Milton Chen

Milton Chen is the author of Education Nation and the former executive director of the George Lucas Educational Foundation, which runs Edutopia. His central argument is that American education’s most innovative practices already exist at the “edges” of the system, and that an “Education Nation” is born when those pockets of innovation — Project-Based Learning, one-to-one computing, integrated assessment — converge and move to the center.

His working definition of innovation recurs through the book: “take the best elements of what has been, integrate diverse sources of knowledge and talent, and create a breakthrough that hasn’t been imagined before.”

Where this appears

• Education Nation — author; argues for bringing edge innovation to the center of American schooling.