Even as education is wrangling with the impact of the Obama administration’s No Child Left Behind Act waiver gambit, the power of data in shaking up education remains more prominent than ever. From news about the success of the Gates Foundation’s abandoned small high school initiative, to the possible benefits of school choice in keeping kids off the path to prison, to the streams of information on the consequences of low-quality teaching, we are getting more information needed to put an end to the kind of failed practices that have hurt far too many kids for too long.

In this Best of Dropout Nation from March 2011, Editor RiShawn Biddle explains how data is changing out assumptions about American public education and how it will continue to disrupt status quo thinking. Read, consider, and offer your own thoughts.

Jerry Yang and David Filo didn’t know what they were doing two decades ago to catalog all the Web sites in the nascent World Wide Web. But what they did was unleashing new forms of data and new approaches to analysis that would revolutionize how we shop, conduct business, buy homes and live our lives. This disruptive power is seen each day as firms such as Amazon ease our shopping (and makes it easier for firms to tickle our proverbial fancies with their wares), search engine such Google (and to a lesser extent, Microsoft’s Bing and Yang and Filo’s Yahoo) to ease the scouring for what was once hard to find information, and countless organizations use the ‘Net for organizing support for their positions or, as in the case of WikiLeaks, reveal black box secrets for all to see. Traditional gatekeepers such as big-box retailers, airlines and old-school media outlets have lost their power to control pricing and the packaging of content (and in the case of weak firms such as Circuit City and Knight-Ridder) have been forced out of business altogether as new players that use the Web as their base technology have taken advantage of the new world.

This disruptive power of data is now beginning to rear its head in education, forcing all the players within it to change the way they operate schools and educate all of our children — reducing the influence of teachers unions, university schools of education and others who have long dominated education decision-making. And that is a good thing. It is high time that American public education embrace the ability of data to shed light on problems, force discussions that have often been stifled (if not outright ignored) and ease pathways to solutions that those who have been the gatekeepers do not want. But we will have to take further steps to make the data more-useful to all players in education — especially our parents, who are demanding (and deserve) to be the consumers and lead decision-makers in schools.

As with the rest of the world, the World Wide Web has played a role in making school data more available to policymakers, school operators, teachers and families alike. Efforts by organizations such as GreatSchools.org (a spinoff of bond rating agency Standard & Poor’s earlier effort to evaluate school spending) has at least been helpful in pushing for greater availability of information on school performance.

But the moves that have made data disruptive in education came earlier than the development of Hypertext Markup Language by Tim Berners-Lee. Starting in the 1970s, the concerns of southern governors such as Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and chambers of commerce helped foster the modern school reform movement; the publication of A Nation At Risk in 1983 by the Reagan Administration, which further raised the alarm about the quality of education in America’s schools, led to other governors to begin taking the first steps towards improving teacher quality (through certification of instructors) and the development of the first curricula standards. By 1986, some 25o commissions and panels were working on school reform, according to Susan Fuhrman (now president of Teachers College).

One of the efforts that came out of all this was the second wave of standardized testing, with students taking more-rigorous exams in earlier grades. The data from those tests began giving policymakers and even some parents a sense of how woeful America’s students were being educated. But the raw scores weren’t enough. A critical question that was not yet answered was how well were students progressing over time, as they moved from grade to grade and from one teacher to another. There were also questions about the role of teachers and schools in student achievement. One researcher, William Sanders, began answering these questions during his time in Tennessee through the development of what would become Value-Added Assessment. Sanders work (which included the development of the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System, the nation’s first systemic effort at measuring student, school and teacher performance) along with the work of Eric Hanushek (now at Stanford’s Hoover Institution), began to reveal the critical role of teacher quality in education and the need to overhaul how we recruit, train and compensate teachers.

The second step came during the 1990s courtesy of the first wave of curriculum standards development, which forced a change in how tests were given. Once purely diagnostics or simple measures of performance, states began to use tests as ways to hold schools accountable for student achievement — especially among poor and minority students. By 2000, 39 states were using consequence-based testing and accountability, according to a Harvard Journal on Legislation report co-authored by Sandy Kress, Stephanie Zeckmann and Matthew Schmitten. This, along with the use of value-added assessment, would lead to new data on the achievement gaps between whites, blacks and Latinos, between middle class and poor students, and between young men and women. This approach to data, which would be made federal policy thanks to the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, would not only force states and districts to figure out how to reform education for all children, but even rally together a new generation of school reformers.

