Unless you are a structural engineer or a historian, the Eiffel Tower seems little more than one of France’s most-iconic monuments — and a lovely spot to dine with your wife (if you can afford the eating at the Jules Verne). But for school reformers, how its builder brought it to being — and how it left its mark on engineering and culture — offers some lessons on the kind of dynamic minds and path-breaking thinking we need for the reform of American public education.

At the time Gustave Eiffel began conceptualizing the tower in 1884, constructing high-rise structures in which people could occupy for at least some time had only begun to move from ideas to reality. The first real high-standing structure was the Oriel Chambers in Liverpool, which was built in 1864, only stood five stories tall. The Home Insurance building in Chicago — completed a year after Eiffel began pushing the French government to support his plan — only stood 10 stories; the Statue of Liberty (fashioned by Eiffel’s fellow Frenchmen Pierre-Auguste Bartholdi) would come after. The tallest of them all, the Washington Monument, stood just 555 feet — and it took more than 36 years to move from conception to completion.

Few thought that anything taller than those edifices could ever be built. As Jill Jonnes points out in Eiffel’s Tower: The Thrilling Story Behind Paris’s Beloved Monument and the Extraordinary World’s Fair That Introduced It, engineers such as Richard Trevithick and bridge-building firm Clarke & Reeves tossed around and attempted similar efforts at building 1,000-ft high structures. None had made it.  Even fewer saw them as being either beautiful, valuable or useful. After all, in many cities, the high buildings would dwarf over existing structures of civic pride; a bunch of them would create shadows that (in theory) dim out the sunlight and get rid of public spaces. Particularly in a city like Paris — which had already gone though a wrenching round of city planning courtesy of Georges-Eugène, 1st Baron Haussmann — the idea would not be well-received by those who like to keep the status quo ante.

It took the plans by the French government to host the Exposition Universelle in 1889 to actually spur a challenge to that thinking — and it took Eiffel to take advantage of that opportunity. A native of Dijon who was landed in the bridge-building business after a job in one of his relative’s vinegar works fell through, Eiffel made his bones by successfully erecting a bridge in Bordeaux even as his colleagues quit working on the project. Eiffel had the combination of daring, tenacity, thoughtfulness, discipline and opportunistic drive most of his contemporaries lacked in spades. He was also brave, even once rescuing one of his riveters from drowning in a river. And by 1884, those qualities made Eiffel a titan among his peers. His firm built what was at the time the world’s highest railway bridge (in Garabit, France); erected bridges in Vietnam and what was then the developing world; built train stations in Hungary; and had placed his stamp on America’s Statue of Liberty itself by crafting the internal skeleton that held together the copper skin of the colossus.

Eiffel understood that the French government to make a bold statement on behalf of democratic republicanism in what would become the twilight of European and Asian monarchies. He knew that the nation needed to rebuild a reputation tarnished by its defeat 14 years earlier in the Franco-Prussian War. He realized that French wanted to prove that its great minds were as capable anyone from America. He also knew that the technology was already available to make a thousand foot tall tower possible: Thanks to the work of Elisha Gray Otis, elevators could carry hundreds up and down buildings safely and efficiently. The engineering work Eiffel did on the Statue of Liberty, along with the burgeoning architectural efforts of William LeBaron Jenny and Louis Sullivan, also paved the way for sky-high construction. And the work of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick in developing processes that made steel production cheap and efficient meant that a sturdy tower of great height could be built.

Eiffel got together a team of engineers and architects at his firm — Emile Nouguier, Maurice Koechlin, and Stephen Sauvestre — to begin sketching out the design and engineering for a thousand foot tall metal tower. Then Eiffel began publicly and privately lobbying for its construction and inclusion in the world’s fair. By 1886, Eiffel had the support to make the tower a reality. Then the real challenges began. The nation’s architects, never fans of engineers to start, were outraged that the shining jewel of the world’s fair was being put together by someone they considered a mere bridge builder. They lobbied for their own plans (including a thousand-foot column with a searchlight) and lambasted Eiffel’s own. Then the French government, which originally planned to pony up the full cost, agreed to only cover a third of its $1 million cost. Eiffel solved that problem by raising the rest of the funds on its own and bearing the engineering and designing costs of the project.

