Iowa Department of Education Task Force Recommendations

The Iowa Department of Education appointed six task forces to address and make recommendations in the following areas:

1. Teacher Leadership and Compensation
2. Instructional Time
3. Administrator Evaluation
4. Teaching Standards and Teacher Evaluation
5. Early Childhood Assessment
6. Competency-Based Instruction

Final reports have recently been released on four of these task forces.  I will be providing a series of blogs highlighting the summary of this work.   I will begin with the Teacher Leadership and Compensation task force.  These recommendations will become the centerpiece of the Branstad-Reynolds administration’s 2013 education proposal to the Iowa Legislature.


The task force’s recommendations are as follows:

•Create and fund multiple, meaningful and well-designed career pathway opportunities open to all teachers in Iowa.
•Establish a pathway that utilizes the wisdom and expertise of educators who are not currently practicing, including retired teachers.
•Review existing allocations and use these funds strategically to enhance teacher compensation and create leadership opportunities.
•Appropriate new money for the explicit purposes of raising base pay to a competitive level and creating additional leadership opportunities for teachers.
•Establish a Commission on Educator Leadership and Compensation to ensure consistent and successful implementation.
•Collaborate with districts implementing a mechanism for piloting peer assistance and coaching programs.
•Incentivize teachers to teach in locally and state-defined hard-to-staff subjects and high-need schools.
•Build upon existing policy and statute, and provide adequate, sustained funding and implementation support for teacher leadership.
•Set the boundaries of the system, but allow districts to customize.
•Provide time for local planning and implementation inclusive of teachers in the decision-making process.
•Require districts to implement professional development structures aligned with the Iowa Professional Development Model that support each career pathway, and utilize teacher leaders to ensure continuous collaboration on student growth.
•Coordinate the development of teacher leadership pathways with teacher preparation programs.
•Create a residency year for entry into the teaching profession to build a more seamless transition from teacher preparation to practice/employment.

The full text of the task force report is available on the Department of Education website. Officials from the Iowa Department of Education and the Governor’s Office will hold a series of conversations with educators statewide to hear feedback and to build support for the recommendations.