Contact: Miguel Gonzalez   (202) 822-7823

May 9, 2007

NEA Supports Bill to Ensure High Quality Teachers in America's Classrooms

Weaver applauds Kennedy and Miller for efforts to close achievement gaps

WASHINGTON -- National Education Association President Reg Weaver today announced support for the Teacher Excellence for All Children (TEACH) Act of 2007. Introduced by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the TEACH Act seeks to improve the recruitment, retention and distribution of high-quality public elementary and secondary teachers and principals, particularly in high-need schools.

“We know that every child deserves a high-quality teacher in his or her classroom, but poor working conditions, low salaries, and a lack of preparation and support leads to high turnover in our schools,” said Weaver. “This bill addresses these concerns by providing teachers the tools and resources they need to be successful. The TEACH Act creates commonsense incentives to attract qualified individuals to the teaching profession and to keep teachers in the classroom.”

Weaver said attracting highly qualified, enthusiastic individuals to teaching is a challenge when teacher pay lags behind comparable professions. And retaining new teachers is equally hard—more than one-third of teachers leave the profession within their first three years and half leave within the first five years. The attrition rate is even higher for ethnic minority teachers, male teachers and teachers under 30.

“If we’re going to close the achievement gaps, we need a stable corps of skilled teachers in our public schools,” said Weaver. “Recruiting talented new teachers, keeping our best teachers in the classroom, closing the teacher distribution gap, and improving teacher preparation go a long way toward ensuring every child has access to a great public school, which is a basic right and a shared responsibility. NEA commends Sen. Kennedy and Rep. Miller for their leadership on this important piece of legislation that will help our nation’s schools close the achievement gaps.”

For additional information about the NEA’s efforts to close achievement gaps, please visit:
www.nea.org/achievement/gaps.html

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The National Education Association is the nation's largest professional employee organization, representing 3.2 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support professionals, school administrators, retired educators
and students preparing to become teachers.