In February, the organization I lead, , brought these two camps together when it became the new home for the program. The program is a system for whole-student learning that integrates high-quality instructional materials from leading curriculum providers, key life skills, real-time data and monitoring tools, with dedicated coaching. It has reached more than 250,000 students across 46 states. 

Some may wonder: “Why would an organization known for school design and innovation become the home for one of the most comprehensive high-quality instructional materials platforms in the country?” But the fact that we found our way to each other shouldn’t be surprising. It should feel overdue. 

I spent the first chapter of my career in education certain I had figured out the equation: Great teachers. Rigorous materials. High expectations. If you gave students access to challenging content and put skilled educators in front of them, outcomes would follow. I trained teachers on that logic. I watched it work often enough to trust it.

It wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t the whole story.

Over the years, visiting thousands of classrooms and talking with young people and their families, I kept seeing the same thing. Teachers were getting stronger. Curriculum was getting more aligned and rigorous. The field’s investment at the instructional core was raising the floor for millions of students. Yet, the experience around all of it was still mired in century-old assumptions about how learning actually happens. The daily interactions and activities through which young people build knowledge, skills, and identity had barely changed.

Young people can feel it. About 75% of elementary students say they love school. By high school, that number flips. Only one in four teenagers reports being truly engaged in learning, a crisis Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop lay bare in The Disengaged Teen. Students are simultaneously bored and overwhelmed. 

Families are voting with their feet, too. Public school enrollment has fallen by nearly two million students since 2020, with in some states and private school enrollment surging. In New York City alone, sits 11% below pre-pandemic levels, and 41% of departing families cited a desire for more rigorous, engaging instruction.

This is what led me to co-found Transcend. For the past decade, we’ve been helping communities design learning environments where strong instruction meets intentional experience design, where the learning itself is engaging, relevant, relationship-rich and connected to who students are and who they’re becoming.

Consider what this looks like in practice. At Intrinsic Schools in Chicago, strong academic content lives inside a learning environment where even the physical design of the building is responsive to the learning experience. Multiple teachers work with students across different learning modalities in a single large classroom, adjusting instruction in real time based on individual goals and needs. 

On Choice Days, students build their own schedules, selecting academic supports like writing labs alongside enrichment they care about. Three times a year, students lead their own conferences with advisors and families, reflecting on their growth and mapping their path forward. The instructional core is rigorous. The experience is intentional.

At the same time, Gradient Learning’s movement to strengthen the instructional core has accomplished something that needed doing. I would never want us to stop investing there. When I visit schools with strong teaching and learning systems, I see students doing more meaningful work. The kind of work necessary for thriving in the world they are about to inherit.

That hard infrastructure, though, operates inside a learning environment. If that environment hasn’t been intentionally shaped, even the strongest instructional elements hit a ceiling. The science of learning and development tells us why. The brain does not process content in isolation from context. 

Learning is shaped by relationships, by whether students feel safe and known, by whether the work connects to something that matters to them, by whether they have agency in the process. Belonging activates the neural architecture that makes deep learning possible. Students actively construct knowledge , and no amount of well-sequenced information changes that fact.

We take for granted everywhere, except school, that experience matters. When we choose a restaurant, book a hotel or pick a doctor, we want to know how it felt to be there. In education, we’ve largely measured only outcomes while leaving the daily experience of learning itself unexamined. That is a gap we must close.

Community-based design, which I discussed in a recent , is how we close it. Students, families, educators, and learning experts must come together to rethink how we do school. 

This work builds the environment that strong instruction requires. The Gradient Learning program finding its home at Transcend is the bridge. Rigorous, aligned instructional materials now sit inside an organization designing the learning environments where those materials can do their best work.

AI, economic disruption and civic fracture are reshaping the world our students are entering. School is one of the few institutions positioned to help young people navigate all of it. But we won’t meet this moment through one-size-fits-all mandates handed down from above, nor by asking exhausted educators to innovate on nights and weekends. 

The path forward is a third way: communities redesigning schools together — drawing on research, proven models, and local wisdom to build learning environments where rigor and meaning reinforce each other, where young people are held to high expectations and supported as whole human beings, and where the daily experience of learning is as intentional as the curriculum itself.

The false choice between rigorous instruction and bold design has held the field back long enough. The schools that figure this out will be the ones young people actually want to attend. Our field has all the pieces. It’s time to put them together.

Hundreds of education leaders from across the country gathered in Washington, D.C., last week for s (SPN) 2024 .

