By studying one school, High Tech High, documentary Most Likely To Succeed offers a compelling look at the future of education.


Education-bashing has become something of a national sport in the United States. From hurling criticism about slipping test scores, socio-economic disparity, dropout rates, to raising concerns about poor teaching standards and school resources, the popular narrative is that U.S. schools are failing children. There’s good reason for the pile-on: in many cases, the problems are real.

While most of the conversation around education reform centers on how to address these existing issues, another point of view has been gaining momentum over the last several years. It’s a point of view that is less focused on fine-tuning the current system for high performance—since the system was built in 1893 with the goal of churning out "good workers"—and more about rethinking education entirely and how it meets the world’s rapidly changing economy in the information age.