In the last few years, all but a few U.S. states have rushed to enact tougher teacher evaluation systems. Spurred by the incentives offered by two federal education initiatives--Race to the Top and the ESEA Flexibility Program--these states have designed teacher evaluation systems designed to "remove ineffective tenured and untenured…

As an early Common Core booster, Michael Petrilli had hoped that by now--10 years after most states adopted the standards--the nation's schools would have logged tangible improvements in teaching and learning that resulted in higher student achievement. In this article, Petrilli reviews what Common Core is and discusses the work ahead that is…

Education standards do not flop spectacularly. Their failure gives rise to nothing like the black-and-white films of early aeronautical experiments: no missiles exploding on launch pads or planes tumbling from the sky. But 10 years after 46 of the 50 states adopted the Common Core standards, the lack of evidence that they have improved student…

This essay reflects on Daniel Tanner's "Race to the top and leave the children behind" by attention to the way our particular national histories impact on our thinking about what is valuable, the kinds of curriculum pressures and common senses that are now at work internationally at government and policy level, the specific forms these…

This article is about the changes in educational reform that have adversely affected teachers and their principals. With the new evaluation system, teachers and school leaders will be evaluated partially on student success. Other educational reforms include the discontinuing of New York State Regents Exams in January and in August. A…

When President Obama took office in 2009, his administration quickly seized on teacher evaluations as an important public-policy problem. Today, much of his legacy on K-12 education rests on efforts to revamp evaluations in the hopes of improving teaching across the country, which his administration pursued via a series of incentives for states.…

The Common Core State Standards, released in 2010, were rapidly adopted by more than 40 states. Champions maintained that these rigorous standards would transform American education, but the initiative went on to encounter a bumpy path. A decade on, what are we to make of this ambitious effort? What kind of impact, if any, has it had on the…

The focus article "Road Maps for Learning: A Guide to the Navigation of Learning Progressions" by Black, Wilson, and Yao (this issue) is a veritable tour-de-force, covering a great deal of education ground while spanning the heights from models of the interplay among curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment to interpretations of student…

This article address the falsehoods regarding No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top legislation, the educational reformers' stance that schools are failing, the privatization movement in education, and the issues of technology in the schools. The importance of poverty is emphasized, although policymakers ignore it and advocate school choice as…