No Child Left Behind
The challenge of every educational leader is to find more effective ways to improve education and show results. Since the inception of No Child Left Behind, accountability has come to the forefront of every administrator’s mind. The Teacher Suite offers administrators new avenues with which to support efforts to reach and maintain No Child Left Behind goals.
In a letter on April 23, 2007 to State Superintendents and State Governors, Department of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings outlined a plan for Building on the Success of No Child Left Behind.
The Teacher Suite could have a direct impact on the implementation of at least four of the five policy priorities that Secretary Spellings describes in that letter.
Educators can partner to solve SPED and LEP problems.Policy Priority 2 of Secretary Spellings’ letter states the need to address issues concerning Students with Disabilities and students with Limited English Proficiency.
Through the platform that The Teacher Suite provides, educators can come together in ways which they have never been able to before to solve issues surrounding the education of these special needs students.
The Teacher Suite breaks down economic barriers and helps provide resources for Math, English, and all teachers.
In Policy Priority 3, Secretary Spellings addresses the need to simultaneously do two things: promote rigorous coursework for our high school students and provide resources to those schools that are considered low-income.
The Teacher Suite does both.
Because teachers are automatically grouped with like teachers of the same subject, they can not only share instructional materials, but they can collaborate to develop curriculum that steers and drives our students to success more efficiently and speedily than they have before. Due to the scope and reach of the Teacher Suite’s design, the shared vision of the educators involved in the development of curriculum can readily be engaged in the classroom.
Also, The Teacher Suite breaks down economic barriers for Title 1 schools. Teachers in economically affluent counties have no more access to content on the Teacher Suite than teachers in economically challenged counties. Every district that offers this service for their teachers has equal ability to connect and generate the same amount of excellent content and indeed, garner new and innovative strategies from the most successful of teachers, schools and districts.
The Teacher to Teacher Initiative developed by the Department of Education is a wonderful resource for teachers. But what the Teacher Suite offers is an initiative like that, every day of the year, for every teacher, and the content is delivered to educators, saving them time and energy.
Struggling schools can connect with high-achieving schools.
Administrators now can have a powerful tool to implement in the elevation of chronically under-performing schools. One possible use of The Teacher Suite’s collaborative abilities is to partner low achieving schools with higher achieving schools. Teachers and administrators in Title 1 schools certainly have different needs than Blue Ribbon teachers and administrators. Bbut through collaboration, schools in need of assistance can finally, easily and unimposingly look outside their county borders for solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems. This perhaps is one of the most powerful uses of The Teacher Suite.