As I travel throughout the country and the world, I am excited by the work of a few tireless education pioneers and innovators who are shaping future education to transform learning for future generations of students through a focus on student outcomes, measuring outcomes and performance by how well students demonstrate high levels of knowledge and skills through personalized pathways and their ability to show what they know in performance-based assessments.

Blended learning—formal education programs that combine online learning and brick-and-mortar schools—is emerging rapidly in K–12 schools across the country, with the potential to reshape America’s factory-model education system into one that can personalize for different student needs.

The history of education reform is littered with “new, new things.”  Innovations masquerading as panaceas have distracted leaders and decision-makers for decades. TV? Whole language? The first-blush promise of computers? At the same time, student performance in the United States has largely stagnated, and the so-called agrarian, industrial model of schooling has proven resilient.