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 This blog is no longer being updated.
Teacher Preparation
Opinion
Federal Policy on Teacher Quality: Is Accountability the Answer?
Tough-minded accountablity reforms for teachers colleges miss the mark in efforts to improve teacher quality.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
The American Workforce: Survey Delivers Bad News
New data on literacy, numeracy and problem solving skills show that U.S. millennials have fallen to the back of the pack internationally and continue to slip.
Education Funding
Opinion
Inequality and Education
Public schools were once the engines of social and economic mobility in the U.S., but that is no longer the case. In fact, the very design of our education system is in many ways contributing to the nation's growing income inequality.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Fixing NCLB: The Right Federal Role With Improved Accountability
How a new architecture for accountability would reset the state/federal balance, improve outcomes for all students, including the most disadvantaged, and avoid the unintended consequences of NCLB.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
ESEA Reauthorization: A Broken NCLB and Its Unintended Consequences
Why the record of achievement for test-based accountability in No Child Left Behind has been dismal and rife with unintended consequences.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Wilhoit: Common-Core Implementation Requires Better Teacher Recruiting and Support
In this final installment of my series on the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, Gene Wilhoit, the former Executive Director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, discusses the need to transform how we recruit, train, and develop our teachers and the consequences of failing to do so.
Curriculum
Opinion
Gene Wilhoit: Quality Curriculum is Key to Common Core Implementation
Gene Wilhoit, the former Executive Director of the Council of Chief State School Officers who led the effort to create the Common Core, explains that until we have a more powerful curriculum design and more deep professional exchange about content, pedagogy, and student work going on in our schools the Common Core will not be implemented as it should be.
Education
Opinion
Gene Wilhoit on the Common Core, Part 1
An interview with Gene Wilhoit, former executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, on why if we fail to give professional educators what they need to implement the Common Core, their initial enthusiasm for the standards could easily disappear.
Professional Development
Opinion
World-Class Teacher Professional Development: Neither Workshops or Rubrics
How professional development works in schools that have created an environment for continuous improvement
Assessment
Opinion
Jim Pellegrino on Common-Core Implementation
An interview with Jim Pellegrino, Co-Director of the Learning Sciences Research Institute, Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor and Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, about the resources teachers will need to teach the Common Core effectively.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Interview With Howard Everson on Common-Core Implementation
An interview with Director of the Center for Advanced Study in Education at CUNY Howard Everson about how the Common Core helps teachers shift from a topic-centered point of view to a learner-centered perspective.
Curriculum
Opinion
Interview With Two Contributors to the Common-Core Literacy Standards
An interview with Catherine Snow of Harvard Graduate School of Education and Sue Pimentel of Student Achievement Partners on developing curriculum and professional development aligned to the Common Core.
Standards & Accountability
Opinion
Rewriting the Textbooks for Common Core
Phil Daro and Jason Zimba on how implementing the common core means re-writing the textbooks and re-teaching mathematics.
Assessment
Opinion
Interview With Phil Daro and Jason Zimba on the Common Core
An interview with Phil Daro and Jason Zimba, leaders in developing the Common Core mathematics standards, on implementation progress, the testing consortia, accountability systems and instructional materials.