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There are essential elements for our public schools to fully develop the potential of both students and educators. They should be centers of community, where students, families and educators work together to support student success. They should foster collaboration.

High school students ought to seek out campus communities where they feel not only empowered to engage their talents, but also challenged to leave their comfort zones. The ability to embrace new opportunities emerges, in part, from a willingness to take risks and to fail.

When nearly a third of our high school students do not graduate on time with their peers, we have work to do. We must design our middle and high schools so that no student gets lost in the crowd and disconnected from his or her own potential.

Just as important as our society as a whole are our small communities: our neighborhoods, workplaces and schools.

The public education landscape is enriched by having many options - neighborhood public schools, magnet schools, community schools, schools that focus on career and technical education, and even charter schools.

The only thing that everyone needs to look out for is keeping the students reading through high school and thereafter.

We would like to have every middle and high school become a place where there will be lots of examples of youth competence and confidence.

The answer is not to standardize education, but to personalize and customize it to the needs of each child and community. There is no alternative. There never was.

It is incumbent upon all of us to build communities with the educational opportunities and support systems in place to help our youth become successful adults.

I envision presenting parents with a marketplace of school choices - public, private, parochial, charter, virtual, blended, and home education. They then can choose the model that best equips their children for success.