Motivating students and personalizing learning is necessary to improve student achievement. Doing so is bound to enlarge and to change the teacher's role. In the school only the teachers know the students as individuals.

This runs against much current thinking about standards and accountability, which wants to script and restrict what teachers do and narrows professional discretion. This discourages and disheartens teachers and makes it hard to attract and retain talent. It is important to have better-trained teachers. But it is also important to make teaching a better job, a better career.

Motivation matters for teachers, too. Motivation increases when teachers can control their work, as professionals can in most other white collar occupations. The Teacher Professional Partnership is proving to be a viable way to organize a school: Teachers control what matters for school success. In return they accept accountability for school success.

This section of our site explores these new roles for teachers.

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