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“It would look like a national system,” said Broad, describing what he would see as a perfect education infrastructure. “Rather than having 14,000 school boards across America, it would get governors involved, big city mayors involved, and it would have a longer school day and a longer school year.”

It's been a direction fueled by lots of money. In the past 13 years Broad has donated $800 million to education initiatives. A lot of it has gone to charter schools. In 2012, the KIPP charter school group got more than $2 million and Green Dot received $775,000 to supplement public funding. The online tutoring group Khan Academy received $1 million that year, too.

Broad has known all along he needs allies in public office to carry out his vision. He's generously donated to elections — from school boards to the U.S. presidency. He leans Democrat in Washington but anti-union on school boards.

I often recall Houston's Apollo 20 experiment, designed to bring "No Excuses" charter school methods to neighborhood schools. Its output-driven, reward and punish policies failed.  It was incredibly expensive, costing $52 million and it didn't increase reading scores. Intensive math tutoring produced test score gains in that subject. The only real success was due to the old-fashioned, win-win, input-driven method of hiring more counselors.

Michels finds no evidence that Grier's test-driven accountability has benefitted students, but he describes the great success of constructive programs that build on kids' strengths and provide them more opportunities.

With the help of local philanthropies, however, Houston has introduced a wide range of humane, holistic, and effective programs. Michels starts with Las Americas Newcomer School, which is "on paper a failing school." It offers group therapy and social workers who help immigrants "navigate bureaucratic barriers—like proof of residency or vaccination records." He then describes outstanding early education programs that are ready to be scaled up, such as  the Gabriela Mistral Center for Early Childhood, and Project Grad which has provided counseling and helped more than 7,600 students go to college.

America is the land of opportunity, just for some more than others.

it's not just a matter of dollars and cents. It's also a matter of letters and words. Affluent parents talk to their kids three more hours a week on average than poor parents, which is critical during a child's formative early years.

Even poor kids who do everything right don't do much better than rich kids who do everything wrong. Advantages and disadvantages, in other words, tend to perpetuate themselves.

The fundamental premise of Moneyball is that the labor market of sports is inefficient, and that many teams systematically undervalue particular athletic skills that help them win. While these skills are often subtle – and the players that possess them tend to toil in obscurity - they can be identified using sophisticated statistical techniques, aka sabermetrics. Home runs are fun. On-base percentage is crucial.

The wisdom of the moneyball strategy is no longer controversial. It’s why the A’s almost always outperform their payroll,

However, the triumph of moneyball creates a paradox, since its success depends on the very market inefficiencies it exposes. The end result is a relentless search for new undervalued skills, those hidden talents that nobody else seems to appreciate. At least not yet.

I would think it would take years for a new principal to replace teachers and make curriculum changes that would eventually trickle down to students and grow over time. More research is needed to understand what things new principals are doing immediately that boost learning throughout the building.