The Business Education Compact, based in Beaverton, Oregon is doing some interesting work with proficiency-based education under their Teacher Development Initiative.  They are literally helping schools and school systems break out of time- and seat-based schooling all across the Oregon. (more)

I'm intrigued with the idea of applying goal-setting model proposed by Richard Beckhard (1969) to virtual groups working in asynchronous discussion space. 

Beckhard's model takes groups through four questions: Who am I? Who are we? What do we want? and How will we get it?

I've been thinking... No Child Left Behind (NCLB) may be doing us a favor by accelerating awareness of the obvious -- that all students cannot learn in a system that was designed to grade and sort.