The final wave came after the passage of No Child, thanks to its provision that graduation rates had to be considered alongside test scores as critical measures of student achievement. For years, states and districts got away with inflating their graduation rates by simply dividing the number of students who graduated from high school from the number in junior or senior years. But researchers such as now-University of Arkansas education professor Jay P. Greene, Schott Foundation’s Michael Holzman, and Chris Swanson (now at the education research unit of the parent of Education Week) took a hard look at the numbers and began looking at the progress of students throughout their entire high school career (from leaving 8th grade to graduation). Other researchers, including Robert Balfanz of Johns Hopkins took it further and looked at how many kids were leaving school before even reaching senior year of high school. Their work on graduation rates and the promoting power of schools exposed the low quality of education provided in our high schools, identified the dropout factories (and by extension, failure mills in earlier grades) that were the major sources of academic failure, and forced states to begin looking at the poor instruction and curricula given to kids long before they reached high school. Their work also forced states to finally be honest in their graduation rate reporting.

The disruptive force of these new sources and ways of analyzing data cannot be overstated. Value-added data on the long-term performance of teachers is what informs the Race to the Top initiative and efforts to replace traditional (and abysmal) forms of subjective evaluation for objective forms of performance management. The impact of data can be seen in the fact that the American Federation of Teachers is now accepting the use of test score data in evaluating teachers (and in supporting milder forms of the kind of quick dismissals of laggard teachers).

It is Balfanz’s work on promoting power that has led to efforts by states and school districts to create early warning indicators that show when kids are falling behind and on the way to dropping out of school. And it is the data on graduation rates and achievement gaps that are now fueling Parent Power movements in states such as Connecticut and California, leading to the creation of Parent Trigger laws that allow families to overhaul the schools their kids attend, and foster new forms of school choice.

The impact of data can also be seen in the participation of political leaders and others in conversations about the reform of American public education. No longer are governors, state legislatures and mayors willing to simply stand by while teachers unions, school superintendents and school boards at the state and local level make policy decisions largely on their own. While this may annoy the Randi Weingartens, Dennis Van Roekels and Diane Ravitches in the status quo, the reality is that education plays far too critical a role in the nation’s economic and social future to be left to so-called experts who have done little and achieved less.

All of this is wonderful. But it isn’t enough. As Dropout Nation noted in December, school data most school data and analysis remains a black box affair, unavailable for easy use by parents, policymakers and even teachers and principals for making smart decisions. Far too many school data systems leave out useful information, explain it in the kind of jargon most parents and laymen cannot understand, or are organized in ways that are useful to no one. Save for California and Indiana, most states do a poor job of defining and reporting chronic truancy — a data point critical in finding out which kids are on the path to dropping out. School spending data that would allow principals to actually serve as true managers of schools and help families learn what they are actually getting for their school dollar is largely non-existent. And even information on the academic progress of English Language Learning students in learning English and moving into regular classroom (and avoiding the path to academic failure) is poorly tracked and reported.

American public education’s penchant for using education for compliance with state and federal is one reason why these data challenges still exist. The low quality of current data systems at the district level is another; in California, for example, there are still districts using Excel spreadsheets to track data that needs to be handled with far-superior software and data systems. There is also the reality that school districts are not private-sector corporations and thus, not required to actually make data easy to use; since families are not considered customers or lead decision-makers in education, districts feel no obligation to make information easier to use.

Then there is the resistance to the use (and even the very existence) of data from defenders of traditional public education. From where they sit, the use of data by families and politicians to hold all players in education accountable for laggard instruction, turgid curriculum and antiquated practices and rules (tenure and degree- and seniority-based pay scales) is both a threat and a promise. The threat is to what remains of their influence over education policy; the promise is to the long-held belief that education decisions should be left to experts alone. As seen in the debate over the use of value-added data in evaluating teachers, they use the reality that data isn’t perfect or always all-encompassing to beat back efforts to expand its use in all aspects of education. Considering that defenders of the status quo demand more engagement from families and communities in schools, this opposition to using and disseminating data is ridiculous and shameful.

But at the end of the day, their opposition will be of little use. You can’t stop a fast-moving train with broken breaks. And data is exactly that. Once information becomes available, those who consume it will demand more. Parents are going to ask for more information, not only on the academic progress of their students and the effectiveness of schools, but even individual data on teacher performance. Considering that a child can go from a high-quality teacher to a low-quality one just by crossing the hallway (and that the quality of instruction varies from classroom to classroom), there will be greater demand or more data on teachers of the kind made available by the Los Angeles Times in its award-winning series last year. It will also force greater scrutiny of the work school districts do in recruiting and evaluating them.

