If I’m a benchmarker, I go looking for the best of class and then try to outdo them. I do it not for a company as a whole but for a function.

In education, it’s partly that, yes, we know how to teach kids. We aren’t so sure how to organize. Let’s look at some places that actually have beaten the odds. Let’s look at school districts that have shown that you can really raise achievement. What are they doing to make that happen?

We also have to look nationally. And we can learn a lot. There are success stories that are now understood, in terms of how they function organizationally and in community support. If we look at those, we can learn that we don’t just have to set our sights on being a little above average. And if we set the sights high, they’re meetable goals. And meetable within a range of resource allocation that is available in the country and region at this time.