In an event co-hosted by AEI and the Center for American Progress, Rick Hess and Raegan Miller will discuss their views on what particular changes to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act will allow it to fulfill its aims without causing educators and local officials legal headaches.

Student achievement should be incorporated into teacher evaluation and compensation, and transparency is a vital tool for recognizing excellence and shaming mediocrity. But a public data release is the wrong way to get there.

If education philanthropists want to influence policy, then they must open themselves to more public debate about their  plans and goals.

What determines which teachers will be let go, and does the existing policy offer the best for the students?

In their rush to immediately "fix" education, Colorado's lawmakers rushed to a mistaken value-added system that will not improve education in the state.

Plans to evaluate teachers based on student performance and offer merit pay for teachers have gained attention, but they don't go nearly far enough. Today's teaching profession is the product of a mid-20th-century labor model.

Low grading standards in university education departments will negatively affect the accumulation of skills for prospective teachers and contribute to a larger culture of low standards for educators.

Teachers are the most important school-level factor in student success—but as any parent knows, all teachers are not created equal. Reforms to the current quite cursory teacher evaluation system, if done well, have the potential to remove the worst-performing teachers and, even more important, to assist the majority in improving their craft.