Today's most successful K-12 schools have a voracious appetite for talent. Indeed, successful charter school networks--like KIPP and Achievement First--are perhaps most notable for their ability to create a "no excuses" culture staffed with talented, passionate, and hard-working recruits. Given that the nation's public schools employ more than 3.3 million teachers, reform strategies based on these successful models quickly run into questions about how many superstar teachers can be found and how long they will teach. In short, the very strategies that have fueled the success of some of America's most admired schools may not be feasible nationwide. Such issues are particularly relevant in light of the Obama administration’s new Innovation Fund, intended to support efforts to replicate these successful ventures. Teachers may be the most important element of an effective school, but must K-12 improvement wait on the ability of schools or systems to recruit, nurture, and retain outstanding teachers? Can reformers and practitioners devise ways to increase this pool of talent or devise highly effective school models that are less reliant on standout teachers? What do these human capital challenges mean for charter schooling, district reformers, and teacher education?

AEI's director of education policy studies Frederick M. Hess will moderate a discussion among distinguished panelists: Norman Atkins, the founder and CEO of Teacher U at Hunter College; Kaya Henderson, deputy chancellor for human capital and community relations for the District of Columbia Public Schools; Katherine K. Merseth, director of teacher education at Harvard University and author of Inside Urban Charter Schools: Promising Practices and Strategies in Five High-Performing Schools (Harvard Education Press, 2009); and Steven F. Wilson, the founder and CEO of Ascend Learning Inc. and author of a recent AEI working paper on human capital in charter schooling.