There are many factors that affect a child’s success in school, but none as much as the quality and motivation of the teacher in the classroom. The states of Tennessee and Texas have tracked the correlation between highly qualified teachers and student achievement, and they have found that the effect of teaching on student learning is greater than class size, greater than school location, greater than family income or student ethnicity.

If we want Delaware’s public schoolchildren to be the best educated in America, we need to assure that we are attracting the very best teachers to Delaware’s public schools, and creating working conditions and classroom environments for those teachers that will nurture real success. We need to treat our public school teachers as true professionals. We must respect and enhance their expertise at the same time as we hold them accountable for progress.

Matt’s four-part plan for teachers includes:

Making Delaware’s Starting Teacher Salaries The Best In The Region. The salary and benefit package that we are offering new teachers must be the best in this part of the country. Last year, Delaware’s Public Education Compensation Committee analyzed the regional competitiveness of Delaware’s starting teacher salaries. In a couple of areas we were a little ahead, in several we were behind. We need to do better—our starting salaries for school teachers, and the benefits associated with those salaries, must clearly be the best in the region, so that future teachers will know that Delaware is the place to be. The costs of increasing teacher pay and benefits will be partially offset by his plan to move education money from administration to the classroom (details here). We spend millions of dollars a year trying to lure new businesses to our state. It is about time that we realized that if we want to recruit new businesses, we can do that best by recruiting excellent new teachers. Strong schools are the backbone of a strong state economy.

Controlling Class Size. Too often, the value of class size is measured only by student achievement. That is one valid way to measure its importance. But another important measure is teacher satisfaction. Teachers want to work in an environment where they feel that they are making a difference for their kids. Smaller class sizes—even incrementally smaller class sizes—will make our state more attractive to new teachers and cause them to stay in the teaching profession. Delaware’s existing class size law, even with all of its waiver provisions, has been somewhat effective: eighty percent of the state’s elementary classrooms covered by the law are meeting their class size limits. We should aim to make incremental improvements in that class size statute, so that we can show teachers that we are headed in the right direction.

Changing The Way Teacher Are Paid. Teachers who take on additional challenges and teachers who excel in the classroom should be rewarded. We in Delaware are well positioned to learn from places like Minneapolis and Denver that have successfully implemented innovative teacher compensation plans. Successful programs have several common features. First, teachers must be involved from the outset in designing the programs. There may be disagreement but teachers must be involved in the discussions from day one. Second, a new compensation system must be accompanied by significant new funds—higher compensation for greater accountability. Third, it should include significant financial incentives for teachers who are willing to teach in challenging schools. Finally, a system must include carefully developed teacher performance measures that are understandable and are based on student improvement in the course of a school year. Because of the status of the state’s finances, this change in teacher compensation should be implemented for the 2009-2010 school year on a pilot basis in two school districts. A significant state grant for the budget year starting July 1, 2009 should be created the districts that are the first to submit acceptable alternate compensation plans, and dedicated staff in the Department of Education should assist local districts in developing those plans.

Bolstering Professional Development. Professionals in every other walk of life receive constant training to make sure they are at the top of their game. Teachers should be no different. One area that has been universally recognized as being critical to professional development, is in the classroom follow-through for professional development: having instructors—often senior teachers—who move from classroom to classroom to help teachers put into practice the skills they learn in their training. Research has shown that it is critical to good teaching. And new teachers will be more likely to come to a state that takes their professional development seriously. Delaware has started efforts to provide this classroom peer mentoring, but those efforts should be significantly expanded.