It must have seemed simple to the framers of No Child Left Behind. For years, they had poured more and more money into federal programs for schools, yet reading performance had not improved. It appeared that the money had gone down a rat hole, and Congress was ready to hold schools accountable. It was time to get tough. Unfortunately, the test-based accountability that both Democrats and Republicans saw as the answer has not worked out very well. Not only has performance not improved, but good teachers are leaving the profession in droves, and applications to schools of education are plummeting. The problem, writes Marc Tucker, is that the United States is attempting to address a new challenge (the need to educate all students to high standards to meet the needs of the knowledge economy) with an old accountability model designed to meet the needs of the industrial age. High-performing nations have demonstrated the effectiveness of a different model, one that holds teachers accountable as true professionals. Tucker describes how this new model would use career ladders, giving teachers the support and incentives they need to lead unprecedented school improvement.