Teaching

2030
What We Must Do
for Our Students and
Our Public Schools
Now and in the Future

IG
THE B

S
A
E
D
I
BARNETT BERRY and the TeacherSolutions 2030 Team:
Jennifer Barnett Kilian Betlach Shannon Cde Baca Susie Highley
John M. Holland Carrie J. Kamm Renee Moore Cindi Rigsbee
Ariel Sacks Emily Vickery Jos Vilson Laurie Wasserman

Teaching 2030
[Our Book]
Imagines a fully realized,
results-oriented teaching
profession

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Frees education from its

19th-century industrial roots

and 20th-century reforms

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Our P

f Hopes for a brighter future

for all students and teachers

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Answers the urgent question:

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Stakeholders and Contributors

Center for Teaching Quality
Elevates the voices of expert teachers to transcend dysfunctional
debates on school reform
12 Accomplished Teachers
Connect research evidence and classroom realities to a hopeful future
MetLife Foundation
Offers support and long-standing commitment to teachers and students
Brightspot I.D.
Provides concept design and illustration

The Teachers of 2030 and a

Hopeful Vision for Students

Students of today and tomorrow do not just think about

different things, they actually think differently.
Marc Prensky, Digital Learning Expert

iGeneration

Born in the last 10 to 15 years

Raised on mobile technologies and virtual reality games
Learn very differently from todays parents and teachers

21st-Century Students Must

Master content knowledge
Move well beyond the three Rs to collaborate, communicate,
and solve problems creatively
Find, synthesize, and evaluate exploding amounts of
information

Meanwhile...

Meanwhile...

No Child Left Behind

devastating economic
recession

Focus on achievement gaps

Overreliance on traditional
measures of achievement
Narrow curriculum
Risk-averse teaching
Last-century standardized
tests
Top-down school
accountability systems

CRASH!

Creating more student

learning problems as
families suffer
Sapping forward momentum
of expert teachers and
administrators
Slashing state and local
budgets

Meanwhile...

Meanwhile...

Some school reformers

want
Teachers judged mostly
by scores on standardized
tests

Race to the Top or Bottom

Investments in new
teacher evaluation
tools

20th-century tools built

on 19th-century
principles

Overreliance on 20thcentury tests and

accountability

Less preparation for

teachers (keeping them
cheap, compliant, and
itinerant)

Too little focus on

spreading teaching
expertise

What we Want!
New Basics for All Students

Collaboration

Communication

Creative
Problem Solving

Critical
Thinking

Effective Teachers
2

Teach the
oogled l earner.
G

Connect teaching to
community needs.

Work with a
diverse
student body.

Help students
monitor their
own learning.

Policymakers Confronting...
The shameful reality of educational haves and have-nots

Equitable
School Finance

Agencies Working Reward & Retain

Together
Teacher Leaders

21st-century vision
Transcending 20th-Century Debates

600,000 Teacherpreneurs
Teacher Educators, Network Navigators, Virtual Mentors,
Community Organizers, Trustees of the Profession,
Learning Architects

Teams of Educators Working In/Out of Cyberspace

PATHWAYS into
Teaching

PAY For
Teachers

National Residency
Academy

Using Best Knowledge &

Skills

School-UniversityCommunity Partnerships

Innovative Solutions,
Products, & Services

Strategic Placements Based

on Performance
Assessments

Student Outcomes
Leadership & Spread of
Expertise

Trendlines are toward transformation and

were hopeful about imagineering a bright future.

To design for this future, we must know the past.

Americas Teaching Profession

The stormy and complicated story behind more than a century of struggle

19TH CENTURY

20th CENTURY

Evolving into shortterm, low-wage

occupation for women

Schools expand,
policymakers opt for
cheaper teachers

First education
schools established

Thorndike (teaching
is telling) won;
Dewey (learning is
doing) lost

Lack of clarity and

rigor in becoming a
teacher

/
/

Teaching becomes
more standardized
Teachers are tested, but
not accurately
Pay modest but stable,
and pensions ensure
middle-class retirement

LATE 20th-CENTURY
BATTLES

EARLY 21st
CENTURY

Teachers and
administrators roles
more distinct

Media reifies myth

that teachers are
born, not made

Policymakers still opt

for cheaper teachers

Unions and reformers

fight over 20th-century
issues

Same reforms (e.g.,

merit pay) come
and go
Ed schools slow to
respond
Researchers finally
conclude, teachers
make a difference
Unions fight for better
working conditions

Policymakers still opt

for cheaper teachers
Polls indicate American
public thinks highly of
teachers
Teacher leaders use
cyberspace to begin
de-siloing themselves
and lead transformation

Emergent Reality #1
A Transformed Learning Ecology
for Students and Teachers

Brain Research

Digital Tools

TeacherPreneurs

Finally convinces
policymakers and the
public that Dewey
(l earning is doing)
was right

