This article features an interview with Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings. In this interview, Hastings relates that he told the "Wall Street Journal" in 2008 that he started looking at education--trying to figure out why our education is lagging when our technology is increasing at great rates and there's great innovation in so many other…

As states move to implement the Common Core State Standards, key challenges remain. One is how to make sure a high school diploma acknowledges what students have achieved. Should states adopt a two tiered diploma, in which students who pass internationally aligned Common Core exams at a career- and college-ready level receive an…

More than 40 states plan to assess student performance with new tests tied to the Common Core State Standards. In summer 2013, results from Common Core-aligned tests in New York showed a steep decline in outcomes. Common Core advocates hailed the scores as an honest accounting of school and student performance, while others worried that they…

"We used to send out books that looked like this," says Barbara Dreyer, as she holds the 500-page volume from one of the first-ever courses offered online by Connections Academy. "You could look at this information online, but, frankly, a lot of people were doing this," she adds, thumbing through the book's pages. Dreyer,…

If 2012 was the year of the MOOC--massive open online course--then 2013 was the year the MOOC hype returned to Earth. Largely lost in the coverage in both years, however, was the impact MOOCs might have in high schools. Although the jury is still out on that question, high schools around the country are experimenting with adding MOOCs to their…

There's broad commitment to ensuring that all high-school graduates are college- and career-ready, but heated debate about the best means of achieving that goal. The big question is, how can schools both respect the diversity of students' interests and ambitions and set a high bar for all? In this forum, two longtime advocates of high…

This article introduces a conversation with Brett Peiser, named chief executive officer of "Uncommon Schools" in July of 2012, along with the principal of North Star Academy Vailsburg Middle School, a charter school in Newark, New Jersey's West Ward. There is no doubt that "Uncommon Schools" has given thousands of…

Should charter schools be required to enroll students labeled special needs at the same rate as local school districts, that is, educate their "fair share"? Or is it reasonable for a charter school to counsel special education students to go elsewhere, if another school would be a better fit? If "fair share" requirements are…

This article presents an interview with Terry Grier, superintendent of the Houston Independent School District (HISD), Texas's largest district. Before taking this post, he had been a principal or superintendent for most of three decades and remains a reformer five years into his leadership. Grier has maintained his passion for improving…

Today's education technology holds immense promise, but what matters more than the tools themselves are how they are used in schools and in classrooms. In "Breakthrough Leadership in the Digital Age," Frederick M. Hess and Bror Saxberg argue that educators have tended to think of adopting technology as a way to "reform" or…

Ensuring college access amid rising tuition costs has hovered near the top of the nation's education agenda for years. Facing heightened concern about the student debt burden and disappointing college graduation rates, policymakers are hungry for fresh ideas. Federal Pell Grants, the primary means for subsidizing college tuition for…

The enthusiasm for digital learning is contagious. More than 2 million K-12 students are enrolled in online courses today, and research firm Ambient Insight projects that figure will hit 10 million by 2014. Will today's wave of technology inexorably change the face of schooling, or must school administrators first alter policy? This article…

In July 2011, Bill Gates told the "Wall Street Journal," "I'm enough of a scientist to want to say, "What is it about a great teacher?"" As a "practitioner" of sorts, the author has wondered the same thing for 15 years. The K-12 school sector generates little empirical research of any sort. And of this small amount, most is targeted to…

Three years after Barack Obama's election signaled a seeming resurgence for America's unions, the landscape looks very different. Republican governors in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio have limited the reach of collective bargaining for public employees. The moves, especially in Wisconsin, set off a national furor that has all but obscured the…

Washington is at a crossroads on K-12 education policy. Policymakers can (1) continue down the path of top-down accountability; (2) devolve power to states and districts, thereby returning to the status quo of the mid-1990s; or (3) rethink the fundamentals, do something different, and empower parental choice. This article discusses how the federal…