New England's reputation for world-class educational excellence is well-earned but tenuous, especially as a changing world demands increased levels of learning for a much broader population. People know the current K-12 system is not producing enough students with the knowledge necessary to succeed in college. Too few enter higher education. Too few of those who do matriculate persist through to graduation. By some estimates, only 18 of every 100 students who enter ninth grade graduate from college with at least an associate degree, the minimum level necessary to be competitive in tomorrow's world. Education reform efforts, meanwhile, have been well-intentioned, but alarmingly incremental in their gains. The slow pace of progress, coupled with a need for higher levels of achievement from many more of the learners, leads to a sobering conclusion: a new approach is needed. The obsolete nature of current school structures is evident in the way large groups of students with the same birthdays move from subject expert to subject expert in incremental blocks of time, in the way success is measured by seat time and rote return of information, and in the way what is learned during the "school year" is lost during the summer, perpetuating the difference in learning levels for various socioeconomic groups. In this article, the author calls for a reinvention of how citizens are educated rather than continuously trying to improve the existing education "systems."