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We do not know the exact mix of policies that is needed for “more” education, a subject on which there are many views. That is, we don’t know if we need more charter schools or just more effective public schools. We don’t know if we need a longer school day or a longer school year, or both or neither. We do not know which technologies or software programs are best at training students so that we see a rise in math abilities and test scores. We don’t know to what extent teachers’ unions are the problem, by protecting the jobs of mediocre teachers, and to what extent they are part of the solution, in rewarding great teaching. We leave to the educational experts the definition of what is sufficient in all these areas to produce more education for all.

We do, though, think we know what is necessary to produce what the country needs. We believe that six things are necessary: better teachers and better principals; parents who are more involved in and demanding of their children’s education; politicians who push to raise educational standards, not dumb them down; neighbors who are ready to invest in schools even though their children do not attend them; business leaders committed to raising educational standards in their communities; and—last but certainly not least—students who come to school prepared to learn, not to text.

If that list strikes you as including everyone in society, you’ve gotten the point. Our education challenge is too demanding for the burden to be borne by teachers and principals alone. Let’s look at each group.

Teachers and Principals

While teachers and principals cannot be expected to overcome our education deficits alone, outstanding teachers and principals can make a huge difference in student achievement. So we need to do everything we can as a society to recruit, mentor, and develop the best cadre of teachers and principals that we can. Bill Gates, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invests heavily in studying and improving K–12 public school education, says its research shows that “of all the variables under a school’s control, the single most decisive factor in student achievement is excellent teaching. It’s astonishing what great teachers can do for their students. Unfortunately, compared to the countries that outperform us in education, we do very little to measure, develop, and reward excellent teaching. We need to build exceptional teacher personnel systems that identify great teaching, reward it, and help every teacher get better. It’s the one thing we’ve been missing, and it can turn our schools around … But the remarkable thing about great teachers today is that in most cases nobody taught them how to be great. They figured it out on their own.”

Eric A. Hanushek, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, summarized some of the findings of his research on the importance of quality of teaching in Education Week (April 6, 2011):

Studies examining data from a wide range of states and school districts have found extraordinarily consistent results about the importance of differences in teacher effectiveness. The research has focused on how much learning goes on in different classrooms. The results would not surprise any parent. The teacher matters a lot, and there are big differences among teachers. What would surprise many parents is the magnitude of the impact of a good or bad teacher. My analysis indicates that a year with a teacher in the top 15 percent for performance (based on student achievement) can move an average student from the middle of the distribution (the 50th percentile) to the 58th percentile or more. But that implies that a year with a teacher in the bottom 15 percent can push the same child below the 42nd percentile … Obviously, a string of good teachers, or a string of bad teachers, can dramatically change the schooling path of a child … The results apply to suburban schools and rural schools, as well as schools serving our disadvantaged population.

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