The Reading Wars Again (or Still)
How the reading strategy debate in New York City underscores the importance of developing highly competent teachers with good leadership skills.
Accountability vs. What We Want for Our Children
Test-based accountability forces teachers to abandon their interest in helping students develop many of the qualities that will actually help them succeed in workplace and life.
Teachers' Unions: Moment of Truth
Discussing the implications of the Vergara v. California case, Marc Tucker finds that teacher unions are at a critical crossroads - they can either fight to maintain blue collar working conditions or decide that they want to be true professionals and take on the associated compensation, status, risk and obligations.
College: The Key to Prosperity - or Is It?
A look at Switzerland's vocational education system and what the United States could stand to learn from their success.
American Schools - Back to 'Separate But Equal'?
Marc Tucker explains how housing segregation leads to school segregation and calls for reforming our school finance system.
Unacceptable Options for Our Most Vulnerable Students
In order to meet the demands of our workforce, the United States must build a strong vocational education and training system and provide students who want to pursue this path with much stronger academic skills then they currently have now.
Who Gets to Write the History of Teacher Quality?
Success in improving teacher quality should be measured by our country's ability to transform teaching from a blue-collar occupation to a high-status profession, not by our ability to implement teacher evaluation systems.
Weakening the State Education Agency: A Manual
A look at a recent report from the Fordham Institute which advocates weakening state education agencies. Marc Tucker explains that to the contrary, a better education system in the United States will come through stronger, better equipped state education agencies, not weaker ones.
The Federal Role in State Education Accountability Systems
How to balance the federal government's interest in making sure that federal education funds are well spent with the states' interest in retaining their constitutional right to enact their own education policies.
The Proposed Accountability Plan: A Commentary
A call for changing the culture of schools so that teachers are accountable to their professional colleagues and have more time during school hours to collaborate.
The opinions expressed in Top Performers are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.
Recent Comments