Finding a New Way: Leveraging Teacher Leadership to Meet Unprecedented Demands

Given the newly refined ability to distinguish between teachers and their effectiveness, and the imperative brought on by the Common Core standards (CCSS) to deliver instruction at a more sophisticated level, it is no longer reasonable or tenable to keep treating teachers the same. Instead, school systems should provide their highest-performing teachers with leadership roles that both elevate the profession and enable them to have the greatest impact on colleagues and students. It is not easy to implement new forms of teacher leadership meaningfully and effectively; doing so involves some profound changes to the status quo. This paper addresses what is necessary for change and how school systems might be able to achieve it. Broadly speaking, teacher leadership is defined as specific roles and responsibilities that recognize the talents of the most effective teachers and deploy them in service of student learning, adult learning and collaboration, and school and system improvement. This paper explains why systems pursue teacher leadership strategies and why it is important to embed that work in a specific vision of what the system seeks to achieve more broadly. The vision for teacher leadership and what it can facilitate can be quite varied across school systems and may include any of the following: (1) A culture of collaboration, shared accountability, and continuous improvement among adults; (2) Greater capacity and commitment to differentiate instruction to meet students' needs; (3) Recognition, through status and compensation, that excellent teachers can be on par with school leaders; and (4) New ways of organizing and delivering instruction that increase the number of students highly effective teachers reach. (Contains 16 endnotes.) [For "Finding a New Way: Leveraging Teacher Leadership to Meet Unprecedented Demands. Executive Summary," see ED541443.]