Today’s guest, Amanda Ripley is an investigative journalist for Time Magazine and The Atlantic. Her reporting on education has explored the interaction between public policy and human behavior. In 2013 she published The Smartest Kids in the World--and How They Got That Way, a New York Times bestseller. Before I ever met Amanda, I was familiar with her work. Her October 2012 piece in Time Magazine on how massive open on-line courses were impacting higher education helped focus and shape the education policy conversation, as did her September 2013 piece in The Atlantic which focused on the outsized influence of sports in American high schools. This will be ORHigherEd’s first-ever, two-part series. Part 1 focused on Amanda’s reporting her cover story in The Atlantic titled, "The Upwardly Mobile Barista," and covered the Starbucks College Achievement Plan. Part 2 focuses on reporting she's done about education reforms around the world that have changed outcomes for students.