What does excellent teacher training look like?

More and more, charter organizations and districts are training their own teachers. Pioneers in the field joined a panel to provide insight on creating and running teacher preparation programs.

One major topic was “What does success look like?” Michael Goldstein of Boston’s MATCH Education responded that MATCH starts by asking the question “Will people want to hire your graduate?” This market demand type information can help inform the strengths and weaknesses of the program. They also have blind evaluators who can evaluate rookie teachers in action, and compare against other new educators.

Heather Kirkpatrick of Aspire Public Schools said Aspire’s long term measures of success include looking at retention rates, examining if they are garnering student achievement scores, observing teachers at work, and by making a difference in the teaching population (by hiring minority teachers who reflect the students they are teaching).