I was thinking today about the potential of digital textbooks/instruction especially in subjects like math. Schools group so many students so arbitrarily that most kids are not engaged at all in their class. The teacher gives a lesson but half of the students didn't understand yesterday's lesson so they don't understand today's either, one third of the students are ready for something new.
Give every student a laptop with extremely limited internet access. Students rotate from class to class getting mostly individual help from teachers on different subjects and work on their individual progress on a web-based teaching curriculum. All Johnny or Suzy has to do each day is make progress towards his/her educational goals, stay on task, and not break anybody or anything and they can be "successful" in the most modest sense. Somebody breaks a laptop, oh well. No work is lost, it's all web based, get a new machine and move on. Smells like the future to me.