Editor's Note: Rahilla Zafar is working with a team of writers at Arabic Knowledge @ Wharton on a book highlighting female entrepreneurs and leaders in the MENA region. She is also a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania researching solar and water innovations in developing countries. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Rahilla Zafar.

By Rahilla Zafar – Special to CNN

Editor’s Note: Robert J. Hutter is Chairman of Edmodo, which aims to "help educators harness the power of social media to customize the classroom for each and every learner", as well as a Managing Partner of Learn Capital, a venture capital firm concentrating on the global education sector. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Robert J. Hutter.

By Robert J. Hutter - Special to CNN

Technology has long had its supporters and detractors in K-12 education. But until recently, regardless of one’s view, technology has had a minor role to play in the everyday work of K-12 schooling. This is now changing at rapid speed.

Advances in easily portable computing devices and the growing presence of wireless Internet access in schools have quietly worked to create a genuine tipping point that classroom educators are now leveraging to change the very scope of their ability to teach.

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Editor's Note: Learn more about the future of education with the special edition of GPS, Restoring the American Dream: Fixing Education.

By Fareed Zakaria, CNN

I've been thinking about Occupy Wall Street, which is now occupying a number of other cities in America. What is it really about? The protesters don't like bank bailouts; they feel the 99% have been hard done-by and they're protesting what they see as unprecedented inequality. But America has always had more inequality than many countries.

I think underlying their sense of frustration is despair over a very un-American state of affairs: A loss of social mobility. Americans have so far put up with inequality because they felt they could change their own status. They didn't mind others being rich, as long as they had a path to move up as well. The American Dream is all about social mobility - the sense that anyone can make it.

TIME magazine's Rana Foroohar has a great cover story this week that highlights that social mobility in American is declining. She points out that if you were born in 1970 in the bottom one-fifth of our socio-economic spectrum, you had only a 17% chance of making it into the upper two-fifths. Data show that its much easier to climb the socio-economic ladder in many parts of Europe. Rana points out that while nearly half of American men with fathers in the bottom fifth of the earning curve remain there, only a quarter of Danes and Swedes and only 30% of Britons do. The American dream seems to be thriving in Europe more than it is here at home.

What happened and what can we do?

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This Sunday, a Fareed Zakaria GPS primetime special – “Restoring the American Dream: Fixing Education”. The show airs at 8p and 11p ET/PT.

While America was once tops in education, we are now ranked 15th in reading, 23rd in science, and 31st in math.

What happened? How can we dig ourselves out of this deep hole?

For inspiration, we go to South Korea and Finland – two nations that consistently rank highly on education. Interestingly, the two have very different approaches. South Korea has long school days and school years with a strong focus on standardized testing. Finland is much more lackadaisical – except in its approach to teachers and teaching. In Finland, teachers are revered; it’s tougher to get into masters programs for teaching than it is to get into higher education for medicine and law.

So what can we learn? We talked about the priorities of teachers, testing, and technology with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates whose foundation has given $5 billion to education so far; we speak with former DC schools chair Michelle Rhee, and education activist Diane Ravitch. We look at a novel way of teaching, started by a former investment manager who stumbled upon a formula for student success: Sal Khan is the creator of the Khan Academy, a YouTube-based “classroom” that so far has gotten over 80 million hits - and reports of success using it in real classrooms.

Finally, Fareed offers his take on what will fix our troubles.

Here are some excerpts:

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25%

Twenty-five percent of Americans that start high school do not graduate. Entering the workforce without a high school diploma means an unemployment rate three-and-a-half times the rate of those with a college degree. And for those who do find full-time work, they on average earn less than half of what a college graduate makes each year.

30%

Thirty percent of high school graduates do not go on to college right after graduation. In the workforce, a high school graduate earns on average more than someone without a diploma, but still only 60 percent of what a college graduate makes each year.

43%

Forty-three percent of students who start college will not graduate in 6 years. Women graduate at a six-percent-higher rate than men within six years, and outnumber men in higher education by a ratio of 3-to-2.   FULL POST

By Fareed Zakaria, TIME

For the past month, we have all marveled at the life of Steve Jobs, the adopted son of working-class parents, who dropped out of college and became one of the great technologists and businessmen of our time. How did he do it? He was, of course, an extraordinary individual, and that explains much of his success, but his environment might also have played a role. Part of the environment was education. And it is worth noting that Jobs got a great secondary education. The school he attended, Homestead High in Cupertino, Calif., was a first-rate public school that gave him a grounding in both the liberal arts and technology. It did the same for Steve Wozniak, the more technically oriented co-founder of Apple Computer, whom Jobs met at that same school.

In 1972, the year Jobs graduated, California’s public schools were the envy of the world. They were generally rated the finest in the country, well funded and well run, with excellent teachers. These schools were engines of social mobility that took people like Jobs and Wozniak and gave them an educational grounding that helped them rise. FULL POST

By John Cookson, CNN

More people are attending college in the United States than ever before. There were 18 million undergraduate students in 2009, and more than 1.6 million Bachelor's degrees were awarded that year. But are college students studying the subjects that will lead to good jobs and keep America competitive in the world economy?

Below are the top-seven subjects by percent of all Bachelor's degrees awarded in the 2008/2009 school year, collected by the Department of Education. If science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) majors are the path to well-paid jobs and an innovation-led economy, the numbers are concerning.

There are, for example, more students studying visual and performing arts than engineering. There are more parks, recreation, leisure, and fitness studies majors than physical science majors. And there were fewer computer and information science majors in 2008-2009 (37,994) than there were in 1984-85 (38,878). FULL POST

By John Cookson, CNN

In the most recent sixty-five-nation Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), the United States came in 15th in reading, 23rd in math and 31st in science. Here are the nations who beat the U.S. in the 2009 PISA test. FULL POST

I spoke in the Great Hall of The Cooper Union on Educating Students to Lead in a Global Context. The video of my remarks is above, and a transcript is coming soon. The event developed into a lively conversation with Cooper Union professor Atina Grossmann and Tufts University Professor Vali Nasr. Let me know what you think.

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

"I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

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