Abstract

Our schools today confront challenges that our education system is not equipped to answer. Erected haphazardly over the course of two centuries, our system of schooling has been configured to process large numbers of students for lives in an industrial nation. Given the realities of globalization and the demands of a knowledge economy, a system that may have worked passably well 35 years ago is no longer adequate. Moreover, there is no evidence that our education system can be reconfigured commensurate with a new mission. In fact, decades of earnest efforts to reform public schools through conventional means have shown remarkably little ability to substantively alter routines or results (Hess, 1999).