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When it comes to high school, both agreed that the current model is outdated. As Khan put it, "Kids get promoted because they were in a chair for four years." Duncan called it a "19th century model" and "neanderthal." Instead, they suggested a competency-based model for promotion through grades rather than one that is time-based. In terms of content and standards, Duncan suggested adding subjects such as computer science, foreign language and financial literacy to the core curriculum. He adamantly defended the Common Core standards as a way for the U.S. to remain competitive globally and ensure requirements don't get dumbed down "to make politicians look good."

First, successful change leaders clearly articulate the need for change to a variety of audiences in ways that are intellectually coherent and emotionally compelling. The ability to do this requires that change leaders immerse themselves into radically different worlds

nderstand deeply is the world for which they are preparing their students

what skills, what habits of mind, and what dispositions

What happens to the people who make their livings from teaching, when their jobs are replaced by online courses available for free? All we need is one superb remedial algebra course that can be effectively delivered online and, theoretically, the demand for a zillion remedial algebra courses taught at a zillion community colleges suddenly drops off a cliff. Ask the music business what happens when you can get good stuff for free instead of paying for crap. Daily newspaper journalists learned a similar lesson all too well over the past two decades. The Associated Press business model — licensing the same story to multiple outlets, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense once a single news outlet puts that AP story online for free.

My own daughter is a freshman at a U.C. campus, and has already experienced lectures attended by more than 500 students with sections led by teaching assistants who are utterly uninterested in doing their job. For dollar paid, the value received is questionable, and whenever that kind of situation exists, the status quo is ripe for disruption. (It’s also worth noting, perhaps, that over 60,000 students applied for spots in a freshman class that ended up enrolling only 4,500 applicants, a sign, I think, that the brick-and-mortar university is in no imminent danger of going the way of the dinosaur.)

Education, I’d argue, has always been the most likely sector of society to get transformed by the Internet, because the thing the Internet does better than anything else is distribute information.

Principals must effectively and consistently model the use of the same technology tools they expect teachers to use in their classrooms with the students. Principals must be consistent in their decisions and expectations about integrating learning technology in the school. The principal's communication about the pace and process of integrating learning technology needs to be clear and reasonable. The principal must provide appropriate professional development time and resources to support effective classroom implementation of technology. The principal must support early adopters and risk takers. The principal must do whatever it takes to ensure that all staff has early access to the very same digital tools that students will be using in their classrooms. As the educational leader, the principal must make it clear to the technology leader that all decisions relating to learning technology will be made by the educational leaders with input from the technology leaders, not the other way around. The principal must set and support the expectation that student work will be done and stored using technology. Principals must ensure that families and the public are kept informed about the school's goals and progress relating to its use of technology as a learning resource. The principal must be an active and public champion for all students, staff members, and the school in moving the vision of fully integrating learning technology for the second decade of the 21st century.

‘Reinventing Higher Education’So what exactly is the pedagogical model Carnegie Mellon has discovered, that has inspired such faith? Essentially, it’s an online program that teaches students itself, rather than just being the medium a professor uses to teach. Furthermore, it leverages the opportunity to interact directly with a unique student -- an opportunity a professor addressing dozens of students in a lecture hall does not have.

portunity a profe

Van Meter was one of the first schools in the state to adopt the one-to-one computer program for its students last year. Since then, the school has become a model for the program for schools across the country.

The first world that change leaders must understand deeply is the world for which they are preparing their students.

They realize that the world no longer cares how much students know, but rather what they can do with what they know.

he second world effective change leaders understand is the world of students