Then came more foes of the tower. Politicians, notably future French President Georges Clemenceau and Pierre Tirard, managed to delay the signing of the contract with Eiffel to build the tower after declaring that the spare, minimalist tower, more scaffolding that building, was “anti-artistic, contrary to French genius… a project more in character with America”. The came another problem: A French aristocrat, along with one of her neighbors, sued the French government to prevent construction of the tower; they argued that the tower could collapse on their properties and could serve as a giant lightning rod for decades after the fair was completed. Eiffel solved those problems by indemnifying the French government against the lawsuits and any possible structural collapse. As a result, French officials official signed the contract, allowing Eiffel to go ahead with construction.

But Eiffel’s greatest challenge laid with building elevators that could reach the heights and do so safely. The tower needed three sets of elevator banks — two of which needed to go up each of the curved legs of the tower from the ground to the second platform 377 feet above ground — and the French government, which controlled the contracts for the elevators, preferred that they were developed by native companies. But the best elevator maker was the elevator firm Elisha Gray Otis founded years ago, and even it hadn’t built elevators to go that far up. The French government did its best to rebuff Otis’ bid, but eventually relented when no one else would bid for the work. It still didn’t go smoothly, with Eiffel and Otis executives mutually frustrated at one another over their respective perfectionism (including Eiffel’s changes to the interior of the tower’s legs and Otis’ unwillingness to go along with building elevators according to French government demands). But Eiffel learned to go with Otis’ plans (and even accept cost overruns on that part of the project) because he knew it was more important to get the tower completed safely and on time than following his ego (or that of the French government).

Eiffel was a master of public relations. As France’s leading thinkers and artists — including Alexander Dumas fils and Paul Planat of the country’s leading architectural rag — attacked the tower, Eiffel held interviews with media players attacking his foes for remaining stuck behind the times and being unwilling to do anything that would advance France among the world beyond a status as “amusing people”. He also hired a photographer to document its construction, encouraged people to visit the site and watch the tower take shape, brought reporters and other dignitaries up to the unfinished structure to experience the dizzying heights, and eventually struck a deal with one of the country’s leading publications, Le Figaro, to place an office in the tower and publish a special edition for the world’s fair. Eiffel was also a master of the moment: When workers on the tower, demanding more money, threatened to stop work; he threatened to ditch them to the proverbial curb. They showed up for work and did their jobs.

What Eiffel wrought was a masterpiece of engineering and architecture. When it opened in 1889, it easily surpassed the Washington Monument as the world’s tallest structure — and would hold that title until the Chrysler Building overtook it four decades later. Besides dazzling the crowds at the Exposition Universelle (and annoying a generation of Parisians who would have rather seen it never be built), it began the race to build taller buildings that would maximize space and spur more people to move into cities. By 1891, Sullivan built the Wainwright Building in St. Louis, which would serve as the prototype of the modern office tower; the Flatiron Building and the Metropolitan Life tower would soon follow. The Eiffel Tower’s spare design would also help architects  break with the neoclassic past of the time and develop new styles, and spur generations of industrial designers. Without the tower, there would be no Art Deco of Rockefeller Center and the Chrysler Building, no streamline of the DeSoto Airflow and the 20th Century Limited, no stark power of the Guggenheim Museum or the San Francisco Bridge, and no sleek design of the iPhone or the BlackBerry. The tower even inspired the entertainment and amusement industries. Three years after the tower opened, George Washington Ferris would beat out Eiffel to build the very first Ferris Wheel for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago; every child riding a Ferris wheel this spring and summer (and watching a blockbuster at night) can thank Eiffel for their entertainment.

But what makes the tower special is what Gustave Eiffel brought to the table. He understood the challenges that France needed to overcome, imagineered a solution, put energy and drive into making it a reality, and approaching the challenge with both missionary zeal and disciplined thinking. He also brought strong management skills to the table, bringing together talented men to the fore, using persuasion (gentle and otherwise), and orchestrating public relations campaigns that overcame the opposition of status quo defenders. And he broke free of the past, forcefully articulating that it was time for new approaches to architecture and engineering.

It is the same combination of skills that school reformers will need in transforming American public education today.

