In these essays, members of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on K-12 education, joined by several keen-eyed observers, blend prediction with prescription to paint a vivid picture of American primary and secondary education in 2030. What follows is necessarily speculative, and readers may judge portions to be wishful thinking or politically naïve. But none of it is fanciful-we're not writing fiction here-and all of it, in the authors' views, is desirable. That is to say, the changes outlined here would yield a more responsive, efficient, effective, nimble, and productive K-12 education system than we have today.

For the last half century, higher spending and many modern reforms have failed to raise the achievement of students in the United States to the levels of other economically advanced countries. A possible explanation, says Herbert Walberg, is that much current education theory is ill informed about scientific psychology, often drawing on fads and pop psychology, and contradicting well-evidenced behavioral insights. In Advancing Student Learning, Walberg draws on both psychological and economic research to describe how students actually learn and how family, classroom, and school practices can help them learn more effectively.

Pre-kindergarten is one of the hottest topics in American education in 2009: Which children really need it? How many aren’t getting it? Who should provide it—and at whose expense? What’s the right balance between socialization and systematic instruction? Between education and child care? Where does Head Start fit in? What are reliable markers of quality in preschool programs? And much, much more.

Technology has transformed all aspects of our everyday lives. From online banking to social networking, we communicate, connect, and consume in ways radically different from the past. Yet the average classroom is not that different from the classroom of fifty years ago. In their book Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education (Jossey-Bass, 2009), Hoover fellows Terry M. Moe and John Chubb, leaders in education reform, tell a dramatic story about the pitched battle to bring about real change and improvement to America’s schools—a battle that pits the innovative forces of technology against the entrenched interests that powerfully protect the educational status quo.