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Teachers — many of them — will continue to resent efforts to use standardized tests to measure their ability to teach.

Tucker, 72, a former senior education official in Washington, is the president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, which he founded in 1988. Since then he has focused much of his research on comparing public education in the United States with that of places that have far better results than we do — places like Finland, Japan, Shanghai and Ontario, Canada. His essential conclusion is that the best education systems share common traits — almost none of which are embodied in either the current American system or in the reform ideas that have gained sway over the last decade or so.

His starting point is not the public schools themselves but the universities that educate teachers. Teacher education in America is vastly inferior to many other countries; we neither emphasize pedagogy — i.e., how to teach — nor demand mastery of the subject matter. Both are a given in the top-performing countries. (Indeed, it is striking how many nonprofit education programs in the U.S. are aimed at helping working teachers do a better job — because they’ve never learned the right techniques.)

In truth, this conventional view relies upon imaginary facts.

Let me repeat: black elementary school students today have better math skills than white students did only twenty years ago.

Aside from their preference for engaging work environments, millennials value jobs that encourage social media activity. One-in-three indicated he would prioritize social media freedom, device flexibility and work mobility over salary when considering a job offer.

Mr. Nadelstern recently wrote a paper for the University of Washington center on how New York created networks of autonomous schools. He said rather than fight the heterogeneous practices taking place behind closed doors at schools, central-office administrators should embrace them. "The people closest to the kids in the classroom—the principal, the teachers in consultation with parents—are the best people to make decisions," he said.

"It's a value for us not to get caught up in one school type as being preferable to another," she said. "We try to focus not on the differences between these schools but the similar goals."

job-embedded PD

Children are influenced by everything around them, the way their parents act, what their parents say and do, and increasingly as they spend more time ‘with’ celebrity figures how these role models act.

Employment: The borrower must be employed full-time in a public service job for each of the 120 monthly payments. Public service jobs include, among other positions, emergency management, government (excluding time served as a member of Congress), military service, public safety and law enforcement (police and fire), public health (including nurses, nurse practitioners, nurses in a clinical setting, and full-time professionals engaged in health care practitioner occupations and health care support occupations), public education, early childhood education (including licensed or regulated childcare, Head Start, and State-funded prekindergarten), social work in a public child or family service agency, public services for individuals with disabilities or the elderly, public interest legal services (including prosecutors, public defenders and legal advocacy on behalf of low-income communities at a nonprofit organization), public librarians, school librarians and other school-based services, and employees of tax exempt 501(c)(3) organizations. Full-time faculty at tribal colleges and universities, as well as faculty teaching in high-need subject areas and shortage areas (including nurse faculty, foreign language faculty, and part-time faculty at community colleges), also qualify.