Education and Society Program

Building a Teaching Effectiveness Network (BTEN)

Recently, the Aspen Education Program launched a Building a Teaching Effectiveness Network (BTEN). This is a partnership of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Carnegie Foundation), the Education and Society Program of the Aspen Institute (Aspen Institute) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). 

Our partnership builds on extended, exploratory conversations among the leaders of our three organizations over the past three years, punctuated by meetings among the partners in November 2009 and March 2010.  We have formed this partnership with four goals in mind. These are to: 

• Improve the entry of new teachers into the profession;
• Enhance the capacity of novices to learn to teach;
• Achieve measurable success in the retention of effective early career teachers and the student learning gains assessed in their classrooms; and
• Build a learning community around this critical work.

BTEN's aim is to strengthen teaching by focusing on the development of new teachers, the practices, contexts and systems within which they learn to teach, and the data systems that could inform improvements in these endeavors.

To achieve these aims the partnership seeks to develop a networked, learning community organized to focus systematically on evidence and improvement. This community will coalesce stakeholders around the work, build a colleagueship of expertise to inform it, and invigorate advocates to disseminate information, field test and further develop what is learned. We envision a diverse stakeholder group that draws from the worlds of practice, policy, teacher preparation and development, research and evaluation.