A Declaration of Teachers’ Principles and Beliefs

We, as educators, believe that it is our duty to prepare our students for college, the workplace, and beyond. We know there is no factor more important to student success than the quality of our instruction. For that reason we need a system that allows, supports, and encourages us to do the best we can for our students.

As educators, we demand a system that:

Recruits, retains, and supports the highest quality teachers by offering
- A higher starting salary
- Encouragement and opportunity for continued intellectual development
- High level professional development and support
- An evenhanded performance-based pay structure to reward excellent teachers
Restores professionalism to education by
- Evaluating teachers through a holistic and equitable system that incorporates value-added student achievement data as one component of effectiveness
- Reestablishing tenure as a significant professional milestone through use of a comprehensive teacher evaluation system
- Eliminating the practice of "Last In, First Out" for teacher layoffs
Places student achievement first by
- Giving students and parents more opportunity to choose great schools
- Displaying more transparency in both fiscal choices and decision-making processes
- Implementing an effective system of evaluating administrators
- Adopting higher standards for students and teachers
- Opening the education reform conversation to the voices of teachers and parents