But we cannot count just on the force of data alone. We will need more private-sector and nonprofit players to get into the business of aggregating data and breaking it down into usable chunks. And we will need community-based family information centers that can help families and communities to understand what the data means for kids and for their neighborhoods. These two efforts would help fulfill the Five Codes of Parent Power I have discussed earlier this week on the Dropout Nation Podcast, force teachers and other players to end the anti-intellectualism that plagues American public education, and ultimately make data even more disruptive in education. And ultimately, help replace dropout factories and failure mills with schools fit for our children and their futures.

Photo courtesy of GreatEcology.com

It’s simple: A high-quality education for all children is the best long-term solution for poverty. As this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast points out, this is especially true in an age in which what you know trumps what you can do with your hands. One of the underlying causes of the nation’s current economic malaise is the 14 percent unemployment rate among high school dropouts aged 25 and older; this along with the high levels of unemployment among the 150 children dropping out from high school each hour, has led to a drag on economic growth that will continue to burden the nation and its poorest communities both economically (and through an expanded welfare state) decades into the future. Meanwhile the unemployment levels for high school grads with at least some college education is far lower.

In this Best of Dropout Nation from last June, Editor RiShawn Biddle further explains why ensuring that kids currently in school get high-quality teaching and curricula can help stem poverty. Read, listen to the Podcast, consider, and take action.

When it comes to the matter of the role of high-quality education in stemming poverty, the thoughtlessness on the subject is rather bipartisan. Bring in the question of whether every child should be given a rigorous, college preparatory education, along with the idea that every child should attain postsecondary education, and the mindlessness becomes astounding. This truism was proven once more this week amid the publication of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce’s latest report on the need to increase the number of college-educated American children. From Deborah Meier’s latest anti-intellectual defense of the status quo (on a blog she shares with Diane Ravitch that should be called “Thoughtless Minds Think Alike”), to the meanderings of the usually more-thoughtful Neal McCluskey of the reform-minded Cato Institute, their general complaint is that there is no economic or social value for kids supposedly uninterested in college. And ultimately, that providing kids with college preparatory education (and encouraging them to attend college or some other form of higher education) is rather wrongheaded.

One can at least say that McCluskey is partly right about this: There isn’t necessarily any magic in attaining a degree, especially if one’s goal is to go into fields such as the Humanities, where the possibilities of attaining a decent-paying job is unlikely. But liberal arts, social science and history degrees only account for 15 percent of all baccalaureate degrees awarded in 2008-2009, according to the U.S. Department of Education; high-paying fields such as business, health-related fields, education, biological sciences, engineering and computer science account for half the baccalaureates earned by collegians. Let’s also be clear that there is plenty wrong with America’s higher education system. (I have noted some of those problems this month in my report for Organization Trends on for-profit colleges.) But those problems don’t negate the value of higher education, especially for poor and minority children.

But at least McCluskey is coming from a good place. He actually wants high-quality school options for all children. Meier, on the other hand, is like her EdWeek colleague: Ready to damn poor kids with low expectations and using condescending nostalgia about a student that chose to go into law enforcement to justify her point. The fact that one young man did manage to get into one of the few middle-class careers that didn’t require college or technical school (even though police academies are, in fact, higher ed institutions of a sort) doesn’t prove her point. (The fact that her own grandchildren are attending college disproves her argument entirely.) And given the educational requirements to succeed in law enforcement (which involve abstract thinking), along with the fact that college education is required for attaining more-prestigious positions in that field (including serving with the FBI), even aspiring cops can use college preparatory education.

For anyone to say that encouraging kids to pursue higher education — and thus, provide all children a college preparatory education — is ridiculous. Especially when it comes to our kids who grow up in the poorest urban and rural communities. Higher ed has value for the kids and the communities in which they live.

As Dropout Nation has noted, the math and science skills needed to get into college and white-collar fields are also needed in high-paying blue-collar fields such as welding and elevator installation (which one can only get into if they attend other forms of higher education such as community colleges, technical schools and apprenticeships). The jobs that those with some form of higher education can attain is often higher-paying than that for those who only finished high school or worse, just dropped out.

