State must attract top teachers

Daily Journal, Tupelo, Miss.: Teachers in Mississippi are on the hot seat. In this age of test-driven accountability, our state’s teachers face the double-edged challenge of lingering low educational achievement and high poverty.

Mississippi teachers are expected to perform at a higher level than ever before, yet their training doesn’t fully prepare them for the task.

Of course, actual experience has always brought teachers, or any other professionals, into unanticipated and unrehearsed-for circumstances. But today teachers face a host of newer challenges — including understanding, interpreting and using student data — that teacher education programs haven’t caught up with.

If we judge teachers on student achievement, they should be trained in the interpretation and use of the data that surround it. This is one of the most obvious areas where teacher education is getting a good, hard look as Mississippi works to update how it educates its educators.

Creating more selective programs, such as the collaborative honors college-type approach to teacher education announced recently by Mississippi State and the University of Mississippi, can help raise the prestige level at least closer to that of other, more lucrative professions.

But a big part of attracting and holding on to the best teachers is raising the financial rewards, meaning a commitment to moving teacher pay up more quickly.