noted, "The skills that students need are not just more of what the
schools have always taught, such as basic skills in mathematics,
but also skills that the schools have rarely taught--the ability to
work with complex knowledge and to make decisions under con-
ditions of conflicting or inadequate evidence."

The challenges posed for schools are enormous. But quietly,
in places around the country like Tulsa, Oklahoma; Austin, Texas;
Portland, Oregon; and Cambridge, Massachusetts, a new kind of
education is emerging. In these communities, educators and
employers are joining forces to make the system of education work
by making academics more rigorous and by tying schools more
closely to the realities and the demands of the modern workplace.

This revolution is already happening, although it is often
overlooked in the weekly tirades against the public schools. It is,
admittedly, uneven in its implementation. But it represents a grass-
roots response to a growing problem: how to prepare young people
for a knowledge-based economy that will be radically different
from the one we knew as children.

The story begins in the mid- 1980s, when national reports high-
lighted the gap between changes in the workplace and in educa-
tion. These reports documented the steep decline in earnings among
young people with only a high school diploma and their difficulty
in finding steady, well-paying jobs. The reports cautioned that for
the nation to remain competitive, more young men and women
would have to achieve at levels once expected only of the few. In a
world where what you know and can do increasingly determines
what you earn, what young people learn and how well they learn it
have enormous consequences, both for individuals and for society.

One response to these problems has been new efforts to link
work and school in a more meaningful way. Originally, the focus
was on young people who may not complete a bachelor's degree.
But the discussion has since broadened into one about how best to

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