For Policy Makers

Because teacher expertise is the most important factor in student achievement, quality professional development is critical. In What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future, the National Commission on Teaching & America's Future cites the study comparing high-achieving and low-achieving elementary schools with similar student characteristics, which found that differences in teacher qualifications accounted for 90% of the variation in student achievement in reading and mathematics.

Helping teachers use effective practices, supporting their professional development, providing them with great books, and showing teachers and administrators how to use assessments and benchmarks to inform instruction are all activities that have enormous impact. (more...)

Averting a Human-Capital Train Wreck in Education

Authors: Linda Katz, Andrew Belton

(As first appeared in Education Week, December 8, 2010. Reprinted with permission from the authors.)

There is a business training film in which a man in a gorilla suit walks slowly into a room, waves, and slowly exits. But most people don't see the gorilla—they are watching what they have been told to watch, people tossing a basketball. In education, we likewise have a "gorilla" staring us in the face—how we fail to prepare teachers to succeed—and keep missing the obvious.
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