As Eiffel had to do in the 1880s, reformers must stare down teachers unions, ed schools and other defenders of the status quo who insist on clinging to a vision of public education that has outlasted Horace Mann and John Dewey. Traditional public education  probably didn’t work even in an age in which education wasn’t critical to economic survival; it is definitely a failure in a knowledge-based economy in which strong math and reading skills are even critical for auto repair work. With concepts such as lower class sizes proven to be ineffective — and fiscally unsustainable — the need for using the Internet to provide every child with a high-quality teacher is critical. And with America becoming a majority-minority nation, racial- and gender-based achievement gaps are both unacceptable morally and from the standpoint of maintaining the nation’s prosperity.

The challenges — which come at the cost of 150 kids dropping out every hour — are not insurmountable. But as the American Enterprise Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce succinctly laid out yesterday in their report on the importance of school reform in spurring the science and technology sectors, it mean a clean break with the past. Scale can no longer be a fetish. There will be a need for a thousand different solutions working together (including even DIY schools). Parents and caregivers must be the kings and lead consumers in education. And we must embrace the moral, civil right and practical need for giving every child a high-quality education.

It will also take all hands to make it happen. In particular, we need visionary men who also have strong management skills, the ability to pull together ideas and technology, and political savvy to beat back defenders of the status quo who still have their (increasingly slipping) influence on how traditional public schools mis-educate children. We already have had the Joel Kleins, the Wendy Kopps and (to a lesser extent) the Michelle Rhees. But, as we have seen last week with the ouster of Cathie Black as New York City schools chancellor, there aren’t enough of them. And with the challenges ahead, we will need more than one Teach For America to expand the pipeline of talent.

So the school reform movement must developing new alternative pipelines into education, reaching beyond ed schools and central offices for talented minds. It must also reach  into classrooms and elevating teachers who are ready and willing to cast the Randi Weingartens and Diane Ravitches into the ashbins of history. And it must grab talents who are already out there preaching in the wilderness — including Parent Power activists — and put them into places where they can further the goal of building cultures of genius for all children. At the same time, it is critical for reformers to also glean lessons from how Eiffel approached challenges — including those from traditionalists who oppose reform, have nothing better to offer, and simply want to stay comfortable in the past at the expense of children.

We need Gustave Eiffels for school reform. And their success will mean every child succeeds in school and in life.

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When New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg handed the reins of the New York City school reform effort to Cathleen Black last year, Dropout Nation was rather agnostic about it. American public education is in dire needs of outsiders and new thinking to spur reform and end nearly two centuries of mediocrity and practices that have done little for kids or for anyone else. At the same time, corporate experience alone won’t help anyone deal with the perilous path of running an urban school district. If superintendents homegrown in education (think Clifford Janney or even Jean-Claude Brizard) struggle to make it past three years — and dealing with teachers unions, hostile central office bureaucracies and school boards in the thrall of National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers locals — then outsiders will also struggle.

A few months later, Black is out of the job of running the nation’s biggest experiment in school reform, replaced by Dennis Walcott, Bloomberg’s deputy mayor for education and a former nonprofit executive. Expect the usual cackles from the Diane Ravitch crowd (who never wanted Black or her predecessor, Joel Klein), and some excuse-making from reformers. But there isn’t all that much to say except that sometimes the wrong person is in the wrong job. This doesn’t weaken the need for reform or for outside thinking. Nor does it bolster any arguments about the value of experience in education. It does, however, remind folks to be a little humble about the challenges of reforming American public education, that it is as much a political battle (including battling perceptions that the ship is sinking and losing talent) as it is one about overhauling instruction, curriculum and operations. And once again, makes one consider whether the traditional district model of education is workable.

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Chances are that Arne Duncan doesn’t mind appearances at the NBA All-Star Weekend and getting shout-outs from celebrities such as LeBron James. But the U.S. Secretary of Education faces some daunting challenges over the next two years in keeping President Barack Obama’s school reform agenda. He must make headway in spite of such hotspots as the sparring in Congress and among education players over the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, and questions about getting new funding for such initiatives as Race to the Top and I3. Then there’s that pesky debate over abolishing collective bargaining that puts centrist Democrats such as Duncan on the hot seat just as their own initiatives would also weaken the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. All as the President is gearing up for a re-election campaign that will require all activist hands on deck, including two of the biggest players in Democratic party politics.

