TEMPLATE - Tell Your Governor: These are Teachers’ Policy Priorities

I am writing as an educator at the start of the school year to share teacher’s policy priorities:

We must reimagine the way schools operate, designing dynamic, sustainable teacher roles that better enable educators to serve all students, and particularly our most vulnerable. Doing so will in some cases require more rigid policy guidelines to ensure alignment with evidence-based practices, and in others will require increased flexibility to allow teacher leaders to innovate on the ground and scale what works.

We ask that you consider our below priorities as you work to improve the way we educate students, and the way we support our educators.

Align Funding Systems to Student Need
Despite sustained advocacy and some recent state-level progress, students with the greatest needs continue to receive the fewest dollars toward their education. K-12 education funding must increase overall, and must be allocated to the students that need it most.

Rethink the Teacher Role to Make it More Sustainable, Rewarding, and Dynamic
Teachers have too many responsibilities and are not paid enough; we must decrease their workload and increase pay across the board. The teaching role can be both rigorous and sustainable if we redesign it to have fewer responsibilities aligned with teachers’ core instructional work and more competitive compensation.

Recruit, Support, and Retain Teachers of Color
Despite their documented positive impact on student learning and wellbeing, teachers of color are sorely underrepresented in the workforce. We must prioritize pulling policy levers, such as residency preparation models and teacher leadership opportunities, that boost recruitment and retention of teachers of color.

Implement High-Quality, Culturally Relevant Curriculum and Aligned Professional Learning
Many large districts are moving toward adoption of high-quality, culturally relevant curriculum. However, adoption of these materials alone is not sufficient; teachers need ongoing professional learning opportunities to effectively implement them.

Reimagine Measures of Student Learning to Better Serve Students and Teachers
The collection of uniform data is crucial to understanding student progress; exposing gaps along racial and economic lines; and informing the equitable distribution of resources. However, while the data these assessments produce is invaluable, real challenges exist in their use. Rather than eliminating assessments, we must redesign them to be better.

Equip Teachers to Support Student Wellbeing with Welcoming and Inclusive Learning Environments
The pandemic created a student mental health crisis, which teachers report has led to increased disciplinary incidents. As a result, some are calling for a roll-back of recent success in eliminating zero-tolerance discipline policies. Instead, we must equip teachers to create inclusive learning environments, which lead to improved academic outcomes.