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Imagine that Michael is your son. He's entering the ninth grade but is reading at a seventh-grade level. He complains that school is boring and refuses to do much homework. He is starting to become friendly with a bad crowd.

You hear about the latest school reforms: Standards will be ratcheted up so courses will be tougher than ever. Class size will be reduced to 20, but Michael will now be in classes with both high and low performing students. Do you think that such school reform is likely to help or hurt your son?

Except for the name, Michael is a real kid. I've been mentoring him for the past six years. And I'm worried about what school reform is doing to him. Here's a blueprint for school reform I believe is more likely to help Michael-and all students.

Better Teachers

It's more difficult than ever to attract and retain good teachers. At one time, many of the best and brightest women saw teaching as the most ambitious career to which they could reasonably aspire. Today, however, the best and brightest have many more opportunities and can choose more prestigious careers. This is a major reason the quality of K-12 teachers has declined. We must reinvent the way we recruit, train, and retain teachers by addressing:

Prestige: Teaching would be more prestigious if we added a career ladder for teachers: teacher, senior teacher, and master teacher.

Pay: If teachers' per-hour pay remained the same and they worked an eight-hour day and a 220-day year, they would earn $70,000 to $100,000 a year-enough to eliminate low pay as a reason to reject a teaching career.

Control: I believe that more teachers would stay in teaching if classes were grouped by achievement rather than by random assignment, which brings Herculean challenges for most teachers. It would also help if teachers had more power to place too-difficult-to-teach students in special classes.

Reinventing Teacher Training

It is difficult to imagine why university professors rather than K-12 master teachers train K-12 teachers. Most university professors are researchers, and many have never taught K-12.

The following approach to training teachers makes more sense. Each school district should recruit candidates with bachelor's degrees for a teacher training program taught primarily by the district's best teachers. Each trainee would spend a few weeks in each of those teachers' classrooms and debrief with them. The district would supplement that practicum with methods and theory minicourses. After certifying the new teacher, the school district would have to hire him or her, which would provide a strong incentive for the district to ensure good candidate screening and training.

To attract enough good teachers, we must undertake a marketing campaign for "the new and improved teaching profession" aimed at top high school students, college students, and mid-career professionals.

Better Curriculum

Think back to the last class or workshop you attended. How much do you remember? If you're like most people, not much. And that was when you chose the class and paid for it. Now imagine school kids, especially the millions like Michael who perform below grade level and have low academic motivation. They must endure class after class on topics they never would have chosen, for example, World history, trigonometry, and chemistry. And each class is no mere workshop, it's a 180-hour marathon. Plus, kids have shorter attention spans than adults. It's little wonder they forget, let alone fail to incorporate into their lives, most of what they were taught.

This is especially devastating to the millions of students like Michael who are going to leave high school knowing relatively little. That makes it crucial that what they do learn be as important as possible. Until every student has acquired the basic life skills, it is elitist of us to insist that they understand nonlinear functions, the electron structure of the elements in the periodic table, the pre- and post-Columbian explorers' voyages, and so on.

Lest you think I exaggerate, here's an example of the state of New York's objectives for all its students: "Students relate processes at the system level to the cellular level in order to explain dynamic equilibrium in multi-celled organisms."

Forcing all students to know such things-even if they graduate without decent reading, writing, and arithmetic skills-is what we're endorsing whenever we nod in agreement when some educrat or politician calls for "high standards for all students." Is this what you would want for Michael? We must ask ourselves: What are the most important things kids need to learn? We must teach those things first: reading, number sense, writing, how to use a computer, and interpersonal communication skills.

A Reinvented Curriculum

What might a reinvented high school curriculum look like? Roughly one-fourth of traditionally required high school courses would become elective, replaced by required lifeskills courses as follows:

English/language arts: Of the four years of high school English, roughly three are currently devoted to the study of literature. One year would be replaced by Language for Life. Using common real-life situations, this course would develop students' ability to make logical and well-presented arguments orally and in writing. The course would also focus on enhanced reading of such material as newspapers and magazines, voter handbooks, consumer contracts, employee handbooks, product assembly manuals, and how-to books.

History and government: One year of the four years of history and government would be replaced by Psychology for Life. Using real-life situations and role-playing, this course would help students develop skills in such areas as conflict resolution and coping with such anxieties as teasing, bullying, cliques, drug abuse, and sexuality.

Math: One year of the four years of college-preparatory math (algebra, geometry, algebra 2/trigonometry, and precalculus) would be replaced by Math for Life. Many students graduate from high school able to solve the problems in the algebra 2 textbook yet unable to deal with more common real-world math problems-for example, "Can I afford to buy a home?" This requires an understanding of how to set up the problem, calculate likely mortgage payments, estimate likely income (after taxes) over at least the first few years of home ownership, and so forth. This course would use real-life scenarios to teach essential math abilities that a surprising number of high school and even college students don't have.

Science: One year of the four years of science would be replaced by Information Literacy. The information explosion provides tremendous power to those who can harness it. This course would show students how to optimally use the Internet, libraries, and phone interviewing to obtain information.

Foreign language: One year of the three years of foreign language would be replaced by Career Exploration. Even after college, many people graduate unsure of what they want to be when they "grow up." They are aware of only a small fraction of the thousands of career options available, and they don't know what kind of career would suit them. This course would expose students to a wide range of career options; use various methods to identify each student's strengths, weaknesses, values, and interests; and show students how to discover what careers might fit them. Non-college-bound students would be exposed to quality careers that offer room for advancement but do not require a college education.

Create a National Curriculum

Imagine what would be possible with a national curriculum. For every major concept, from kindergarten to grade 12, there could be a superlative lesson plan. Consider the classic frog dissection lesson. Instead of killing millions of frogs, a high-quality interactive video-based course (too expensive to develop locally but affordable nationally) distributed over the Internet would allow students to simulate the frog dissection. Click on an icon and you get a mini-lecture or demonstration by a nationally renowned teacher. A lesson plan would be included for the in-classroom teacher, including stimulating questions, group activities, and homework assignments. Why should 70,000 biology teachers each have to try to figure out a wonderful way to teach the frog dissection lesson? Now think about an entire biology (or English, history, and so on) course.

This approach would allow for a degree of individualization impossible without a computer. Students could proceed at their own pace, getting more or less help as they need it. This would be invaluable for Michael. What would the hundreds of thousands of live teachers do if online master teachers were doing the teaching? They would do what they do best: provide the human touch, answer questions, work one-on-one with kids, and develop the close relationships with students that few teachers have time to provide.