We hold out hope that Americans will begin to see as a higher priority the necessity of strengthening our education system, if for no other reason but to keep alive the hope of their children achieving the American Dream.

We've learned a lot over the years about how our kids learn best. But putting that knowledge to work in our communities and classroom isn't always as easy as it sounds.

The Expanding Learning and Afterschool Project is a 50-state initiative that gives educators easy and direct access to research and promising practices that can help them use time beyond the conventional school day most effectively for learning.

If you believe that to close the achievement gap in this country we've got to close the opportunity gap, I invite you to tweet why you believe our nation should #expandEDin2012.

Proposed new standards neatly encapsulate a decade of independent research: in order to truly benefit kids, after-school program activities should be based on planned and sequenced curricula that support specific learning and developmental goals.

On this National Day of Blogging for Real Education Reform, it's a great time to talk about how to get American young people the extra learning time they need to prevent summer setback -- whatever you call that time.