Absent high-quality retraining, it's easy for workers in dying industries to get stuck, for their skills to atrophy, and for their networks and work habits to erode. All of this shrinks the supply of skilled workers, discouraging employers and leading many big firms to look overseas.

The authors stress the importance of career and technical education for students to achieve success after high school graduation.

The recession has pinned education policy in a tough spot: Our schools must both produce more skilled workers and do so as efficiently as possible. Innovative models of career and technical education could go a long way toward threading this needle.

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.

Employees who are good at their work ought to be rewarded, recognized, and have the chance to step up into new opportunities and responsibilities.

AEI has received a new bequest from the estate of the late Joseph J. Jacobs for its Joseph J. and Violet Jacobs Chair in Social Welfare Studies.

We must recognize the fact that most people do not have the ability or interest to succeed on the conventional academic track.

An interview with Frederick M. Hess and Juliet P. Squire on teacher retirement plans.