Marc Tucker was president of the National Center on Education and the Economy. For two decades, his research focused on the policies and practices of the countries with the best education systems. This blog is no longer being updated.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Measuring the Immeasurable: The Schools We Want and the Problem of Assessment
Marc Tucker discusses a recent trip to several Hong Kong schools and how they showed what is possible for delivering a rich and empowering education.
School & District Management
Opinion
A Meditation On the Evolution of Species, Societies, and Education Systems
Marc Tucker looks at the difference between disruptive change and engineered change and what it means for improving our education system.
College & Workforce Readiness
Opinion
U.S. Workforce Skills: Even Worse Than We Thought
New data on U.S. workforce skills show once again that U.S. workers are at an increasing disadvantage in the global labor market.
Education
Opinion
Why Education Research Has So Little Impact on Practice: The System Effect
Marc Tucker on the limits of the dominant model of American education research.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Why the Common Core Will Be Declared a Failure
Claims that the Common Core State Standards have failed to improve academic performance in U.S. schools overlook the fact that standards are just one component of a high-performing education system.
Curriculum
Opinion
Charles Fadel on What Students Need to Know and Be Able to Do
Marc Tucker interviews global education thought leader, futurist, and expert Charles Fadel on how to prepare today's students for the changes they'll face in tomorrow's world.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
High-Performance Teacher Education: An Essential Component of the New System
How teacher education and training will need to change in order to build a top-performing education system in the United States.
Assessment
Opinion
Building a Powerful State Instructional System for All Students
In the third part of a series, Marc Tucker explains how states can build instructional systems that rival those of top-performing countries and foster high achievement and equity for all students.
Education
Opinion
High School Diplomas and Career and College Readiness: Time to Get Serious
Marc Tucker explains how states can make high school graduation a meaningful indication that the graduate is truly ready for college and career and in so doing create new, more effective systems of accountability for our schools.
Education
Opinion
Tough-Minded Federal Accountability Is Dead: What Will the States Do Now?
In the first of a series, Marc Tucker looks at how the age of federally driven school accountability met its end and what states can do to leverage their new freedoms to create world-class education systems.
Assessment
Opinion
Top Performers Offer U.S. Much More Effective Models of Teacher PD
NCEE's groundbreaking research on teacher professional learning was the topic of conversation recently among some of the leading voices in education, including Lily Eskelsen García, Linda Darling-Hammond, and Joshua Starr.
Education
Opinion
Professional Development Transformed
Two new reports from NCEE show that the model of teacher professional learning used by top-performing education systems is much more effective than the dominant U.S. model of teacher PD.
College & Workforce Readiness
Opinion
The Low-Wage Strategy in the South: Is It the Future for Your State?
Some governors in the American South are pinning their economic development hopes on attracting low-skill, low-wage employers. That's a formula for further impoverishment of those states and their residents, argues Marc Tucker.
Federal
Opinion
Education in 2015: A Look Back
Marc Tucker looks back on the year that was 2015 in education and discusses some of his most popular blog posts of the year.