This is an important time for our country's education system, as the potential exists to not merely tinker with it, but to transform it.

Most kids in America would benefit from spending twice as much time learning in a positive place.

Teachers have tough jobs and budget cuts are making things worse. They have administrators telling them to boost achievement and personalize learning, but most are on their own without tools. But that is beginning to change.

We're still new to using data in education. We quickly started trying to use state tests for everything. We've been relying on a few dozen data points about each student for a lot of important decisions.

John Behrens directs Cisco's Networking Academy. They partner with 10,000 schools in 160 countries and provide free online courses on computer networ...