Marc Tucker speaking at the 2012 Southern Growth Policies Conference

Marc Tucker recently travelled to Chattanooga, TN to participate in the Southern Growth Policies Conference hosted by Governor Bill Haslam.  News Channel Nine covered the event and reported on some of the pertinent workforce issues in the region. An op-ed in the State Journal (WV), reviews NCEE’s latest book, reasoning “Shanghai may have the right idea when it comes to training teachers.” In his blog in Education Week, Marc Tucker questions whether differentiated learning is really a solution to the school finance crisis, explains why STEM does not make sense, and discusses the presidential candidates’ education agendas.

Steve Hargadon of the Future of Education recently interviewed Tucker on the shared strategies used by the top-performing education systems and Emily Richmond, of the Education Writers Association, chatted with Tucker about why United States fares so poorly on international comparisons, how fundamental changes are needed in how society views and treats teachers, and why there doesn’t have to be a choice between equity and quality when it comes to public schools. In his Education Week blog, Top Performers, Tucker challenges the new generation of business leaders to turn their talents and influence to systems-change so that U.S. students can perform at world-class levels.

“Bob King and Bob Schwartz are two of this nation’s most highly respected educators and the National Center is fortunate to have them on its Board of Trustees,” said Marc Tucker, President and CEO of NCEE.  “Bob Schwartz brings his experiences as a high school teacher, principal, a governor’s education advisor, foundation executive and university dean to the National Center which is deeply involved with benchmarking the top-performing education systems around the world – many systems that Bob knows well.  Bob King also has had a sterling career in government at both the state and county level.  His efforts to bring best-in-class educational opportunities to all of the students in the states he has led have made him an invaluable partner in the National Center’s work on bringing world-class instructional systems to U.S. high schools.” Read the full press release here.

NCEE in the News
In his Education Week blog, Top Performers, Marc Tucker reviews How Well Are American Students Learning?, the latest report out of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, and reinforces that raising academic standards is an integral step in a much larger process to develop powerful instructional systems to raise student achievement. Marc also blogs about his proposed education agenda for the next American president, the death of vocational education and the demise of the American middle class, and more in Top Performers.

In the Des Moines Register, Head of Iowa State Department of Education Jason Glass, writes about lessons learned from Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World’s Leading Systems (NCEE’s latest publication) and how they could inform an education reform package currently being considered in the state.  District Administration magazine interviews Marc Tucker and asks, “What Can U.S. Schools Learn from Foreign Counterparts?” Atlanta Journal Constitution education reporter Maureen Downey explains why American politicians and educators should pay attention to successful school reform models elsewhere in the world. Read these stories and more here.

On January 19, 2012, the National Center on Education and the Economy launched the Center on International Education Benchmarking (CIEB). The new Center will conduct research on the world’s most successful education systems.  It will also offer access to information, analysis, and opinion on the education systems of the top-performing countries from all over the world through its new web portal. Click here to find out more.

In August 2011, Emily Wicken joined NCEE as a research analyst. Emily recently completed a PhD in History from Brown University, following a BA in History from Carleton College in Northfield, MN, where she also completed coursework in Education Studies. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the treatment of criminals in the West Indies, Ireland and India in the 1790s and required a year of independent research in UK archives.

In the Fall of 2011, Wanying Wang joined NCEE as a visiting scholar. Wanying recently completed a PhD in Education from the University of Hong Kong where her studies focused on a curriculum innovation in Peking University in Mainland China; the university is committed to modeling the core curriculum at Harvard University.  She holds a master’s degree in education and a bachelor’s degree in law.

Latest Publications and Events

Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World’s Leading Systems

On November 10, Harvard Education Press released NCEE’s latest book, Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World’s Leading Systems. The book, edited by NCEE President Marc Tucker (with a forward by Linda Darling-Hammond), focuses on five countries that have sustained records of superior education performance including Canada (with a focus on Ontario), China (with a focus on Shanghai), Japan, Finland, and Singapore. The authors describe each country’s history, culture, and education system in terms of standards, instructional systems, assessments, teacher quality, school finance, the gateways through the system, and the incentives that affect student motivation. In the final chapter, the book offers recommendations for how the United States can catch up and even outpace these educational leaders. Purchase a copy of the book here.

To celebrate the release of Surpassing Shanghai, NCEE hosted a book signing and briefing on November 15 with Marc Tucker and New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winning-author Thomas Friedman, who co-authored the book, That Used To Be Us: How America Fell Behind In the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back. The discussion was moderated by NBC correspondent Luke Russert. Video from the event is now available on NCEE’s web site.

NCEE in the News

Dan Rather Reports

On January 12, Marc Tucker participated in Education Week’s Quality Counts event and joined Mary Jean Gallagher, Deputy Assistant Minister at the Ontario Ministry of Education; Anthony Jackson, Vice President for Education at the Asia Society; and Emiliana Vegas, Lead Education Economist at the World Bank for a policy roundtable discussion entitled the Global Challenge. In November 2011, Marc kicked off his new blog, Top Performers, hosted by Education Week. He will be blogging at least once a week on what we can learn from the nations leading the world in student achievement and how those lessons can help shape U.S. policy and practice.  Marc also blogs occasionally for National Journal’s Education Expert blog—check out his latest post on why charter schools should not be driving national education policy.  Last November, Marc also wrote a commentary for Education Next entitled, “A Different Role for Teacher Unions” and appeared on Dan Rather Reports to discuss why the United States has fallen so far behind its international peers in terms of student achievement. Watch part of the interview here or to view the full show, Take a Lesson from Singapore, visit iTunes.