The split screen strategy

"American education could be getting far more than it is from its teachers, and from our young people. But only when it accepts that it has a design problem, and broadens its concept of change. Today the dominant idea is to drive standards and assessment into the existing inert system, in the hope this will get schools, teachers and students to improve their performance ... while not challenging what makes K-12 an inert system. The effort to 'do' improvement is good, but is only half a strategy. The idea should be to make K-12 a self-improving system, by introducing arrangements that…