The three-day conference discussed a shifting education landscape, changing student and employer needs, and successful strategies being implemented across the nation — including in North Carolina.

This shifting landscape includes generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), a different generation of students, and the desire for more relevant career planning and postsecondary opportunities, said SPN Founder and Executive Chair Dr. Bill Daggett.

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“How do we truly prepare our students for their future, and not our past?,” Daggett asked during the conference’s opening keynote. “Schools are not structured to prepare for the unknown. Too often they just react after the unknown has happened.”

Daggett said the pandemic exacerbated challenges students and schools faced prior to spring 2020.

In recent years, he said, student social media use has drastically increased.

In North Carolina, included questions on social media for the first time. According to survey results, more than 80% of high school students reported using social media at least several times a day, with 37% of those students reporting using it at least once an hour.

At the conference, Daggett’s presentation included studies showing that overexposure to screen-based devices can lead to mental health issues, social deprivation, addiction, attention deficit disorders, and sleep deprivation, among other things.

“Schools, too often we react to the symptoms… rather than the cause,” Daggett said.

At the same time, the prevalence of generative AI technology is presenting schools with another challenge. School leaders are working to update their policies to account for AI, while teachers are trying to teach students how to use AI responsibly.

During his keynote, Daggett said AI also poses great opportunity for schools — if school and district leaders are willing to invest in it. Among other things, the conference highlighted opportunities to use AI for teacher planning, student career planning and personalized learning, and a shift to developing durable skills for students.

Daggett said schools must teach students how to use AI, so that AI isn’t a tool only used by students from the most privileged families.

Schools must “figure out some way to help close that gap,” he said.

As schools adapt to AI and other shifts, Daggett said leaders must “refocus our North Star.” The entire education ecosystem must shift, he said, including reexamining how schools organize curriculum programs and expectations.

Ray McNulty, SPN president, said such refocusing requires that schools embed “foresight thinking” into education systems.

“It’s not about adapting, it’s about anticipating and preparing,” McNulty said. “The primary aim of education is not to enable students to do well in school, but to help them do well in their lives outside of school… We must make the future more powerful than the past in meeting the needs of all our learners.”

What is a future-focused school?

According to a SPN presentation, a future-focused school system “is one that cultivates and champions:”

• Proactive culture: This includes “inspiring vision,” foresight, digital learning, technology, AI, experimentation, coaching, and adaptability.
• Cognitive skills: Literacy, math, creativity, adaptability, organization, problem-solving, prioritization, planning, critical thinking, and communication.
• Interpersonal skills: Honesty, trust, teamwork, empathy, humility, collaboration, motivation, relationships, and role modeling. (These are also known as durable, or soft, skills.)
• Proactive instruction: Inquiry, project and problem based learning, voice and choice, collaboration, experimentation, risk-taking, and assessment.
• Self-leadership skills: Persistence, integrity, self-control, coping, risk-taking, self-motivation, self-confidence, passion, achievement oriented.

In , SPN, a nonprofit, said that the following phases “accelerate a district’s success at becoming future-focused:” Portrait of a Graduate, strategic planning, and executive coaching.

At last week’s conference, McNulty and Daggett both highlighted . In fall 2022, state Superintendent Catherine Truitt unveiled seven durable skills the N.C. Department of Public Instruction (DPI) hoped public schools across North Carolina would incorporate into day-to-day learning — adaptability, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, empathy, learner’s mindset, and personal responsibility.

As employers turn to AI to automatically complete certain tasks, Daggett said such durable skills are crucial because they are skills employers cannot replace with AI.

“Most people aren’t going to replaced by AI,” Daggett said. “They’re going to be replaced by somebody who has skills that AI does not have.”

During a breakout session, McNulty said that schools working to become more “future-focused” must first start with a clear and focused vision. Next, they must evaluate if their current culture supports that vision.

After completing strategic and action planning, McNulty said districts must start implementation — with frequent evaluation to see if what they are doing is actually working.

“Implementation is critical,” he said. “And implementation is tricky.”

McNulty and Daggett said that moving forward, school systems should invest in AI, durable skills, and career planning to better serve students.

Such practices should be research-based, and implemented systemically, with teacher supports in place.

“This means starting with what you believe, then checking if you have systems in place to do it,” Daggett said. “Then, you might have to take some things off your plate.”

The importance of career exploration

During a breakout session — “High School Reimagined: Why We’ve Been Wrong and How to Get it Right for Every Student” — one superintendent talked about his district’s efforts to embed individualized career exploration into school curriculum.

