The premises of this 2-year study are: first, what teachers know and can do is the most important influence on what students learn; second, recruiting, preparing, and retaining good teachers is the central strategy for improving our schools; and third, school reform cannot succeed unless it focuses on creating conditions in which teachers can teach and teach well. This report focuses on perceived barriers to achieving these goals: (1) low expectations for student performance; (2) unenforced standards for teachers; (3) major flaws in teacher preparation; (4) slipshod teacher recruiting; (5) inadequate induction for beginning techers; (6) inadequaate professional development opportunities and few rewards for knowledge and skill; and (7) schools that are structured for failure rather than success. To address these concerns, five major recommendations are offered: get serious about standards for both students and teachers; reinvent teacher preparation and professional development; fix teacher recruitment and put qualified teachers in every classroom; encourage and reward teacher knowledge and skill; and create schools that are organized for student and teacher success. Five appendixes provide a schedule of commission meetings and forums; lists of presentations, advisers, research contributors, and commissioned papers; and state-by-state data on indicators of attention to teaching quality, July 1996. (LL)