Editor's Note: This week, Jim Shelton and John Easton of the Education Department will provide the question and join in the discussion. Shelton heads the Office of Innovation and Improvement, and Easton leads the department's research branch, the Institute of Education Sciences.

The federal government and private institutions such as graduate schools, foundations, and nonprofit groups spend billions of dollars on promoting educational innovation, developing and designing new programs, supporting research, evaluating programs, and disseminating their findings. But these resources are not organized, prioritized, or leveraged for maximum impact. Innovations are often not scaled because of lack of evidence; research is frequently separated from the problems of practice; and evaluation findings provide little insight into why a particular program succeeded or not. These disconnects demand a new vision, one that binds the work of researchers, evaluators, developers, practitioners, and policymakers and builds a cohesive structure for school reform.

Given this need, what are the essential components of an effective innovation, research, development, and dissemination infrastructure in education? How can we tap into the collective expertise of practitioners when designing and refining new school programs? Finally, what are the capabilities that need to exist at the local, state, and national levels and how should organizations that provide them fit together into a coherent whole? Our ultimate goal is to ensure that all students can benefit from well-designed and thoroughly tested best practices.

-- Jim Shelton and John Easton

How can the Obama administration and Congress put together a winning majority for reauthorization of ESEA? What should change, what should remain more or less the same, and why?

The Education Department is working on finalizing applications for the $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund, the centerpiece of the Obama administration's education reform agenda. The program, whose goals include turning around low-performing schools, is widely reported to be a blueprint for the administration's plans for the upcoming reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.

In a recent article for Education Next, expert Andy Smarick made a compelling case against the "turnaround" strategy. "Once persistently low performing, the majority of schools will remain low performing despite being acted upon in innumerable ways," Smarick wrote. He argued that poorly performing schools should be closed.

Is the turnaround strategy fundamentally flawed? Is the Race to the Top Fund throwing billions of dollars down the drain?

Even with federal stimulus dollars, which won't last forever, many schools are struggling financially and must seek alternative solutions. Should public-private partnerships be formed to shore up gaps in school budgets? Does this pose ethical concerns?

Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, have called for an overhaul to our nation's teacher evaluation systems.

How should teacher effectiveness be assessed? What role should student performance and standardized testing have in this equation?

Under the proposed eligibility requirements, districts must have made adequate yearly progress for two consecutive years in order to apply. The Education Department indicated it would prefer lifting the AYP requirement and hopes that pending legislation will allow it to do so by the time the applications are released.

Is lifting the AYP requirement a good idea? Would that be a step toward weaker accountability?

Under the Senate's proposal, states seeking to compete for funds through the program would have to create data systems that include all public postsecondary institutions within their borders. These systems would collect information on all students, including their secondary school record, financial status, entry and exit from colleges, job placement, and postsecondary earnings, among other information.

Is an extensive data system like this a good idea? Could it pose an invasion of privacy?

How would you grade this draft? How could common state standards impact the quality of U.S. education?

What can be done to boost college completion?

Now that we are nearly a decade into the 21st century, has this endeavor succeeded?

Veteran education reporter Jay Mathews dismissed the 21st-century skills movement, and P21 itself, in an article titled "The Latest Doomed Pedagogical Fad." Do you agree? Has P21 accurately identified 21st-century skills? If not, what are they?

Fewer than a quarter of the 1.5 million graduating seniors who took the ACT last school year scored at a "college-ready" level in all four subject areas: English, Mathematics, Reading and Science. Data released by the ACT last week show students have made minimal to no improvement in meeting benchmark standards since 2005. Under the ACT, a benchmark score is the minimum score needed on a subject-area test to indicate 50 percent chance of obtaining a B or higher, or about a 75 percent chance of obtaining a C or higher in the corresponding credit-bearing college course.

Given these results, what should the nation be doing differently to ensure high school seniors are ready for college? How can the upcoming reauthorization of No Child Left Behind help promote greater college preparedness?

Remembering Kennedy

Given Sen. Edward Kennedy's prominent role in education as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, it's appropriate to take a break from the college readiness issue and remember Kennedy. Does anyone have experiences or memories about Kennedy they would care to share? Thoughts about his impact on education?

In order to win funds under the program, states must create a standards-based, outcome-driven system. Is it appropriate to use data-driven standards to assess such small children's readiness for school? How will the federal government ensure that this new program works in concert with other early education initiatives, such as Head Start and Early Head Start? How can early education programs be coordinated with the goals of Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind?

Under New York City's Spark initiative, which was developed in partnership with Roland Fryer of Harvard's Edlabs, seventh-graders earn up to $500 and fourth-graders as much as $250 based on good performance on 10 assessments. An analysis conducted by the New York Post found that roughly two-thirds of the 59 high-poverty schools participating in the Spark program improved their scores since last year's state tests by margins above the city average.

Thus far, pay-incentive programs are most prevalent in high-poverty areas, but perhaps they will become more pervasive if results are consistently positive. Is there a moral concern about paying students to learn? How should these programs be structured? How can children be transitioned from learning for cash to learning for its intrinsic merits?