Marc S. Tucker is president of the National Center on Education and the Economy and codirector of the New Standards Project, the nation's largest effort to create a system of performance standards for our schools. The creator of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and co-author of America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages, he also coauthored the prize-winning Thinking for a Living: Education and the Wealth of Nations.

Judy B. Codding is vice-president for programs at the National Center on Education and the Economy. A former teacher at the elementary, middle and high school levels, Codding has also been an award-winning principal of one of Los Angeles' toughest high schools as well as of some of the wealthiest schools in New York's Westchester county. She was one of four charter principals who participated in the creation of Theodore Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools.