Barack Obama and Arne Duncan Star in Education Reform Competition

It's a Race to the Top, with US$4.35 billion on the line to improve American education.

I was reading today about a new proposal to award billions in grants to education institutions heralded by Education Secretary Arne Duncan and US President Barack Obama.

Here's the summary of what this is about:

The centerpiece of the Obama administration's education reform efforts is the $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund, a national competition which will highlight and replicate effective education reform strategies in four significant areas:

* Adopting internationally benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare students for success in college and the workplace;
* Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals;
* Building data systems that measure student success and inform teachers and principals how they can improve their practices; and
* Turning around our lowest-performing schools.

The Textbook Industry is Inefficient

That's what Chegg.com's Jim Saska says in an article in the New York Times today.

Saska, who used to work for Match.com, has helped Osman Rashid and Aayush Phumbhra, the co-founders of Chegg run a business model that allows college students to rent textbooks, the way people rent movies through Netflix.

It all started through the use of Mr. Rashid's American Express card, as told in this story about the origins of Chegg.