We have a lot of rhetoric today about "high rigor" and you often hear terms like that thrown about when discussing the Common Core. But the American education system historically has not embraced intellectual seriousness.

I think any sort of system that gives teachers more opportunities like teacher-led schools is a positive one that's going to lead to better retention in the profession, and it's going to be more intellectually challenging, so teachers stay engaged with their work over the many years of their career.

We have a lot of rhetoric today about "high rigor" and you often hear terms like that thrown about when discussing the Common Core. But the American education system historically has not embraced intellectual seriousness.

Younger teachers are definitely more likely to have worked at charter schools as opposed to have just heard of them. Charter schools explicitly look, often, to hire younger people. I've even talked to people who didn't necessarily go into teaching thinking they wanted to work at a charter school or even may have been considered critics of the charter school movement, and found that it was the only way for them to get their foot in the door. So young people just have much more familiarity with the concept.

I think a lot of people truly underestimate how much planning is involved in a teacher's work cycle.

Younger teachers are definitely more likely to have worked at charter schools as opposed to have just heard of them. Charter schools explicitly look, often, to hire younger people.

There are a lot of polls that show that actually Americans have a pretty high opinion of teachers, that Americans think teachers are just about as prestigious as doctors. And yet there's this political conversation - this reform conversation - that paints a very negative picture of the effectiveness of the teaching population. So there's definitely a tension between the way teaching is talked about and understood at the political level and how everyday average Americans think about teachers.