Teacher Matters

In a world where education matters more than it ever has before, parents and policymakers alike are asking how to find the extraordinary teachers who can help all children acquire the increasingly complex knowledge and skills they need. As the social and economic demands for education grow, so do expectation of teachers' kjowledge and skills. Teachers must be able to succeed with a wider range of learners than they were expected to teach in a time when school success was not essential for employment and participation in society. Teachers are also beeing asked to achieve goals for all children, not just the 10-20 percent traditionally siphoned off into gifted and talented programs or honors cources. Furthermore, students have more extensive needs: as education becomes more important to life success and schools both expand the range of students they educate and include more of them in "regular" classroom, teachers encounter more students with learning differences and disabilities; with language learning needs; and with difficult family circumstances, from acute poverty, homelessness, unemployment, and lack of medical care to violance, abuse, and abandonment. Teachers in many community need to work as professors of disciplinary content, facilitator of individual learning, assessors and diagnosticians, counselor, social workers, and community resources managers.