We envision a new set of alternatives to today's group-based instructional model, in which students are actively engaged in learning activities that are appropriately challenging, based on each student's needs. Students and teachers form important, productive, long-term relationships that result in mutual respect, success in school, and lifelong friendships.
We envision several different approaches to education, with parents, guardians, and mentors selecting the most appropriate option for a child based on an understanding of the child's needs and interests.
We envision new models of "school" in which both "basic skills" and "higher-order skills" are developed in ways that reflect how these skills are used outside of school.
For example, in one approach we envision small groups of students moving efficiently through a carefully designed set of interesting, multidisciplinary challenges, supported by expert teachers and using modern learning technologies. These challenges present important issues, generally focused on the content presented in the fields of science and social studies, and they require the application of skills now taught in language arts, math, fine arts, family and consumer science, and vocational arts. Long blocks of time devoted to these multidisciplinary projects are punctuated by brief instructional bursts delivered by teachers to small groups, and by computer-based instruction to individual students. Data from teacher observations, tests and quizzes, and educational games is combined to create an up-to-the-minute "student profile" describing what each student knows and still needs to know, and this information is used to prescribe appropriate activities for each student, on a daily basis.
In order to realize this vision, and others, we envision an extensive partnership spanning at least five state departments of education, several educational professional associations, school districts, research universities, and vendors that produce educational products and services and information technologies, as well as corporations that provide financial support to education. We envision these partners, working together in a ten-year collaboration that creates, implements, evaluates and disseminates new educational models, with important deliverables at the end of each year. Just as teams of men and women across the nation collaborated to put a man on the moon within a decade, we see a large, coordinated effort pooling the talents of top professionals working together, doing the best work of their lives to achieve this crucial goal.