Leading High-Performance School Systems: Lessons from the World's Best

WITH A FOREWORD BY LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND

Did you know that close to half of today's jobs in the U.S. could be done by robots and that proportion is rapidly increasing? It is quite possible that about half of today's high school graduates will not have the knowledge or skills needed to get a decent job when they graduate. Tomorrow's high school graduates will be able to thrive in this environment, but only if school superintendents, central office executives, and principals use the strategies employed by the world's top-performing education systems to build the high-performance education systems today's students will need to succeed tomorrow.

In Leading High-Performance School Systems: Lessons from the World's Best, Marc Tucker, a leading expert on top-performing school systems with more than 30 years of experience studying the global economy and education systems worldwide, details how top-performing school systems have met head-on the challenges facing school leaders today. You'll learn why our current system is obsolete, explore the knowledge and skills needed to design and build first-rate education systems, and gain a solid understanding of the key elements of high-performance school systems, including the following:

• A powerful, coherent instructional system with school-leaving certifications that mean much more than today's high school diploma.
• Partnerships with first-rate universities to ensure a steady supply of highly capable, well-educated, and well-trained teachers.
• Schools reorganized around highly qualified professional teachers with a career ladder they can climb.
• High expectations and personalized support to ensure that children arrive at each grade level ready to learn.
• An equitable system that closes the gaps in student performance.
• Vocational education for talented youth seeking an applied, academically rigorous education.

Leading High-Performance School Systems is an invaluable resource for school leaders preparing today's students for tomorrow's world.

Marc Tucker is the founder, CEO, and president of the National Center on Education and the Economy. A leader of the standards-driven education reform movement, Tucker has been studying the strategies used by the countries with the most successful education systems for three decades. He created New Standards—a precursor to the Common Core, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, and its successor, the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce; and he was instrumental in creating the National Skill Standards Board. Tucker also created the National Institute of School Leadership.

Tucker authored the 1986 Carnegie report A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century and the report of the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages, and was the lead author of Tough Choices or Tough Times, the report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce. He coauthored or edited Thinking for a Living: Education and the Wealth of Nations; Standards for Our Schools: How to Set Them, Measure Them, and Reach Them; and The Principal Challenge.

Tucker was commended by President Bill Clinton for his contributions to the design of the Clinton administration's education and job training proposals in the Rose Garden ceremony celebrating the passage of the legislation authorizing the Clinton program. In 2014, he received the James Bryant Conant Award from the Education Commission of the States for his outstanding individual contribution to American education.