No Longer One Size Fits All & Excerpt from Transforming American Education

Collaboration and Investment for Success
Transforming U.S. education is no small task, and accomplishing it will take leadership at all
levels of our education system – states, districts, schools, and the federal government – as
well as partnerships with higher education institutions, private enterprises, and not-for-profit
entities.
In the United States education is primarily a state and local responsibility. State and local
public education institutions must ensure equitable access to learning experiences for all
students and especially students in underserved populations – low-income and minority
students, students with disabilities, English language learners, preschool-aged children,
and others. States and districts need to build capacity for transformation. The Department
of Education has a role in identifying effective strategies and implementation practices;
encouraging, promoting, and actively supporting innovation in states and districts; and
nurturing collaborations that help states and districts leverage resources so the best ideas
can be scaled up.
Building capacity for transformation also will require investment. But we must resolve to
spend investment dollars more wisely, with clear expectations about what we expect in terms
of learning outcomes and process improvements.
Achievement of the vision set forth in this plan will rely on the broadband initiatives of
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which are intended to accelerate
deployment of Internet services in unserved, underserved, and rural areas and to strategic
institutions that are likely to create jobs or provide significant public benefits. These are the
Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) of the Department of Commerce’s
National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the Rural Development
Broadband Program (BOTP) of the Department of Agriculture’s USDA Rural Utility Services
(RUS), and a cross-agency National Broadband Plan that is being developed by the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC).
This plan also draws guidance and inspiration from the report of the National Science
Foundation (NSF) Task Force on Cyberlearning, “Fostering Learning in the Networked

World: The Cyberlearning Challenge and Opportunity,” published in June 2008.