In a report published by another liberal Washington think-tank, the Brookings Institution, Gordon, along with co-authors Thomas Kane and Douglas Staiger, outlined five recommendations for changes to the public school system:

1. Reduce barriers to entry for teachers. Allow teachers to start without state teacher certifications because no evidence has shown this improves student performance. Plus, such a move would help alleviate substantial teacher shortages across the country.
2. Make it more difficult for the poorest performing teachers to receive tenure. "The tenure process should be changed, since school districts have much better information about a teacher's effectiveness after two years on the job than at the point of recruitment," wrote the authors. "If schools simply set a minimum tenure standard and denied tenure to teachers below that standard, student achievement would rise substantially."
3. Add bonuses for teachers that show solid results in an area with a high proportion of low-income students
4. Evaluate teachers using multiple measures that could include Principle evaluations, parent evaluations and classroom observations.
5. Distributing federal frabrs to states that show a long-term link between student performance and the effectiveness of individual teachers, then federal grants should be provided to that state.

Gordon's beliefs about NCLB - and education in general - seem to reflect the opinion that partisanship has hurt the school system more than helped it grow. "Strengthening teaching requires changes to the pay system and school culture that abet mediocrity. Standing alone, the usual liberal solution - across-the-board pay hikes - perpetuates the maldistribution [sic] of good teachers and reinforces the irrelevance of achievement," wrote Gordon, for CAP.

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