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RISE's Mission
Recognize and retain effective K-12 public school teachers to elevate student performance in low-income communities.
| The Problem |
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• 3.4 million public school teachers → 32% (1,088,000) in low-income areas.
• Estimated only 20% (217,000) are effective (students achieve ≥ 1 year of academic growth per year of instruction).
• 70% of all new teachers in low-income communities leave within 5 years → effective teachers are the first to leave.
Students in low-income communities face an undeniable disadvantage in educational opportunity. Studies show that effective teachers can have the greatest impact on low-income students, however, as many as seventy percent of teachers in low-income communities leave within five years of entering the profession. Not surprisingly, highly effective educators are the first to leave. Frustration with work environment, pay, and isolation are the top drivers of attrition. In losing our most effective urban educators to suburban districts or other professions, our country is crippling student learning in low-income communities and wasting billions of dollars in recruitment and training costs (a conservative national teacher replacement cost estimate is $2.2 billion). Recruiting more teachers will not solve the teacher crisis if large numbers of them then leave.
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| RISE's Solution |
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RISE's theory of change has always been simple: Effective teachers are the key to student learning; so effective teachers in low-income communities must be recognized and retained. While other organizations have worked to address teacher shortages by attracting new talent to the profession, RISE's innovation is to curb effective teacher attrition by recognizing and retaining experienced talent.
Yet not all teachers are worthy of retention. RISE believes that it is not enough to teach low-income children-one must teach them well. Using a research-based, groundbreaking "value added" assessment tool, RISE sidesteps the ideological and academic debate about which test is the best measure of student achievement. Instead, teacher applicants provide quantitative data about student learning results at the beginning and end of a given school year. RISE Teachers are those that demonstrate that their students are making significant academic progress-that their students are gaining ground instead of getting further behind. This focus on achievement gains as opposed to snapshots means that 100% of RISE's resources are focused on effective teachers who are closing the achievement gap.
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RISE's Niche
| Program Focus |
Target Years of Experience |
Service/Support Provided |
Exemplars |
| Teacher Induction |
0-2 |
Recruits, trains & supports new teachers |
Teach For America (TFA), New Teacher Center |
| Teacher Retention |
2-5 |
Recognize & retain existing effective teachers |
RISE |
| Master Teachers |
5+ |
Trains effective teachers to become master teachers |
Cotsen Foundation, Milken Foundation, Nat. Board Cert. |
| Principal Induction |
5+ |
Trains effective teachers to become principals |
Building Excellent Schools, New Leaders (NLNS), KIPP |
| District/Superintendent Induction |
5+ |
Trains effective teachers to become key district staff |
Broad Foundation, Stupski Foundation |
Membership Numbers & Geography
RISE is an award-winning organization with more than 765 RISE Teachers nationally and 55 Partner Schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago and Los Angeles. Building upon the momentum of an Ashoka Fellowship, and several other regional/national awards, teacher membership will increase to nearly 2,000 by 2007, enabling the organization to impact the educational futures of roughly 50,000 deserving students nationwide.
RISE Multimedia
View the
RISE Montage Video or
RISE Event Video.
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