Argues that standards-based education has woefully impacted students' ability to learn in a classroom setting in favor of one-size-fits-all models that don't address the needs of diverse student populations. Instead, the author claims, schools should focus on competency-based models that allow students to show mastery of a topic before moving on to the next. By doing so, students will prove their competency similar to the ways craftsman, martial arts, and music teachers have stressed for hundreds of years. Provides a guide to reforming education using competency-based models, showing how students can use utilize creativity, art, and other topics long thought detrimental to the core concepts of reading, writing, and arithmetic, to improve a child's mastery of their education.

PO# FY23-0242.

Time for disruptive innovation in our schools -- Our moment of opportunity -- Hasn't worked can't work won't work -- Designing student learning for the 21st century -- Personalized competency-based learning in elementary and preschool -- Personalized competency-based learning in secondary schools -- Personalized competency-based learning in higher education -- How to suck innovation out of the American education system -- Leading to innovation -- The equity agenda -- Bring back the joy -- We need leaders like you -- A call to action -- Which system do you want for your children?.