Lou Gerstner's Teaching Commission has released a remarkably candid appraisal of progress made on the teacher quality front since they started pounding on governors' doors three years ago. A superb rhetorical piece, Teaching at Risk: Progress and Potholes reviews progress made across the board in the areas of compensation, preparation, licensure, support, and giving more authority to principals. Highest marks go to state and district efforts to introduce performance pay and lowest marks to the state of teacher preparation: "...we are still deeply disappointed by the state of teacher preparation and by leaders' failure to do anything about it."

We are grateful to The Teaching Commission for the great contribution that it made in its short tenure, putting teacher quality at the forefront of policy debates. It is with some considerable sadness that we bid adieu to a group that we have come to view as our partner in the battle to improve teacher quality. Our sadness is professional and personal, as it was a great privilege to work first with its executive director Gaynor McCown, who died far too young, and more recently with Josh Greenman. Josh deserves great credit for taking over the helm during a difficult time. He gave Gaynor dignity, the only real gift one can give to a dying person who wanted so much to keep working up to her last days. Almost single-handedly Josh produced this excellent, superbly written report. We wish Josh well in his new position as op-ed editor at the New York Daily News.