"The SEA of the Future" is an education publication series examining how state education agencies can shift from a compliance to a performance-oriented organization through strategic planning and performance management tools to meet growing demands to support education reform while improving productivity. This volume, the second in the series, examines how state leaders, challenged with having to make decisions on how to use limited resources, are faced with an uneasy zero-sum game: every dollar they put into one program is a dollar not spent in another. When state education agency (SEA) chiefs suggest that public funds can be better spent, they are criticized, often unfairly. In short, leaders need to talk about how to better spend money in schools and districts; they need to prioritize productivity. Following an overview by Betheny Gross, this volume contains the following essays: (1) Leveraging Productivity for Progress: An Imperative for States (Marguerite Roza); (2) Getting Beyond the Data: The State Role in Fostering Continuous Improvement (Data Quality Campaign); (3) Next-Generation Teacher Evaluation Reform: Taking on Teacher Quality from the Statehouse (Betheny Gross and Ashley Jochim); and (4) Teacher Retirement Benefits: Defining a More Active Role for SEAs and Their Chiefs (Marguerite Roza and Michael Podgursky). [For "The SEA of the Future: Leveraging Performance Management to Support School Improvement. Volume 1," see ED562516. For "The SEA of the Future: Building the Productivity Infrastructure. Volume 3," see ED562515. For "The SEA of the Future: Uncovering the Productivity Promise of Rural Education. Volume 4," see ED562510. For "The SEA of the Future: Building Agency Capacity for Evidence-Based Policymaking. Volume 5," see ED562509.]