If the think-tank policy paper mill is any indication of issue salience, teacher quality is a hot topic right now - as it should be. Teachers are critical to students' academic success, yet many students do not have high-quality teachers, and many of the best teachers are set to retire in the coming years.
Unfortunately, discussions on how to improve teacher quality often ignore the unique challenges of improving teaching in early education. Early education faces many of the same teacher quality issues as elsewhere in the K-12 sector, such as large numbers of teachers who are not trained in the subjects they teach and the fact that the best teachers tend to gravitate towards low-poverty schools. But there are some important differences that affect how well some proposed policy changes will work for our youngest learners.
The holidays have given me some time to finally read through the 
As we've 
This morning, President-elect Barack Obama will announce that he 
