A recent survey by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Scholastic found that America's teachers are open to the idea of being held accountable for their students' progress through multiple measures. Bill and Melinda Gates describe those findings and the work their foundation is doing to help teachers improve their craft in an article in the Saturday, October 22, Wall Street Journal.

They make some great points about the difficulty in developing measures of the profession, or "craft" of teaching. "We have all known terrific teachers," the Gates' write. "You watch them at work for 10 minutes and you can tell how thoroughly they've mastered the craft. But nobody has been able to identify what, precisely, makes them so outstanding."