New Website Launches for Teacher Leader Model Standards

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Jan 10, 2012, 11:31 ET

National Consortium Focuses on Creating Stronger Career Pathway for Teachers

PRINCETON, N.J., Jan. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium has launched its new website — www.teacherleaderstandards.org — to build a peer-to-peer network around the Teacher Leader Model Standards, share best practices and offer resources for educators, including webinars, blogs, text and video examples that will bring the standards to life.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120110/DC33419LOGO )

The website is a tool that will help to stimulate an ongoing dialogue among stakeholders of the teaching profession about what constitutes the knowledge, skills and competencies that teachers need to assume teacher leadership roles in their schools, districts and the profession.

Ali Kliegman, Policy Associate, Center for Teaching Quality said, "Teacher leadership is not a new concept. Until we begin to cultivate, support and spread the knowledge and expertise of those who have mastered this craft, we will continue to miss the mark on achieving great gains with students."

CTQ designed the website on behalf of the Teacher Leader Exploratory Consortium, and six teacher leaders created the content which includes an overview of the standards and its seven domains along with exemplars of those domains and their functions. In addition, the site incorporates social media components through Facebook® and Twitter® to further facilitate collaboration among teachers, administrators, policymakers and other stakeholders in determining the knowledge, skills and competencies teachers need in order to become leaders in their schools and districts.

"The Teacher Leader Model Standards provide a framework for understanding and promoting teacher leadership," said Sarah Henchey, sixth-grade English Language Arts teacher. "All stakeholders in education can use these standards to create dialogue about how to elevate teachers' voices within their schools, districts and states. We hope these stakeholders will share their conversations through our virtual community and add to the website's content by sharing their own teacher leader exemplars."

Henchey has been leading the work of the exemplar content development as a Virtual Community Organizer (VCO) and the virtual community of teacher leaders who will be responding to and providing additional exemplars for the standards.

The Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium is recruiting interested teacher leaders for a virtual leadership community expected to launch early this year. Those interested should visit: http://www.teacherleaderstandards.org/contact.

The Consortium was formed over two years ago to explore opportunities to provide meaningful positions for teacher leaders in the nation's schools and focus on teachers who seek leadership roles, but do not want to leave the classroom.

For the complete list of the Teacher Leader Model Standards and the Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium members, visit www.teacherleaderstandards.org. The website funders are University of Phoenix, Education Commission of the States (ECS), Educational Testing Service (ETS), National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

"We proudly contributed to the building of the Teacher Leader Model Standards website. ETS believes that developing career continuums — offering teachers advancement opportunities while staying in the classroom — will increase retention, encourage interest in teaching and will ultimately impact student learning," said Linda Tyler, Vice President for Teacher Licensure and Certification at ETS.

The standards are already being used for curriculum for higher education coursework, establishing roles in schools, drafting legislation and state-specific standards, and for professional development for both teachers and school leaders.

About ETS
At ETS, we advance quality and equity in education for people worldwide by creating assessments based on rigorous research. ETS serves individuals, educational institutions and government agencies by providing customized solutions for teacher certification, English language learning, and elementary, secondary and post-secondary education, as well as conducting education research, analysis and policy studies. Founded as a nonprofit in 1947, ETS develops, administers and scores more than 50 million tests annually — including the TOEFL® and TOEIC® tests, the GRE® tests and The Praxis Series™ assessments — in more than 180 countries, at over 9,000 locations worldwide. www.ets.org

SOURCE ETS