Dr. Ken Wallace, superintendent , said that career exploration is “the essence of equity.”

“The idea is if we can get your child into a career path responsibly… that pays a living wage, has growth potential, and is in high demand, it doesn’t only change their life, it changes the lives of their family, their children,” Wallace said.

Wallace noted rising student debt in the United States, along with the rising cost of postsecondary education. At the same time, he said, many students are taking out student loans to study one thing, but then end up shifting paths.

Career exploration after finishing college is expensive for students, he said.

“Our young people — they’re saddled with debt,” Wallace said. “I felt like it was irresponsible to not pay attention to this… where I’ve got a lot of first-generation kids who absolutely need us to get this right.”

Maine Township High School District 207 focuses , Wallace said.

The district begins formally preparing students for career exploration in eighth grade, including information about school counselors, the districts’s Career & College Resource Center (CCRC), and postsecondary education opportunities.

In ninth grade, students create a , which allows them to take a survey to learn about possible career paths.

Students continue to update their SchoolLinks profile, survey, and career goals throughout the rest of high school, and also receive resources to create a resume and apply for internships and apprenticeships. The district partners more than 1,000 local partners to provide students with career experiences during high school.

Students also work on their career plans and goals during a weekly advisory period that is built into the school day. In addition to their teachers, students can also receive guidance from counselors and career coordinators.

“Students have equal access to rigorous curriculum, helping them have all kinds of possibilities, and pushing them based on what they want to do,” Wallace said. “And all exploration has to pay a living wage.”

Here are a few tips Wallace gave school leaders:

• It’s never too soon to talk about careers.
• Focus on passions and interests, not just making money.
• Explore options with students, and then ask more specific questions when the child enters high school.
• Invest in research and analytics to determine effectiveness of initiatives.
• Create a plan that provides a baseline level of resources for all students, along with specialized layers of support for students that need it.

“What I’ve found with our students is give them capacity, give them space, and they will rise and exceed your expectations,” Wallace said.

North Carolina spotlights

Surry-Yadkin Works

One breakout session of the conference focused on North Carolina’s , a work-based learning program created in 2021 to connect high school students in Surry and Yadkin counties with internship and pre-apprenticeship opportunities in local high-demand fields.

The partnership brings together all four public school systems in the counties. As of December 2023, Surry-Yadkin Works has assisted more than 350 students in finding 450 internship and pre-apprenticeship opportunities, according to  from the .

Last week, Superintendent Dr. Travis Reeves and President Dr. David Shockley spoke about the origin and impact of the partnership.

Approximately 65% of the district’s students are economically disadvantaged, Reeves said, and agriculture is the No. 1 industry. That means that many students who are not interested in agriculture end up moving out of the county after graduation.

“We need to showcase the opportunities at home before they leave,” Reeves said.

Both leaders have more than a decade of experience in their current roles.

In 2012, Shockley said he started on a journey to answer one question that kept coming up with community stakeholders: “How do we prepare our students beyond the high school diploma by providing them access to college courses within traditional scheduling?”

Surry-Yadkin Works is part of the answer, Shockley and Reeves said, but the journey started earlier than that — with North Carolina’s investment in dual enrollment in 2011, with the creation of .

The program’s  provides structured opportunities for high school students to earn college credits tuition-free that “lead to a certificate, diploma, or degree as well as provide entry-level jobs skills.”

Around this time, Reeves said the school district had to shift the mindset of what traditional high school looks like, in order to take advantage of CCP.

“How do you create this environment where you’re earning more than the high school diploma?” Reeves said. “So you’re earning all these other experiences, so you will be career ready once you leave.”

Surry County Schools also pays for all textbooks and transportation, Shockley said, “so there is truly no cost for students.”

In 2016, Surry Community College enrolled 412 CCP students, Shockley said, with 3,109 college credits earned.

In 2023, the college enrolled 702 students — who earned 4,540 credits.

Shockley and Reeves said Surry-Yadkin Works was meant to capitalize on the gains the region had already seen through dual enrollment.

Reeves said the expected outcomes of the partnership included all students in the program graduating with either a credential and work-based learning opportunity. They also wanted to help create a stronger local workforce pipeline.

“We’ve tried to streamline and align our resources and create the most opportunities for our students in rural North Carolina,” Reeves said.

