A Commitment to Growth: Essays on Education is an edited collection of materials that Geoff Masters has published over the last seven years, including the ground-breaking Reforming Educational Assessment (Australian Education Review; No. 57). This collection is mostly comprised of shorter pieces such as the influential Five challenges in Australian school education and other essays and posts relating to themes of: effective use of assessment; focus on growth and progress; and, school and system improvement.

The four sections of the book are: Part 1: ‘Big Five’ Challenges in School Education. - Part 2: Is School Reform Working? - Part 3: Reconceptualising Educational Assessment. - Part 4: Schools as Learning Organisations. The editors have drawn on this body of writing by Professor Masters in an attempt to tell the story of these past seven years. If the beginning of this story was the publication of Reforming Educational Assessment: Imperatives, principles and challenges (AER 57), the release of the report of the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools, might be seen as the end of the beginning. With a greater understanding and emerging consensus of the challenges, implications and needed approaches, the next chapter in the story must focus on what Masters has called ‘the hard work of improvement’.