Developing a Modern Teacher Workforce: Federal Policy Recommendations for Professional Learning and Supporting Future-Focused, Competency-Based Education Systems

This issue brief highlights federal policy opportunities to improve and modernize professional learning and development for educators for competency-based education systems. Three policy recommendations are identified: diversifying pathways into the teaching profession, catalyzing innovation to redesign teacher preparation, and developing meaningful systems of assessments and evaluation. The brief also articulates specific policy actions for each recommendation which include: increasing affordability and institute incentives to expand and diversifying the teacher workforce, supporting innovation in teacher education to enable 21st-century learning and helping states build balanced systems of assessments to support 21st-century learning.

The recommendations describe actions for federal policymakers to enable and enact the vision described in the previous CompetencyWorks report, Moving Toward Mastery: Growing, Developing, and Sustaining Educators for Competency-Based Education.