In this interview Duncan held with Dropout Nation and other media and policy players this morning, he discussed the U.S. Department of Education’s efforts to help states realize that there is flexibility in Title 1 funding and offered thoughts on Wisconsin and other major education issues. (Michelle McNeil of EdWeek has a roundup of the pow-wow.) More from the session, including about standardized testing and No Child — including comments from Carmel Martin, Duncan’s point-person on reauthorization– will be forthcoming this evening.

You have been critical of efforts in Wisconsin and elsewhere to abolish collective bargaining. How does efforts to abolish collective bargaining go against fostering collaboration?

You need budget concessions on wages and benefits [in Wisconsin]. As you know, the [NEA's Wisconsin affiliate] said they would make them… You have a union that is making moves toward the kinds of reforms we want. The president of the union even had push-back internally…You had a union that had been historically more intransigent, but was moving. You don’t want to hit them with a hammer… I think collective bargaining can and will be a tool for improving student achievement.

But isn’t ending collective bargaining critical to forcing the NEA, the AFT and their respective presidents, Dennis Van Roekel and Randi Weingarten to actually make concessions and embrace reform? Especially given the presence of Baby Boomers who want those benefits.

The leadership is changing. We have to get there faster. But you see union leaders such as Randi saying it should be easier to dismiss teachers, you’ve never heard that. You are hearing things that you’ve never heard before.

If you talk to good young teachers, they aren’t as interested in pensions. They want more pay. Give them a 401K plan and they will be happy. You have the Baby Boomers going into retirement. You have the new teachers who are coming in… I think [change] is happening.

But what about the reality that teachers unions have so many ways of advocating on their own behalf? In most school districts and even in states, there are few countering forces against unions, few ways for any sort of realistic collaboration.

Let’s have this conversation about parent engagement, countervailing pressures. We need that. We need the business community engaged.

No one’s talking about school boards. No one’s talking about superintendents. Everyone needs to move.

I’m not about collaboration for collaboration’s sake. Collaboration around the status quo, I’m not about that. I’m not about kumbaya. It’s about doing things to get better results for kids.”

So unions make concessions on teacher compensation and benefits right now? What if they push to roll things back when the fiscal conditions get better?

“Sometimes, when you cross the Rubicon on these issues, we crossed it… I think people are working in different ways. The countervailing pressure [against returning to the past] is that we need to get better results educationally. I think people are facing more pressure.

One of those pressures is fiscal. And in some cases, states are cutting funds for early childhood education initiatives. In your mind, is this smart cost-cutting?

I know these times are hard. But I don’t think that’s the smart way to cut. Kids are entering kindergarten without opportunity to succeed. If we want to close achievement gaps, we have to start at two and three, not four and five.

There’s the matter of class sizes, which is a particular concern for middle-class parents. Considering that fiscal belt-tightening inevitably will involve fewer teachers and increases class sizes, how can school districts reconcile this with parents?

Class size has been a sacred cow. We have to [put it on the table]. I have two kids. Given the choice between giving them a great teacher working with 28 kids or a mediocre teacher with 23, I’ll take the 28. Why not give the great teacher with 28 kids, $20,000, $25,000 more and give the rest [of the savings] to the district? Parents haven’t been given the choice. We need to have that conversation. Why don’t we have that conversation?

With some question about whether the No Child Left Behind Act will be reauthorized, there has been talk about providing school districts with waivers so they can avoid the penalties from the provision that all kids must be proficient in reading and math by 2014. What is the Department of Education’s roadmap on that?

Our focus is on getting it reauthorized… We are doing our job in passing that bill.

But what about the matter of getting congressional Republicans such as House Education and the Workforce Committee John Kline [who opposes No Child's accountability provisions] to move on reauthorization or even talk about what should be part of the reauthorized law?

No one’s saying ‘we won’t engage, we won’t talk’. Frankly the talks have been better than I expected.

Then there is Race to the Top, which will likely get less funding than in the past couple of years. For the states that competed for the program and didn’t get funding, are they really winners?

When you have 41 states adopting standards, they are winners… Forty-one states have reform plans. There are six districts in California that are working to implement these plans. We’re doing calls with these states and with funders so that they can implement those plans.

