The discussion about "what is wrong with U.S. education and how to make it right" has been around for decades.
Some participants point at such exemplary educational systems as in Finland or South Korea (e.g. read this informative paper). However many publications focus only on the visible attributes of education, its form. For example, quote (from the paper mentioned above):
"In Finland, students spend around 600 hours/year in a relaxed environment, calling their professors by their first name and incorporating the arts into every subject. Finnish schools offer flexible schedules to cater to the students’ learning pace and sleeping habits."
But the authors fail to states that in order to successfully navigate such classes teachers must be absolutely fluent in their subjects well beyond the grade they teach, they need to know fundamentals of science and psychology, they have to be highly effective in communication with a diverse group of students, and also have time to professionally grow. That requires a completely different approach to teacher preparation and to teacher evaluation.
"100 percent of teachers in South Korea and Finland come from the top third of college graduates. In these countries, teaching is a competitive field with an abundance of pursuers. In America, only 23 percent of teachers come from the top third of their class".
This statistics screams that the education reform needs a new paradigm, including new approaches to teacher professional development.
The links to all six my applications to the NSF 2026 Big Idea Machine (from August 31, 2018 to October 26, 2018):
1. Entry125253: High Frequency Data Streams in Education
2. Entry124656: objective measures of physics knowledge
3. Entry125317: National database teacher PD
4. Entry124655: role of NSF in funding education
5. Entry125719: The new type of a science course for science teachers.
6. Entry126205: The development of the uniform standard for measuring content knowledge in physics.