May 2, 2003

Improving Education by Valuing Teachers as Professionals

By JENNIFER K. RUARK

Twenty years ago, the Reagan administration's "A Nation at Risk" report warned of "the rising tide of mediocrity" in American education. The only difference today is that the students swimming in that tide have become teachers, write Vivian Troen and Katherine C. Boles. In Who's Teaching Your Children? Why the Teacher Crisis Is Worse Than You Think and What Can Be Done About It (Yale University Press), the education consultants argue that schools suffer from a "trilemma dysfunction": too few