In January 2010, the General Assembly passed the Complete College Tennessee Act (CCTA), a comprehensive reform agenda that seeks to transform public higher education through changes in academic, fiscal and administrative policies at the state and institutional level. At the center of these reforms is the need for more Tennesseans to be better…

Americans have concluded that the achievement gap is the fault of "failing schools" because it makes no common sense that it could be otherwise. After all, how much money a family has, or a child's skin color, should not influence how well that child learns to read. If teachers know how to teach and if schools permit no distractions,…