In a report released last December, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) provides countries with a toolbox of strategies to develop a policy framework for improving the quality of early childhood education and care (ECE). Starting Strong III: A Quality Too

The World Bank (2012). Education in a Changing World: Flexibility, Skills and Employability. In order to provide students with 21st century skills, curriculum and examinations must teach and test teamwork, leadership, and communication skills, according to a new report from the World

Marc Tucker’s upcoming speaking engagement at the Iowa Teacher and Principal Leadership Symposium prompted the Governor’s Special Assistant for Education, Linda Fandel, to post about Standing on the Shoulders of Giants on the Iowa.gov web site.  Peter Callaghan, a columnist for the Ne

This month, the International Advisory Board welcomed Tony Mackay as their newest member. Mackay is the Executive Director of the Centre for Strategic Education, Melbourne, Australia and Deputy Chair of Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). He also holds t

Twenty-seven years ago, I had the privilege of serving as staff director and report author for the Carnegie Task Force on Teaching as a Profession.  We released our report, A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century, in the spring of 1986.  The message of the report was clear en

This month, Betsy Brown Ruzzi, Director of the Center on International Education Benchmarking, interviewed Ben Jensen of Australia’s Grattan Institute about the Institute’s most recent report, Catching up: Learning from the best school systems in East Asia.  Jensen is Director of the

Last month, The George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development (GSEHD) hosted an event focused on how the United States can learn from the world’s most successful education systems. Marc Tucker discussed his latest book, Surpassing Shanghai: An A

I left the second International Summit on the Teaching Profession not at all sure of what I had learned.  But, after a few days to sort it out, there is quite a lot.  Here it goes — 1.    Swiftly broadening goals I was struck by the way many of the top-performing countries talked abou

On March 9, 2012, Vivien Stewart, Senior Advisor for Education at the Asia Society, conducted a roundtable discussion on teacher quality issues with Lee Sing Kong, Director of the National Institute of Education in Singapore and Pasi Sahlberg, Director General of the National Centre f

As part of their comprehensive set of education initiatives and strategies, the World Bank has recently created a System Assessment and Benchmarking for Education Results (SABER) program that seeks to determine the policies that predict success in national (or sub-national) education