15 Ideas to Recharge America

can the united statesremain competitive in the changing global environment? NEWSWEEK asked 15 leaders in the fields of science, technology, education and business to assess the challenges we face and to offer some solutions. Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists from Silicon Valley addressed the issue of how immigration policies help--and hurt--our competitiveness; educators from the East spoke of the need to beef up basic skills like math and science in our schools, and to re-create the scope of investment in university research that triggered the technology boom after World War II. Should the Internet remain "free"? Has the erosion of core values--like the rewards of hard work and the postponement of short-term gratification in favor of long-term gains--weakened our future? Should we be frightened by the explosive growth of countries such as China and India, or see it as an opportunity to expand our own horizons? Some voiced frustration at the federal government, while others pointed fingers at big business. But all agreed there is a lot of work to be done. Excerpts:

REED HASTINGS CEO, NETFLIX

We Need to Fix Our Schools

The key to long-term success is to cut down government regulation.

We have declared three big crises in education over the last 60 years. One was after the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957. We thought that we might lose the cold war, and we blamed our public schools for not producing enough scientists. The second declared crisis was in 1983, with the publishing of "A Nation at Risk," when we were worried about losing the economic battle against Germany and Japan. And now in the last five years, with the rise of job outsourcing and globalization, education is again perceived as being in crisis. In other words, we project our current fear on the public-school system.

Sure, there are major problems in education. But they are not new. K-12 education is the last big government monopoly in America. School boards struggle with growing state and federal regulation. When a government monopoly is underperforming, politicians just add more state and federal rules, which only makes the monopoly less performance-focused.