Projects & Perspectives
Teacher Supply and Demand Data
For states to intelligently invest in teachers they must first have a clear understanding of their teacher supply and demand data. Dr. Sherratt spearheaded national interest in improving how states collect, analyze, and act on teacher shortage data with the 2016 brief Creating Coherence in the Teacher Shortage Debate: What Policy Leaders Should Know and Do, and presentations at national conferences of policymakers, state education agency leaders and educational researchers.
Common Cents Education can help:
Improve teacher supply and demand data collection.
Recommend clearer, more coherent communications on the story the teacher supply and demand data tell.
Engage stakeholders in dialogue around the data to ensure investments are directed to resolving the most pressing teacher recruitment and retention challenges.
Provide thought partnership and convene leaders across states or districts to share guidance and lessons learned on understanding and addressing teacher shortages.
See also our work with Dr. Etai Mizrav on Raising the Bar on Teacher Shortage Data and Dialogue.
Investing in Teacher Compensation
Improving teacher shortages requires a review and often improvement of teacher compensation. As a nationally- and internationally-recognized teacher salary expert and former Board President and Acting Executive Director of the Teacher Salary Project, Dr. Sherratt has led teacher compensation research, policy, and advocacy initiatives, including facilitating a statewide Teacher and Paraprofessional Compensation Work Group to make recommendations on competitive salaries, testifying to state lawmakers, introducing legislation, and launching a national advocacy campaign that included 2 U.S. Secretaries of Education, National and State Teachers of the Year, CEOs, and other leader. This work builds on publications that include Raising the Bar on Teacher Pay, which provides a framework for state leaders to define what “competitive” compensation looks like in their context and presents 50-state data on key metrics; Teacher Compensation: Busting the Myths and Generating Dialogue, clarifies common misperceptions about the teaching profession that too often stifle collaborative, constructive, solutions-oriented dialogue on teacher pay; Teacher Salaries and Teacher Shortages, which presents the findings of a national survey of the views of teachers on local teacher shortages and the impact of salaries on recruitment and retention; and International Approaches to Improving Teacher Salaries, which highlights how the world’s top-performing school systems invest in their teachers, building on Dr. Sherratt’s participation in a 1-week delegation to study Singapore’s approach. Dr. Sherratt also provided technical assistance to a dozen states and districts through the U.S. Department of Education Teacher and School Leader grant program and has extensively studied performance-based pay policies. With majorities of Democratic and Republican voters supporting improved teacher salaries, Common Cents Education is poised to help leaders make the change happen.
Common Cents Education can help:
Facilitate working group to review and analyze data and make policy recommendations.
Research and present on the competitive landscape for individual states or school districts.
Lead focus groups or interviews to gather stakeholder perspective and priorities and/or identify options to financially support improved teacher compensation.
Provide thought partnership and coaching for launching an advocacy campaign or teacher salary initiative (see note below about the USA's 250th Anniversary as a reason to celebrate and support our teachers)
Addressing the Full Spectrum of Teacher Workforce Policies
State and local leaders must address a spectrum of policies to recruit, retain, develop, support, teachers and leaders. Dr. Sherratt coauthored the book Improving Teacher Quality, published by Jossey-Bass, building on state policy audits and briefs such as Managing Educator Talent: Promising Practices and Lessons Learned from Midwestern States. These were among the first thought pieces to advocate for the important, and common sense, notion that we need to look beyond silver bullets and invest in a comprehensive approach to improving educator quality that includes effective preparation, recruitment, hiring, induction and mentoring, professional learning, performance evaluation, compensation, equitable distribution, teacher leadership, and principal support. Other published briefs summarize research and promising practices from states and districts on a range of educator workforce topics, such as Teacher Leader Pay, Teacher Recruitment, Teacher Retention, Ensuring the Equitable Distribution of Teachers, Gen Y Teachers, Supporting High-Performing Teaching and Learning, Principal Performance Evaluation Design, and Talent Management Practices in the Private and Education Sectors.
Common Cents Education can help:
Conduct state or local policy audits.
Provide thought partnership on filling gaps in line with research, data, and stakeholder input.
Conduct landscape scans.
Share expertise from research and prior efforts in the field.
Stakeholder Engagement in Education Decision-making
Teachers must be at the table on the issues that affect them; this is common sense, and Common Cents Education can facilitate this process, drawing on research and promising practices from around the country. Dr. Sherratt has worked extensively with teachers and teacher leaders, including with the teachers’ unions, on policy, advocacy and collaborative research initiatives. Dr. Sherratt coauthored the book Everyone at the Table, which provides multiple structured discussion protocols and stakeholder engagement guidance to address hot-button topics in ways that move beyond binary thinking and toward constructive, solutions-oriented dialogue around solutions that people can corral behind and that allow states and districts to avoid negative unintended consequences that can result from unilateral decision-making. Dr. Sherratt led the national technical assistance efforts for the 2015 federal Excellent Educators for All initiative, with a particular focus on supporting states with authentic and widespread stakeholder engagement and communication, including with teachers, administrators, parents, students, policymakers, media, and community organizations.
Launched at the request of leading teachers, Dr. Sherratt led From Good to Great: Exemplary Teachers Share Perspectives on Increasing Teacher Effectiveness Across the Career Continuum and Investing in What It Takes to Move from Good to Great: Exemplary Educators Identify their Most Important Learning Experiences brought together eight leading organizations focused on teacher workforce issues, including the National Network for State Teachers of the Year, Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Council on Teacher Quality, American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, to collaboratively examine the results of a survey leading teachers on the supports that most helped them advance from satisfactory to excellent in their instructional practice and the policy implications.
Common Cents Education can help:
Bring expert educators, researchers, or system leaders to lend their expertise to an issue.
Lead focus groups, interviews, work groups, or stakeholder engagement initiatives.
Conduct surveys to capture stakeholder perspectives and priorities.
Coach and support state and district leaders to pull out their and their stakeholders own common sense insights, while bringing deep expertise to complement the conversation.
Additional Consulting Services - Research and Writing Services
In addition to offering thought partnership, meeting facilitation, fostering connections, and strategic planning with a focus on teacher workforce issues, Common Cents Education offers states, districts, nonprofits, researchers, and other clients supports with a range of services to improve their impact. In Is the Supply in Demand: Exploring How, When and Why Teachers Use Educational Research, we share insights from teachers for making research relevant and usable. Dr. Sherratt’s career spanning research and advocacy offers a unique perspective on how educational researchers and those funding research can ensure their investments do in fact improve conditions in schools.
Common Cents Education can help:
Provide research and writing (including ghost-writing) support for multiple audiences (both technical and laymen).
Develop proposals to support organizational fundraising.
Conduct qualitative and quantitative research and program evaluations.
Provide though partnership and coaching to ensure research is relevant and gets used to improve policy, teaching, and learning.