Teaching Matters, Inc.

Teaching Matters is a nationally recognized professional learning organization dedicated to increasing teacher effectiveness, a critical factor in student success. We envision a nation where every child has access to excellent teaching, regardless of zip code.

We have been an early leader in the nationwide effort to recognize, identify and support teacher leadership as a critical capacity building lever for increased teacher effectiveness, improved student achievement, elevated teacher voice and advanced data-driven practice, as well as effective distributed leadership models in school systems.

Our organization offers professional learning and resources that (1) develop teacher leaders and (2) increase their capacity to lead the charge in increasing teacher effectiveness school-wide. Integral to this process is having qualified teachers collaborate with their peers, in teams and under the guidance of our coaches, to investigate and solve instructional problems – deepening their skills as educators. Principals, themselves, have daunting jobs. As a result, they are limited in taking on the professional learning needs of their entire instructional staff without outside support. Ultimately, schools not only develop but sustain the ability to facilitate professional learning, strengthen teacher quality and improve student outcomes via the teacher leaders that our organization helps to develop.

A series of strategic investments in teacher leadership in recent years has positioned our organization to take center stage in nationwide efforts to advance teacher quality and performance. Beyond our work with schools, districts and systems to develop and implement scalable models for teacher leader support, we have taken a commanding role in advocating for the empowerment of teacher leaders to drive school improvement and communicating its importance to increasingly larger audiences.

Our educational model is built upon research-based and data driven methods: fostering collaboration, cultivating teacher leaders and using evidence to improve student results. Teaching Matters takes a whole-school approach, partnering with school leaders, and providing intensive educator support. We target our efforts where there is the greatest need and potential to make a difference.

Strong support in content and pedagogy that is responsive to the Common Core is at the center of our work. Our organization's coaches regularly support the following field-based activities:

• Institutes: The teachers and teacher leaders that we reach regularly take part in sessions that provide grounding in effective professional learning community (PLC) practices as well as the tools and protocols needed to lead high functioning teams in building collaborative culture, analyzing data and student work, analyzing teacher practice and establishing high quality common formative assessments (tied to essential Common Core standards).
• Onsite Coaching: Teachers who take part in our program often receive job-embedded support from a Teaching Matters achievement coach who is a content specialist. Coaching also focuses on supporting teacher leaders in leading effective PLCs and earning micro-credentials related to this work.
• Personalized Feedback: One vehicle is via access to a series of online modules housed in the Teaching Matters learning management system (LMS). These modules include (1) extensive resources around teacher leader competencies and the work of leading high-functioning PLCs toward improved Common Core guided instruction, and (2) a digital platform for receiving one-on-one evidenced-based responses to their Teaching Matters coach. Further, we provide verbal feedback as part of the coaching process.

Teaching Matters brings deep knowledge, experience and a commitment to effective support for schools and school districts that is grounded in both research-based professional learning practices as well as two-plus decades of experience working in urban public schools. In New York City, where our organization is headquartered, we are among the top 10 professional development service providers. As the nation's largest and most complex school district, the City has long served as a projects incubator" in which we test-implement, validate and spread our ideas. Over 30 last 25 years, we have:

Worked with over 1,600 schools to advance academic achievement;
Coached approximately 38,000 teachers to improve teaching and learning;
Affected the learning of 672,000 students;
The City's most recent data indicates that we have supported more than 1 out of every 4 schools with extreme
poverty in NYC.

Our success is due to the high level of competency within our multidisciplinary staff and leadership. This includes our management team which has collectively advanced K-12 public education practice and outcomes for 100-plus years. Moreover, we have a distributed leadership model that not only includes our managers but senior coaches, who are strong instructional leaders. Further, our team of over 50 coaches provides top tier professional development to thousands of educators with the goal of strengthening teacher effectiveness and leadership to improve student achievement across disciplines. In addition to possessing at least a master's degree in education and at least five to seven years of teaching and/or administrative experience (preferred in local public schools), all are strong instructional leaders.

Teaching Matters' active Board of Directors consists of widely regarded leaders in both the education and business sectors. An Advisory Faculty has also been instrumental to the work we are conducting today. Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, was a founding member. The Faculty has included: Beth Lief, President, Petrie Foundation; Kim Marshall, Author of Rethinking Teacher Supervision and Evaluation: How to Work Smart, Build Collaboration, and Close the Achievement Gap; and Dr. Alan M. Lesgold, Professor and Dean, University of Pittsburgh School of Education.

Hovering around $7 million, our annual operating budget is driven by needs of our educational programming and provides a realistic framework for spending. Further, we have established processes and controls for the safeguarding of assets and other financial matters.

Our strength is based on an unwavering focus on mission and our ability to recognize and respond to ever-evolving needs that emerge. Teaching Matters is experiencing a historic moment, as we are a key partner in Mayor Adams and Chancellor Banks NYC Reads initiative. NYC Reads will standardize literacy curriculum across the city, bringing science-of-reading and phonics-based learning methods to all public school students. This program will fundamentally alter the trajectory of the citys children by ensuring every student becomes a proficient reader. Teaching Matters is the largest non-profit partner in NYC Reads implementation, extending our work to an additional 70 schools in three new districts in Brooklyn and Queens.

The disruptions to schooling and remote instruction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have led to nationwide gaps in performance, particularly for Black, Latinx and students experiencing poverty. While gaps for elementary school students are closing at a promising rate, gaps for middle schoolers, particularly in the 8th grade, are showing little progress, based on national NWEA and iReady data. According to the NWEA exams, 8th graders fell further behind this year in mathematics, and the race and poverty level gaps are worse than before the pandemic.

In response to this, Teaching Matters developed its Math Matters Learning Acceleration Program, a comprehensive teacher professional development model designed to improve mathematics instruction for grades 6-8. Our objective is to implement a replicable model that addresses unfinished learning in math while simultaneously fostering inclusive classroom environments and positive student teacher relationships. The effectiveness of our Math Matters interventions is demonsting success. The implementation of our program in eight schools last year resulted in measurable outcomes in both improved teacher practice and student performance on screener assessments. The majority of the schools served by this intervention were in the poorest districts in the Bronx.

In addition, we expanded our Foundational Literacy Matters early literacy intervention (formerly Jumpstart), reaching 180 teachers and 4,125 students, including 788 pre-readers. Of those pre-readers, 83% became readers at the end of 10 weeks. This 10-week intervention grew out of our evidence-based early literacy model, Early Reading Matters (ERM).

Further, we continued our work in all of Newarks Public School Pre-K programs, focused on literacy, language, and social-emotional developmental support; and expanded our Pre-K offering to over five NYC public schools through the implementation of a novel intervention support model, while also branching out into Bridgeport, Connecticut.