Recent News
Read the latest articles about TNTP, below. For press releases, check out our press room. For past articles, visit our archive.
TIME: School of Thought: 12 Education Activists for 2012
TNTP is arguably most impactful education nonprofit of the last decade.
The New York Times: Op-Ed: Don’t Treat Them Like Widgets
Great teachers are among the most respected people in our society. It’s the teaching profession that has a status problem — one that prevents it from attracting or keeping enough talented people to deliver on the promise of an excellent education for all.
Washington Post: Editorial: Seniority Should Not Make Teachers Immune to Layoffs
"Last in, first out" doesn't allow performance to be a factor in layoffs and that means good teachers - possibly even great teachers - are likely to be forced out of the classroom. The time for timidity in changing this irrational process is long past.
Los Angeles Times: When Layoffs Come to L.A. Schools, Performance Doesn’t Count
After the budget ax fell, quality-blind layoffs cost hundreds of the district's most promising new instructors their jobs. Campuses in poorer areas were disproportionately hurt.
The New York Times: Op-Ed: Teaching for America
“We have to reward excellence,” said Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “We’ve been scared in education to talk about excellence. We treated everyone like interchangeable widgets.”
Education Week: Study Calls for Clearer Teacher Evaluation Protocols
Protocols for observing teachers in the classroom during an evaluation should be written in such a way as to leave little room for inference so ratings are clear and objective, asserts a report released this week by the New Teacher Project.
TIME: How to Recruit Better Teachers
Last year the city of Memphis handed over authority for recruiting all new teachers to TNTP. Before school started in August, one way TNTP filled the approximately 800 open teaching positions in Memphis was with its Teaching Fellows, a corps of accomplished career changers recruited from around the nation.
USA Today: Our View: When Every Teacher is Rated ‘Great,’ Students Suffer
The raging debate sparked by the LA Times misses the larger point. If school officials cared enough about students to evaluate teachers properly, a newspaper wouldn't have to try to do it for them.
Eduwonk: Unmasking the “Blame the Teacher” Crowd
The hunt has intensified recently for a shadowy menace: the “blame-the-teacher crowd.” Yet the truth is that the existence of the blame-the-teacher crowd is a myth.
Memphis Flyer: Memphis as a Model
When Memphis won funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, it charged TNTP with hiring the district's teachers. Now the district's bold initiatives have put Memphis in the spotlight of national education reform.
Los Angeles Times: Op-Ed: California’s Quality-Blind Layoffs Law Harms Teachers and Students
Over the last several weeks, nearly 30,000 teachers throughout California received layoff notices. Factors related to job performance should be taken into account rather than length of service.
The Wall Street Journal: Editorial: No (Tenured) Teacher Left Behind
The consequences of putting job protection ahead of learning.
New York Daily News: Op-Ed: A Higher Bar for Teachers, Finally
Nothing in our schools matters more to students' success than teachers, which means tenure decisions carry high stakes. Now, New York City is finally on the verge of making some progress toward a more rigorous tenure process.
The Atlantic: What Makes a Great Teacher?
We tend to ascribe teachers' gifts to some mystical quality that we can recognize and revere—but not replicate. The great teacher serves as a hero, but ironically never as a lesson.
The Boston Globe: Grade the Teachers
We know that individual teachers can make a huge difference. Yet almost nothing about the way we hire, evaluate, pay, or assign teachers to classrooms is designed to operate with that goal in mind.
