Op-Ed (ABQ Journal) by G. Andrés Romero / Introduction by Tim Bedeaux
The Thornburg Foundation is proud to support the Arizona State University (ASU) Next Education Workforce Initiative. Team-based staffing sits as a core pillar of the Foundation’s K-12 education strategy. As a new study from the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) shows, team-based staffing improves working conditions, perceptions of the teaching profession, and ultimately, teacher retention. The effects even reach beyond teachers; middle school students served by educator teams performed significantly better in math.
Within the broader educator ecosystem, teams serve a pivotal dual role: giving new teachers and teacher residents a dedicated space for mentorship, while giving veteran teachers the opportunity to act as instructional leaders and master teachers. In the coming years, the Thornburg Foundation hopes to help more schools explore and implement team-based staffing models, and to support the policy infrastructure that makes the models the new norm, redefining what it means to teach in New Mexico