Several common educational strategies lean into the idea that, in the classroom, challenge is something to embrace.

The value proposition of college is changing.

A shocking majority of parents have no idea how their kids are doing in school. It’s not their fault.

The architecture of learning is changing.

Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, retired from the Chinese e-commerce giant in September to focus on education, which he calls the “most important and critical issue” of our time. His concern: the world is changing fast, but education is not.

The results are in for the OECD’s latest global test of 15-year-olds in math, science, and reading. The test, known as PISA (for Programme for International Student Assessment), is administered every three years and used—by some—to measure which countries are best preparing their students for the future.

Americans have a complicated relationship with higher education. They are angry at its staggering cost, and question its value in a fast-changing economy. But data are clear that college graduates earn significantly more than people with no higher education.

For nearly two decades, America’s elite universities have tried to convince the public that they are deeply committed to diversifying their student bodies, breaking up the concentration of rich, white kids who have traditionally filled their campuses to usher in something that more closely resembles the country’s racial and socioeconomic makeup.

Before Martin Luther King Jr. Day last year, Celeste Law’s eight-year-old daughter told her mother that she didn’t know much about Martin Luther King Jr. Law recalled seeing an ad for Outschool, a marketplace for small, online classes aimed at middle- and high-school students. She checked it out.

Andreas Schleicher is a German data scientist—tall and precise with a grey mustache and a steely gaze. The head of the education division at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), he gives off an impression of determined focus. That’s useful, considering that he’s on a mission to change the way countries around the world teach their children.

On a Monday morning in October, Faith stands before her class of kids, ages 10 and up. She looks down at her tablet computer, which details the day’s lessons. Her teaching plan gives instructions down to the minute, including when kids should stand up, solve problems, cheer for a classmate, and work with others.

WHEN Ayinde Alleyne arrived at the Trinity School, an elite independent school on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, he was eager to make new friends. A brainy 14-year-old, he was the son of immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago, a teacher and an auto-body repairman, in the South Bronx.