The value of higher education in bolstering incomes is especially clear when one looks at its impact on income for blacks and Latinos. A black man or woman with some form of college education will earn at least $9,142 more in annual income than their dropout counterpart; the gap grows both with additional higher ed credentials and as the better-educated person attains experience in the workforce in higher-paying fields. Those additional dollars flow into the economies of the communities in which they live, spurring home ownership, entrepreneurial pursuits and the emergence of middle-class families on whose energies and dollars civil society is dependent.

For a lower middle-class black community such as the one in which I grew up, South Ozone Park in New York City (part of the zip code 11436), those additional higher ed credentials equals a decline in poverty. If just a third of the 3,110 residents living below poverty had attended college for at least two years, they would triple their income and contribute at least an additional $20 million a year in income to their neighborhoods (and more if they reach the nation’s median annual income). If every one of the 1,276 kids under age 5 went to college and returned to the community, that would be an additional $36 million in annual income.

Such numbers seem small on their face, and yes, these quick-and-dirty estimates don’t account for such things as migration and neighborhood transition. But even for this blue-collar community, where many of the residents are employed in high-paying jobs and own homes, higher education equals more men and women who can help sustain the area. In the case of the kids, it means avoiding poverty and prison in their adulthood.

If this is true for South Ozone Park, it is also the case for Eight Mile in Detroit, for rural Liberty, New York, and for our poorest communities.

This is just the economic impact. For most of us, the campuses of colleges and technical schools are the places where we build the connections that lead to career opportunities and fulfilling friendships. Then there are is the knowledge — from the courses on economic theory to the simple lessons about navigating life outside of the communities in which one had grown up — that is even more value. Well-educated men and women beget learned children who continue economic renewal. And for those who live in poor communities where optimism is in short supply, watching neighbors achieve higher education and economic success brings the bright light of hope they need to move their kids on up.

Attaining higher levels of education alone won’t ensure happier lives. But for minorities, acquiring at least some college education often means the difference between being able to feed their children or subsist. And for the communities in which they live, education, along with low crime, and the flourishing of entrepreneurism and free markets, is the most-effective form of long-term economic development — and it is cheaper over time than costly tax increment subsidies. One would dare say if cities such as Detroit, Philadelphia and Newark devoted more civic energy to school reform than to tax abatements and stadium deals, they wouldn’t be facing the economic abyss.

This reality is why rigorous, college-preparatory education at the K-12 level, and the implicit expectation for all children that they must attain higher education, is critical. It is also why we must improve reading instruction and make sure that every child is literate.

For our poorest kids, especially those in black and Latino households , the education they receive at all levels is critical to brighter, less-economically impoverished futures and wider social options. And for the communities in which they live, it can mean the difference between vibrancy and continued decay.

Although in the shadows of Big K.C., Kansas City, Kansas City, K.S. struggles with similar academic woes.

Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan weighed in on the failures of Kansas City, Mo.’s school district, declaring that its low graduation rates and collection of dropout factories were “a huge concern”. That statement could also apply to its sister city across the border in Kansas — especially when it comes to the low graduation and promoting power rates for young men of all races. Little Kansas City epitomizes one of the reasons why we must expand accountability — requiring districts to focus on addressing the underlying illiteracy, special education over-labeling, and overuse of suspensions and expulsions — that is the underlying reason why so many young men in both Kansas Citys and throughout America — end up in poverty and prison.In this Best of Dropout Nation from March 2010, Editor RiShawn Biddle illustrates the problems in little Kansas City. Read, consider, and take action. And listen to tomorrow’s Dropout Nation Podcast on the importance of the No Child Left Behind Act, which has helped shine a light on the extent of little Kansas City’s — and the nation’s — education crisis.

The closing of 29 (of 61) schools by the Kansas City (Mo.) school district has captured the attention of the nation. But across the state line in the Big KC’s sister city that shares the same name, a more-fundamental crisis looms. It is one that both cities share with each other — and with other urban school systems across the nation: The young men, no matter their skin color or ethnicity, don’t graduate.

At the beginning of the 2003-2004 school year, young men made up the slight majority of Kansas City’s graduating Class of 2008. This is typical in many districts. But five years later, according to data from the National Center for Educational Statistics, the numbers reverse. Young women, no matter their race or ethnicity, make up the majority of seniors. Among blacks in the Kansas City district, young women account for a slight majority over young men in the Class of 2008; but among whites and Latinos, the young women outnumber the young men by a 3-to-2 ratio.

