Announcing the arrival of a new “Center for Personalized Health” in the greater Washington, D.C., area, a flier for INOVA Health touted the following innovations: “It will be a one-of-a-kind, internationally prominent center for genomic research, personalized health care, and associated life science commercial development,” the notice explained, proudly declaring, “We've set our sights no lower than becoming the world's epicenter for translational cancer research and patient care.” The notice then proceeded to sketch the various features of their “Personalized Medicine Education Center.”

Although far from a new approach in the medical field, personalization has been steadily gaining traction in recent years. In the current medical model, a patient (at least one lucky enough to be well insured) generally enters a facility and receives personally tailored care, diagnosis, and treatment. Let's be clear from the beginning that personalization does not mean avoidance of goals and standards of practice. In fact, those standards are personally adjusted to meet individual needs. Such a personalized approach has become even more pronounced with the rise of “concierge” medicine, in which patients pay premiums for increased access, attention, and specialization.

This model (based on access, attention, and specialization, which are the hallmarks of personalization) can be found in many other areas. Several years ago a local chiropractor had his phone answered with a cheerful, “I can help you.” How striking that is compared to “How can I help you?”

Department stores have personal shoppers. Hotels encourage and some chains expect that the staff provide caring, attentive, personalized service. Examples of personalized education are plentiful.

Yes, even in education we can find emerging examples of personalized efforts to help students learn well what we expect of them. These might be seen as personalized pathways, not races, to the dreams we hold for the children we serve. And they might be seen as counter to the lock step, this-is-the-way-it's-done approach that the recent Race to the Top encouraged.

We came to this project with one overarching question: How can we raise the level of personalization in education so that each and every child learns to the highest, deepest, and broadest possible levels? What existing models might we look to for guidance, insight, and inspiration? In education there is a long history of adhering to existing, traditional formulas and structures rather than adjusting to try to accommodate the needs of the student. This pattern needs to change. We need to find ways to modify or even radically rework this existing system to more adequately address the specific, varied needs of individual students. This health care flier was striking in that if we replaced the words health and medicine with education and learning we could already see the outlines for how to potentially restructure educational practices to incorporate the successful aspects of this more customer service–driven model.

Of course we recognize that for many, even mentioning the word customer when discussing education is close to sacrilege. In higher education, the growing trend toward treating students as customers has been a topic of distress and debate for quite some time. The line between business and education in higher education is indeed a very blurry distinction these days—a trend that, especially with the increasing number of charter schools, is quickly bleeding into secondary and elementary education as well.

We are not suggesting that we turn our schools into the Four Seasons hotels. Students are our center, our focus—they're not our customers. Such an analogy introduces the wrong mentality into the equation. But we can learn from customer service–based businesses and asset-driven models—models such as the development of personalization in medicine. We can draw on the positive aspects of these enterprises in our capitalistic society, taking and applying only their best aspects. We need to use all the tools that are available to us as we figure out how to create literate, participating, productive citizens in our society—and how to shape the future leaders, lawmakers, and teachers of our country.

We have strong feelings based on our personal and professional experiences that our schools must change. We know that the most significant change takes place at the classroom level, but without a change at the system level, individual classroom attempts will struggle, and perhaps fail, because of the system itself. Consider Horace Smith in Ted Sizer's classic Horace's Compromise (1984), who knew how to teach English but the responsibilities and expectations of the system diluted his efforts. We want to create systems in which the wonderful teachers, staff, and administrators who suffer as Horace Smith did can be given the opportunity to succeed with their students.

We certainly do not want to return to the days of shopping mall high schools. We believe in strong connections, clear expectations, and a highly trained diversified staff who can work with individuals and groups of students in very personalized environments.

The connections should be within the setting of a school and with the rest of the world. Technology makes this possible. Researchers, colleagues, entrepreneurs, parents, and members of the community are part of the learning and teaching teams.

We have been around long enough to remember when Summerhill, Deschooling Society, Inequality, Why Johnny Can't Read, A Place Called School, Human Characteristics and School Learning, and so many other classics of our profession were first published. What have we learned as a profession over the past fifty years since the Civil Rights Act was passed or the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was authorized? Let us take these challenges before us as a call unlike any we have heard before and create the educational systems that our children deserve. The imperative is clear because we see the purpose of public education is to help create literate, participating, productive citizens to sustain and even enhance our democracy.