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If you are, as my colleague, Steve Peha, still disappointed in former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee for not sticking it out after her patron was ousted as Chocolate City’s mayor,  you will certainly have high hopes for her newly-launched Students First initiative. And if you are a general fan of work, as this editor is, you can’t help but support the initiative’s goals of rallying parents and community members to embrace and demand reform America’s teaching corps — and ensure that every student is given high-quality instruction.

At the same time, Students First is in some ways, less than satisfying. Why? Because Rhee’s initiative still doesn’t hit the sweet spot when it comes to school reform: Merging policy savvy with hard-core, take-it-to-the-streets activism and entrepreneurial (and operational) drive.

Right now, there is a divide of sorts within the school reform movement between the Beltway reformers (who spend plenty of time on policymaking and working the halls of Congress and statehouses), the grassroots activists (who do the tough work of rallying support door by door) and charter school operators and reformers working in state agencies and school districts (who put ideas into practice). While the three sides share the same goals and concern for reforming education so that every child can write their own story, they don’t see eye-to-eye when it comes to getting things done. More often than not, the three parties often fail to understand the shortcomings of their own approaches and the importance of the work their colleagues are doing.

The biggest offenders are the Beltway-based reformers. As seen in the reaction earlier this year from big-named players such as Rick Hess to the Los Angeles Times’ special report on the low quality teachers in L.A. Unified schools,  the Beltway reformers  seem to prefer bloodless talk about reform than taking the steps  to make reform a reality (including publicly naming laggard teachers and the institutional leaders who protect them). Beltway reformers are also more comfortable with theory and policy than making things work and rough public battles with teachers unions and other defenders of traditional public education. They fail to understand the key lesson of every reformer, activist and revolutionary of any sort: You don’t accomplish anything without afflicting the comfortable within the status quo.

This problem extends beyond the sparring matches. Beltway reformers fail to understand that it takes more than policy to make reforms work.  Save for a few outfits such as the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (which actually authorizes charter schools), most are unwilling to do the unglamorous, difficult task of working with families and communities — from listening to concerns, providing time and other resources,  and dealing with the messiness of families (many of which are struggling with a litany of other issues) — in order to make reforms a reality. Although organizations such as Democrats for Education Reform are now playing more-prominent roles in political campaigns, they haven’t mastered the brutal art of election politics; so they end up conceding ground to teachers unions and other status quo defenders.

At the same time, grassroots activists and school reformers on the ground fail to understand the importance of policymaking, which often includes winning over politicians with carefully-worded jargon, working those legislative committee rooms, and crafting legislation that achieves the politically possible. As important as their shock troop work is to winning reform on the ground, they must still understand that the ground game is one part of the war over reforming American public education.

As for charter school operators and in-district reformers? Their problem lies in the fact that they are often too focused on operations and mission than on thinking about how their work can help make the case for reform. More-importantly,  as Rhee herself admitted in October in a Wall Street Journal she co-wrote with her former boss, Adrian Fenty, reform-minded operators don’t always realize the importance explaining to community members how their efforts will improve the quality of education for their kids. Nor do they dare to actually question their opponents within traditional public education on their essential anti-intellectualism and misunderstanding of such matters as economics and management theory. The operators can certainly teach the ed school profs and the teachers union bosses a few things about what the real world actually looks like.

Yet all three groups are important to making school reform a reality. Working together, they temper each other’s excesses, force one another to consider flaws in thinking, and inform each other’s work. The school reform movement needs thinking activists, men and women who both know how to work the corridors of power and get their hands dirty in the trenches, skilled at policymaking, bomb-throwing and implementing all at once. This need is why Dropout Nation discusses both policy and practice; they all must come together in a continuum of actions in order to foster a revolution (and not an evolution) in public education. Reformers can’t just stay in the Beltway , work the streets or operate schools; they must get involved in all three areas.

Rhee has shown success in the policy wonk and school operations arenas; she has also displayed her flaws in rallying grassroots support. Students First offers her an opportunity to get her hands dirty in all three areas, learn from her mistakes, and put some of the lessons she has learned into practice. And she can show all three groups within the school reform movement how to not be limited by their respective perspectives.

