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.

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 don't think school reform should be motivated by missionary zeal. I think it should be motivated by evidence of what works. I have been critical of Teach For America in the past but I think one of the things about their model that's interesting is that they're constantly looking at it and whether what they're doing works and reassessing their model, and making changes. So to the extent that I believe everyone in the education sector should be looking at evidence, reassessing, making tweaks to figure out what works, I think it's a positive model.

I don't think school reform should be motivated by missionary zeal. I think it should be motivated by evidence of what works.

In North Carolina, for example, it takes 15 years to move a teacher's salary from $30,000 to $40,000. So it's really difficult to argue that pay doesn't have something to do with the lack of prestige.

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.

I wrote a work of history, I looked at over 500 sources - I spent three-and-a-half years on the project. I think the most gratifying and wonderful thing about the reaction is that people are learning things from the history that feel relevant to today.