Black males in KC barely progress, but...

The white males do even worse. And...

Promoting power rates for young black men are, as one would expect, not high. But with 63 percent of young black male 8th-graders reaching senior year of high school (compared to 72 percent of their female counterparts), at least more than half are making it through. Among young white men, the numbers are even worse: A mere 44 percent of them made it from 8th grade to senior year versus 71 percent of young white women. And only 49 percent of the district’s Latino male 8th-graders were promoted to 12th grade; the promoting power rate for Latino females was 71 percent.

fewer Latino males make it than their sisters.

The consequences can be seen in little Kansas City’s demographic and economic statistics: Seventeen percent of the city’s residents are economically impoverished; only 10 percent of Kansas’ citizens (and 13 percent of U.S. citizens) report poverty-level incomes; 18 of Kansas City households are headed by an unmarried woman (versus 8 percent of the U.S. population). But these consequences can be felt nationwide, especially as higher educational attainment becomes key to economic sustainability.

The issues facing young women, especially young black women (who are more likely than the general population to become head of households and never marry) cannot be ignored; the likelihood that young women are being under-diagnosed for learning disabilities must always be kept in mind. The promoting power rate for Kansas City, while better in some respects than its more-populous neighbor, still means that one out of every four children are dropping out. But if the nation wants to stem the dropout crisis, it needs to work on improving academic achievement among young men. Working in little KC wouldn’t be bad place to start.

As we commemorate the legacy of Martin Luther King, listen to this Best of the Dropout Nation Podcast from November 2010 on what it means for education to be the leading civil rights issue of this era. School reformers and others make this statement every day, but it will be meaningless jargon unless several steps are taken to walk the proverbial talk.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod, Zune, MP3 player, smartphone, Nook Color or Kindle.  Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, the Education Podcast Network,  Zune Marketplace and PodBean. Also download to your phone with BlackBerry podcast software and Google Reader.

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Tuesday’s Dropout Nation commentary on why student surveys were more effective in evaluating teacher quality that classroom observations by adults hits upon one of the most-important issues in American public education: The need for cultures of genius in which high quality caring teachers and principals nurture the potential of all children in their care. What we need for schools to do is embrace the approach of children’s hospitals, who work hard to help children succeed and treat the parents and caregivers who love them with the respect and candor they deserve.

In this Best of Dropout Nation from last May, Contributing Editor (and Connecticut Parents Union President) Gwen Samuel recounts a hospital visit and wonders why schools can’t be so compassionate to kids and families.

Several months ago, my daughter’s teacher and I noticed that her leg was starting to bow. Puzzled about why my daughter’s leg was growing crooked, we began the immediate medical journey of diagnosing the problem and putting the needs of my child first.

From day one, the first moment my daughter’s ailment was noticed, the school took immediate action. We developed an educational and physical needs plan to support her. She went from walking the stairs to riding on the elevator to get to class.  No long meetings, or stalling tactic. They put my child’s needs first.

As my child went through the rounds of CATScans, MRI exams and trips to the doctors to diagnose the ailment, the school and I worked together at the school and home level to keep her educationally engaged.

Then the hospital came into play. Weeks before the surgery, our family met with doctors, who gave my daughter support and prepared us for outcomes after the operation. On the day of the surgery, nurses showed us pictures of the operating room and presented the actual items that would be used n surgery, including the oxygen mask and gowns. And they created a welcoming environment in which my daughter and our family could ask questions and get answers. We also played “I Spy” with the nurses and we had a spelling bee with the key word being anesthesia.

My daughter got to choose how she traveled to the operating room; she road there in a Barbie Car. And I got to stay in the until she was sleep. When I cried, a nurse consoled me and walked with me to the family lounge.

In the family lounge, I was given a phone for updates, a tracking ID number for my child and up to the minute progress reports. A big LCD screen constantly updated families about the progress of procedures. A nurse called me during surgery to give an update. WOW!  It was all about my child and her well being, with the family role clearly defined and supported.

My daughter is doing fine and still recovering. And our experience makes me thrilled to have health insurance and caring hospitals. I wish the same can be said for many of our schools. Teachers and administrators need to realize that parents aren’t the enemy. If schools were as supportive of families as our children’s hospitals, we would accomplish so much for our kids.

The Children’s Medical Center is just another example of a family-centered welcoming environment that can be replicated in our schools.  Working together is clearly the path of least resistance thus placing all the adult stake holders in a better position to meet the needs of our children.

