Teaching Matters

By Ann Bradley

The single most important strategy for achieving America's education goals is to recruit, prepare, and support excellent teachers for every school, concludes a report released last month by a prestigious national commission. Policymakers must embrace what parents have always known, it says: Good teachers are the most important element of successful learning. Instead of being recognized as the linchpin of reform efforts, however, teaching frequently has been ignored.

What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future offers a scathing indictment of current practices, including inadequate teacher education, bureaucratic hiring procedures, and the placement of unqualified teachers in classrooms. The 151-page report is the result of two years of study by the National Commission on Teaching & America's Future, a 26-member panel chaired by North Carolina Governor James Hunt Jr. and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

"This is not an insiders' report," says Linda Darling-Hammond, the commission's executive director and an authority on the teaching profession at Teachers College, Columbia University. "It doesn't pat everyone on the back and say, 'We're all doing fine, and what we need is more money and respect.' It says we have to get serious...