Political Quotes

“I rise today to honor the many outstanding teachers across the Nation and especially in my home State of Tennessee. In particular, I would like to highlight the achievements of Ms. Delise Teague, the 1999 Tennessee Teacher of the Year, whom I had the honor to meet, as you can see in this photo, just several weeks ago. This is Delise in the picture. First, I would like to cite some of the research which paints a clear picture about the quality of a teacher being so critical to the future of our children and their education. Tennessee is one of the few States with data systems in place which make it possible to link teacher performance to student achievement. Researchers have the capability of examining the impact teachers have in terms of their effectiveness, how well they are teaching, and what students actually learn. Data from these studies show the least effective teachers produce gains of approximately 14 percentile points for low-achieving students. However, the most effective teachers produce gains that average 53 percentile points.”