One of the emerging trends in education is the advance of online and blended learning. Efforts such as School of one in new york City have shown how education can be of high quality and still tailored to the individual needs of kids. This development, along with the development of tablets, and the growing frustration of parents with traditional public education, has created new opportunities for families and communities to go further and start their own schools, breaking away from the old-school district model

In this Best of Dropout Nation from March, Editor RiShawn Biddle explains the importance of this emerging DIY education concept. Read, consider, and offer your own ideas.

This month, Wired profiled the work of what can be called the DIY gadget movement. Embracing both a sort of get it done yourself ethic of the early 70s punk music era and the earlier generations of gadget-builders such as computer pioneer Steve Wozniak, folks such as Limor Fried of Adafruit Industries have stepped up their device-building and become providers of tools and guides to fellow DIY builder looking to do it for themselves. Now people can build everything from cutesy novelties such as a device that tweets one’s electric usage to more-useful items such as a scanner that detects cancer. And from these devices can come the kind of tools that will make our lives better, and leads to the start-up of firms that can contribute to the nation’s economic growth.

So imagine if such DIY ethic was brought into reforming American public education? We’re not necessarily talking about the so-called unschooling movement (which consists of very few kids and their parents), or the more-mainstream homeschooling. This would go beyond that. The idea would be that teachers, parents or others committed to reforming American public education would simply start their own schools, either in their own homes, in storefronts or even in the basements of churches. While the schools would still be subjected to standards and accountability — including testing — to ensure that every child is getting high-quality instruction and curriculum, they would be able to create cultures of genius with little bureaucracy in the way.

We have seen some of this happen in the past. As Dropout Nation discussed on Wednesday, parents in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville community of New York City’s borough of Brooklyn started schools in storefronts during the battle between the parent-controlled district and the American Federation of Teachers that shut down three schools. In Africa and India, the presence of privately run schools operating outside the official state confines has helped the quality of school options and student outcomes. Many of the nation’s Ivy League and top-tier universities — think Harvard and Georgetown — started as sort of DIY startups. And then there are the historically black colleges and universities such as Bethune-Cookman and Tuskegee; they emerged after the Civil War as DIY schools, initially providing elementary and secondary education to the children and grandchildren of former slaves.

For parents, especially those whose kids are subjected to the worst American public education offers, waiting for the school reform efforts such as those fostered by President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top initiative means more days of their kids getting abysmal instruction and curricula. Given that high-quality charter schools still reach only a smattering of America’s kids, there are still not enough alternatives to mediocre and atrocious education.

At the same time, for reform-minded high-quality teachers frustrated with the pace of reform, sitting around isn’t enough. They have talents that aren’t recognized or rewarded by traditional districts and compensation systems that reward seniority and degree attainment instead of improvements in student achievement. Community leaders want to do more than agitate for change; they want to see it happen now.

It is possible to make robust and immediate reform a reality. The development of online learning means that a talented teacher can reach more students through the Web. The advent of sites such as Project Gutenberg means access to books that can be used in teaching. Technology gives parents and churches the ability to start makeshift schools anywhere. And there are entrepreneurs in education (including Dropout Nation Contributing Editor Steve Peha) who can provide other tools, including better instructional methods and curricula.

The technology is here and so are the people. In some ways, DIY education is already happening in small ways. But imagine what a mass movement might look like.  One can imagine an urban Parent Power group or community organization working with Barnes & Noble on customizing Nook Color tablet e-readers for video access. This would allow students to access free textbooks and videos from teachers on the subjects they need to learn. Barnes & Noble would gain deductions, new customers and public relations goodwill; the kids would be able to get the high-quality education they need. Same would be true if education toymaker LeapFrog and Parent Power groups did the same thing.
It is also imaginable that high-quality teachers get together and, with start-up grants, create an online education firm that supplies DIY schools with instruction. The teachers could reach more kids; the schools can expand the number of kids getting good-to-great teaching in scarcity fields such as math and science.

There’s still a lot that would need to happen to make DIY schools a reality — including the overhaul of school funding to voucherize dollars so they follow kids to any school option. Nor can we ignore the need to systematically overhaul how we recruit and train teachers, reform the quality of curriculum and other aspects of systemic reform. Not every parent or community will be equipped to do DIY education. But embracing a do-it-for-ourselves ethic can help revolutionize American public education and help all kids everywhere write their own stories.