The American education system is in a period of unprecedented dynamism and change.

In the face of an emerging global learning ecosystem, many facets of traditional schooling are increasingly being called into question. Advances in neuroscience are reshaping old ideas about performance and cognition. Schools must become the locus of design of engaging and personalized learning experiences, supported by interactive media, visualization and social networking tools.

Schools must increasingly serve as critical sites for promoting their communities’ academic, economic, health and environmental wellbeing. Their leaders must develop new capacities to innovate and solve problems and to create and transmit knowledge. At the heart of educational development over the next five years will be diversity and difference, an explosion of our current system into a panoramic portfolio of school models, prototypes and practices.