General Info

The National Council on Teacher Quality advocates for reforms in a broad range of teacher policies at the federal, state, and local levels in order to increase the number of effective teachers. In particular we recognize the absence of much of the evidence necessary to make a compelling case for change and seek to fill that void with a research agenda that has direct and practical implications for policy. We are committed to lending transparency and increasing public awareness about the four sets of institutions that have the greatest impact on teacher quality: states, teacher preparation programs, school districts and teachers' unions. Our Board of Directors and Advisory Board is composed of Democrats, Republicans and Independents, all of whom believe that the teaching profession is way overdue for significant reform in how we recruit, prepare, retain, and compensate teachers. Based in in Washington DC, the National Council on Teacher Quality was founded in 2000 to provide an alternative national voice to existing teacher organizations, and build the case for a comprehensive reform agenda that would challenge the current structure and regulation of the profession. In May 2006, NCTQ launched a series of studies to examine how well education schools prepare teachers to deliver instruction in different subject areas. The first study What Education Schools Aren't Teaching About Reading and What Elementary Teachers Aren't Learning examined teacher preparation in reading instruction in 72 randomly selected education schools across the nation. The end result was not only a review of teacher preparation in effective reading instruction, but also a set of practical recommendations to states, the federal government, textbook publishers and education schools on how to tackle the problems that plague this crucial area of teacher training. In June 2008, NCTQ followed-up on this report with a similar study on the state of preparation of elementary teachers in mathematics, entitled No Common Denominator. The study examined 77 education programs in 49 states and the District of Columbia, and having revealed that this area of teacher preparation is, too, in dire need of improvement, made recommendations to educators and policy makers on how to effect the change needed. Instructional resources we recommend highly for those teaching elementary mathematics to prospective elementary teachers are posted at our website, The Greatest Common Denominator. In fall 2010, NCTQ will release a third study examining prospective teachers' preparation at nearly 150 sample institutions in the crucial area of student teaching.