Augmented reality and

mobile devices escalate
personalized learning
for students and
teachers

Take charge to provide

policymakers and public
with better information on
student success

T eachers will become masters of a curation economy

and our best will be those who can gather, filter, and
distribute customized, meaningful learning based on
advances in learning theory.
Emily Vickery

T eachers must have a hand in creating 21st-century

accountability tools that make sense. Assessments need to
ask students to show what they know and why they know it.
John M. Holland

T o be a good teacher, you need to

listen to your students and to
care about what they say.
Laurie Wasserman

l
s wil
r
e
h
c
Tea
s
dent
u
t
s
know
ter.
t
e
b
even

Emergent Reality #2
Seamless Connections In and
Out of Cyberspace
In Cyberspace
Open

24 HOURS

Mobile-platform solutions
Educational gaming
Virtual courses
Internet as expansion of human
intelligence
In Communities
Public health crises and economic
woes create demand for 24/7
schools
Families need more services,
not less

Teacherpreneurs will build learning bridges

between cyberspace and communities.
We have high hopes that technology will help close
the gap. But we must remember that quantity of access
does not equal quality of access. We need to keep in
front of us the many social and economic, as well as
education, policies of inequity that perpetuate the gaps
between the haves and have-nots in our nation.
Jos Vilson
The expansion and effective organization of virtual
and mirror worlds (Second Life, Google Earth) will have
a dramatic effect on human interaction and learning.
Susie Highley

Emergent REality #3
Differentiated Pathways and CAreers
for a 21 st-Century Profession
More teacher prep,
not less:
Child Development
Virtual Learning
Second Language Learners
Assessment

Teacherpreneurs

Public Engagement

r2
r
REsidencies

n
p

Non-Profits

School-University
PArtnerships

Performance pay:
Premium paid to those who
spread their expertise
Highest paid anybody in a
district is a practicing teacher

First we ask new teachers to do too much with too

little preparation, and then we ask too little of our
seasoned and expert veterans.
Kilian Betlach
The work of 21st-century teaching is too much to fall
on the back of any one teacher.
Shannon Cde Baca

Policymakers challenge us to educate our students like

those in Singapore. We need to create performance-pay
systems like theirs focused on spreading teaching
expertise, not just raising student test scores.
Cindi Rigsbee

Emergent REality #4
Teacherpreneurism and a
Future of Innovation

Teacherpreneurs
Serve as best teachers and visionaries
Always in active engagement teaching students and families
Provide emotional glue for schools and maintain living archives
Learning architects and navigators
Policy mavens
Community connectors
Action researchers
Not just data strategists but gap identifiers and gridders
The beauty of a teacherpreneurial role is that I would
always maintain a classroom teaching practice
the soul of my work in education.
Ariel Sacks
In creating teacherpreneurs, we must make sure what
teaching experts do is done for all children
particularly those who have so few educational resources
upon which to rely.
Renee Moore

Levers of Change for

Transforming Teaching
Reengage

the public

To help them embrace 21st-century teaching and

learning and invest in a results-oriented profession

Rethink

school finance

To ensure equity and require partnerships across

districts, universities, community-based
organizations, and social and health agencies

Redefine

teacher preparation

To focus on better preparation and performance assessments

to determine who is ready to teach, when, what, and where

Reframe

accountability

To focus on not just on who is doing well, but

why, and what needs to be done next

Recalibrate

working conditions

To ensure teachers can teach effectively in teams

Redesign

Teacher Unions as
Professional Guilds

To enforce high standards among its members and to

broker the skills of teacherpreneurs, locally and globally

EVERYONE HAS A ROLE TO PLAY

To create the teaching profession students of the 21st
century deserve we must blur the lines of distinction
between those who teach in schools and those who lead
them.
Barnett Berry

Carrie J. Kamm

"With our vision for TEACHING 2030 we push back

against those forces that crowd in on our most
vulnerable students, by protecting them, but more
importantly, by arming them with an education that
will support them when they move beyond us."

As we wrote TEACHING 2030 we wondered what the

new American mind will do for our world and for
students. We looked at the evidence. We reached for the
possible."
Jennifer Barnett

Renee Moore

We stand on the cusp of a great opportunity to end

generations of educational discrimination and inequity.
The noblest teachers of 2030 will be remembered by
future generations as those who surged over the
barriers to true public education and a fully realized
teaching professionwhile myopic former gatekeepers
staggered to the sidelines of history.

Teaching 2030
One can create only what can be imagined.

TEACHING 2030 (ISBN 9780807751541) is available for purchase from Amazon,

Barnes & Noble, and Teachers College Press.
The book project was supported by

The Center for Teaching Quality is a nonprofit that seeks to dramatically improve
student learning nationwide by conducting timely research, crafting smart policy, and
cultivating teacher leadership.
(www.teachingquality.org)
APRIL 2011