In December, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released its latest report on the countries that achieve at the highest levels in education. As expected, the news about the performance of U.S. education systems was rather glum. If the U.S. had demonstrated a sudden leap in the rankings, we might have grounds for a new theory of action — adopt standards and everything instantly improves. But we all know that is just not the case. We know it takes years to change trend lines and see results from substantive change efforts. Educators over the last several years have become enamored with studying the lessons of high-performing schools, school systems, and organizations. We read the OECD reports, we look at the winners of Broad