The challenge of school excellence is to create new and flexible patterns of student learning and continual professional development for educators. It requires procedures for balancing the concerns of the academy, the economy and the society in the design of system wide programs. These programs should take advantage of computer and communication technology.

While school excellence is often tied to high performances on high stakes testing, in this context it is the spotlight on leadership. It is the challenge to consider the overall aims of education and then through continuous interactions among directors. actors, producers and audience to create academy award winning school performances that accomplish these societal aims.

The challenge of class equity is to design a space for interaction that will value the contribution of multiple perspectives and use this richness to make the learning more meaningful. To close the achievement gap between groups in the society will require the courage to custom design the learning stage to fit the scene. This does not mean that all stage sets are the same, but that all sets accomplish the same goals.

Providing equity of access does not mean providing the same or equal access to information technology and learning tools. It means that schools should be the places where all classes of children are able to engage society's tools for thinking.

The challenge of school engagement is to direct active involvement of each student and the teachers in constructing deep understanding and skillful use of analytic tools. Students who are disengaged are too difficult to teach. We need to find ways to reach not just the students who come to school with the background and resources to perform well, but all students.

This will involve some adjustment of the school and classroom to acknowledge the simple fact that all people do not learn at the same rate or even in the same way. Technology provides some options for creating more personalized approaches to learning. It does this in two ways. It provides for more individualize learning and it offers communication tools for organizing collaborative knowledge building.