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With so much discussion about the selection of Cathleen Black to replace Joel Klein as New York City schools chancellor — and the whole discussion about whether education should choose its leaders from within traditional circles or without (my answer: since school chief executives aren’t actually involved in instructional leadership — and most administrators have no control over the curricula or even teacher performance management — it makes no sense to insist that they should only be chosen from inside education) — it is time to think over another issue: What to do about luring and retaining highly-talented teachers.

As you read this piece from July, think about what the emphasis on credentials really means for improving education for every child. Given that there is no evidence of connections between student achievement and the degree attainment and National Board certification of teachers, what should matter in bringing high-quality teachers into every classroom (and improving the quality of administration and management in our schools).

Based on the talk about (and derision from defenders of traditional public education over) the level of attrition of Teach For America graduates after entering classrooms, one would think that university schools of education were stellar in this regard. But as the eminent teaching guru Martin Haberman points out, half of all aspiring teachers coming out of ed schools never make it into the classroom in the first place. As Richard Ingersoll also notes, half of those teachers who enter the classroom leave within five years (and one third of them leave by their third year). All in all, no matter how you slice it, you have high levels of turnover in the teaching profession and this is a problem.

Or is it? As it may turn out, little of this attrition may be troubling at least in the main. If one looks at the research on teacher effectiveness and the talent arc of the average teacher, it may not make sense for many teachers to be in the classroom for longer than two decades at most. As Dan Goldhaber and Michael Hanson have pointed out in their 2009 study, a teacher with 25 years in the classroom is no more successful in improving student achievement than an instructor working for only four years. Just as importantly, the research is suggesting that in some cases, the best teacher may not be a tenured veteran of three decades, but a rookie teacher who will only get better still over time.

This isn’t to say that young teachers are naturally better than their more-senior counterparts. After all, there is just as much chance that the rookie is going to be a laggard instructor and will not improve over time, while the more-senior teacher is one who has always been really good at improving student performance and is a master at this craft. What it means is that the concern should not be so much about attrition, but about luring high-quality teachers into the classroom and getting as much out of their talent for the benefit of their students (our children) as possible while they are in the job.

Think about it: At its best, teaching is difficult work. Those who undertake it should be thrilled by the challenges and opportunities to improve the lives of every child with whom they work. They should be happy to be in classrooms and anticipate success every day, not be depressed about working with children who may need a lot of help. They must be competent in the subjects they teach and care for every child before them. Those who aren’t interested in such challenges or don’t care for children shouldn’t be teachers. It’s best that they move on to other pursuits.

As for the highly-talented good-to-great teachers? Just because someone is stellar at teaching, cares for children and enjoys the profession today doesn’t mean they just want to be a teacher for life. The kind of talented and gifted people who are best at teaching are also the very folks who are interested in other challenges. Some of them may involve some form of economic or social entrepreneurship. It may include the desire to be the next Steven Evangelista, Marva Collins, Michael Feinberg or Dave Levin. It could even mean rising in the education ranks to lead or shape charters, private schools or traditional districts (like Jason Kamras), become the next John Taylor Gattos or even lead path-breaking teacher training programs like Haberman. Or, they may just want to stay in the classroom and be what the Jaime Escalantes (or for me, Everett Brawner and Dave Gilbert) are for so many children: The men and women who go above and beyond to teach every child what he or she needs to achieve their economic and social destinies.

The real problem isn’t so much the turnover, but a system in which too few high-quality aspiring teachers are recruited; which trains aspiring teachers abysmally for teaching in the classroom (and whose training usually involves pedagogy over subject-matter competence and how to work with kids from backgrounds different than that of those who teach them); which instills teachers with a rather dispiriting vision of classroom teaching (especially in urban classrooms); and then compensates them in ways that are contrary to stirring high performance. As seen in the careers of Escalante and Gatto, great work is barely tolerated while mediocrity is the norm.

The union work rules that limit the amount of work teachers can do, along with the lack of performance management and rigorous evaluation, means that top performers get little feedback, support or recognition. Meanwhile mid-career professionals — who may have the stuff to work in the toughest urban classrooms — struggle to even get into the profession because of the emphasis on licensing instead of on quality of work and talent.

