified teacher provisions of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).