Rafe Esquith

In this talk, education speaker Rafe Esquith, America's most acclaimed public school teacher, gives a valuable - and oddly neglected - insider's perspective on education reform. In order to discuss reform, we need to accept an uncomfortable truth: that teaching has become an incredibly difficult job. Reformers are good people but they tend to oversimplify things. In their reasonable argument to hold teachers accountable, for example, they turn to test scores, which is not reasonable at all. Family, Esquith says, is the biggest, yet most often overlooked, factor in whether children will be good students. Poverty comes in at a close second. Until the reformers factor these issues into their solutions, they won't be successful. "If we want our children to commit to education," he says, "then we have to commit to educating them." With candor, good humor, and a mile-wide practical streak, Esquith offers alternatives and an emotional call - amid the noise, the hype, the politics, and even the anger - to keep the students front and center.