This isn’t just a problem within teaching. The school reform movement has shown the importance of fostering and coalescing entrepreneurship, system leadership and practical problem-solving. But it has only begun to crack traditional education circles. Far too many within traditional public education lack curiosity about how matters are solved in areas outside of education; if anything, they are hostile to anything that seems to smell of “hedge funds” or “Corporate America” or even Main Street, even though all three are the main generators of economic and social activity. There is no iPad or iPhone without Apple and Steve Jobs; no Windows without Bill Gates and Microsoft; and no Facebook, Warner Brothers or Hewlett-Packards without entrepreneurial activity. This anti-intellectualism results in an unwillingness to think outside of the traditional concept of unions, districts, and school boards.

The solution to these problems lies in recruiting and training high-quality teachers who can serve in the classroom and, if they so choose, foster new programs, nonprofits and ideas within education, Right now, however, it is afterthought, not the norm. Thanks to TFA, similar alternative training programs, and reformers within and outside of traditional public education, this is changing. But it is changing too slowly. We must reform smarter and faster.

Attracting great teachers must begin long before they enter the classrooms. As Arthur Levine has pointed out ad-nauseam, most ed schools do a terrible job of screening out teachers. Almost none use the Haberman method — put an aspiring teacher before a kid and watch how he or she interacts with them — or use PRAXIS I or the SAT to screen out the high-quality candidates from those who aren’t (although one state, Indiana, is making that a requirement for its ed schools this year). Nor do ed schools recruit in the same manner as Teach For America, seeking out black and Latino collegians for classroom careers. It is one reason — besides the dropout crisis — that we have so few minorities in the classroom.

Once the teachers get into the classroom, they must be rewarded early and often for great work. This means the traditional teacher compensation system — with its emphasis on near-lifetime employment and seniority- and degree-based pay and privileges — must go out the door. Performance pay is one way to reward teachers. Another is to provide them start-up money to start their own social entrepreneur programs — including schools, teaching fellowship programs or even the next Black Star Project. Spreading out the Chad Sansings of education into the wider world will help boost teacher quality — and the quality of education for every child.

At least these are my thoughts. What are yours? Feel free to respond.

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While others are focused on the silly argument over whether Joel Klein’s successor as New York City’s schools chancellor, Cathleen Black, is qualified to run a school district (Dropout Nation’s answer is yes), our Contributing Editor, Steve Peha, is still thinking about what he considers the failed promise of the other superstar among reform-mineded current and former school chieftains, former D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. He offers some more thoughts today as part of the  series Still Waiting in D.C.:

So far, we don’t know if Mayor-Elect Vincent Gray’s interim chancellor, Kaya Henderson, is a dainty scamperer. If she turns out that way, we’ll know what Mr. Gray’s campaign against Michelle Rhee was about: Bring in the bruiser to knock things around, knock her around, and then send her packing, while Dr. Caspar Milquetoast takes the credit for ushering in a new era of consensus-driven leadership—and the coinage of yet another oxymoron. This group leadership thing never makes any sense to me: even a young lad in grammar school, I knew that “leader” was a singular noun. But rules we teach in one part of education are often contradicted in other parts of education.

No matter what happens, while Rhee’s work will survive for years to come, the end of her short tenure troubles me for several reasons. I discussed some of them last month. Here are more:

I had hoped she would become a model of a new kind of big city school leader. At such a young age when she was hired, she could have served her city for decades, ushering in dramatic change while also preserving stability.

I had hoped that Rhee would validate Teach For America’s real promise — that of putting new people into the field of education for long and highly influential careers — would be validated at the highest level. (Perhaps it has been and I just don’t feel it.)

I had hoped that D.C’.s schools would one day become the best urban schools in our nation. In some respects, this is selfishness on my part. I’m just embarrassed that my nation’s capital city treats its citizens so poorly at times.

I had hoped that a replicable model of school governance and successful reform might emerge. Sadly, Rhee leaves nothing replicable behind, least of all her approach to school leadership.

Clearly, I didn’t get what I wanted out of this deal. Sadly, I have no one to insult, threaten, or belittle as a result. For that, there’s plenty of culpability go around. I will admit that Rhee is to me still something of an enigma, a Sphinx-like riddle I can’t puzzle out. How someone so committed to the welfare of children would leave those kids behind after an election result that did not go in her favor.

I’m sad this didn’t work out. I’m frustrated, too, as I’m sure are many D.C. residents, that such a promising opportunity ended so poorly for everyone.

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