Here are tips Shockley and Reeves gave session attendees:

• You have to have the relationships to create far-reaching partnerships. Surry-Yadkin Works convenes government, education, and business stakeholders.
• It is important to find sustainable funds to keep program offerings consistent for students. In the case of Surry-Yadkin Works, the partnership found “sustainable money” from local county commissioners, in addition to grant funding.
• Be clear on what the expected Return on Investment (ROI) is of the initiative — and promote this ROI once you have results. “It is critical for you to always show your investors what they are getting for their investment, to keep them sold,” Shockley said.
• Celebrate victories! The partnership hosts job signing event ceremonies for students at local event spaces. “If we don’t take time to celebrate this, no one else is going to,” Reeves said.

Currently, Surry-Yadkin Works includes internship, apprenticeship, and pre-apprenticeship opportunities. In the fall, the partnership plans to — which stands for Fostering Learning Through Education, Employment, and Trades — to further expand its offerings in the manufacturing sector.

“When you create synergy around things that are good, good things happen, especially when you have good people,” Reeves said.

UC Guarantee

Another breakout session highlighted , a partnership between , , and .

According , the partnership aims “to make sure every student graduating from high school has a clearly defined, affordable, and easily accessible plan that leads to a meaningful career.”

Union County students are notified of the opportunity in ninth grade. Under the partnership, Wingate guarantees eligible students a $100,000 scholarship to attend Wingate.

South Piedmont and Wingate University already offer the , which allows students who earn an associate degree from South Piedmont to transfer to Wingate to earn a bachelor’s degree for no more than $2,500 per year. The new piece of the partnership will allow Union County students with a GPA of 3.0 or higher to receive at least a $100,000 grant awarded over four years to attend Wingate University.

“We are essentially creating a continuous highway for lifelong learning with on and off ramps to show students they are never limited to one path but can customize their plan so it’s the right fit, at the right time, for them,” South Piedmont Community College President Dr. Maria Pharr.

During the breakout session, panelists said building strong relationships between stakeholders was crucial to getting the partnerships off the ground.

“We’ve looked at each other as partners in this, not competitors” said Eva Baucom, vice president of enrollment management at Wingate University.

Panelists discussed the value of early college programming for students, and the need to communicate with students early about postsecondary education options.

“As a community college, we deal with a stigma that a community college is a lesser-than educational pathway, when we have a lot of very meaningful programs that lead to high earning careers,” said Kamisha Kirby, South Piedmont Community College’s associate vice president of student success.

Together, each of the partners are working to increase access for all students, while promoting awareness of the programs they offer.

Moving forward, the partners are working toward data-sharing agreements, a formal communication plan, aligned pathways for students, and on-campus student programming.

“We want to continue to grow this,” said Jessica Garner, Union County Public School’s director of College Readiness and Innovation. “And as many things that are future focused, you can’t really imagine what some of the next steps are and we don’t want to hem ourselves in. We just continue to find things we can do for our students.”

You can learn more about the programs within the partnership .

What’s next?

During the closing keynote, SPN Senior Vice President Dr. Robert Peters spoke about the importance of looking to the future with all students in mind.

He asked attendees to think about the different connotations between the phrase “our kids” and “these kids.”

One phrase, he said, denotes the desire to inspire, protect, and engage. The other often reflects a desire to control.

“As professionals, we have to understand that we are the common denominator,” Peters said. “We are the ones who make these kids, our kids. These are all of our children.”

With that guiding principle in mind, Peters asked: “Are our systems right for all of our children? Are our systems created for success for all students?”

Peters said creating a future-focused system required first aligning your mission and vision around all students. Then, school leaders must build out structures and systems of support for leaders and teachers, followed by instructional support in order to successfully implement new curriculum goals.

As schools and districts implement these ideas, McNulty cautioned that policy is often the last thing to change.

“But I need to have something that I know gets results before I can change policy,” McNulty said. “We can be agents of change.”

You can learn more about SPN

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Increasing numbers of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are acting as incubators for innovation in the teaching profession, and helping to grow the nation’s Black teacher pipeline.

����Ӱ�� recently partnered with the Progressive Policy Institute for an online panel examining how HBCUs are key contributors to bolstering Black educators.

In the replay below, you’ll hear from experts Katherine Norris of Howard University’s College of Education, Dr. Artesius Miller of Morehouse College and Utopian Academy for the Arts Charter School, Sharif El-Mekki from the Center for Black Teacher Development and ����Ӱ��’s Marianna McMurdock. Watch the full conversation:

Go Deeper: Explore our recent coverage of the teacher workforce below.

• How Black Educators in America’s Fastest-Shrinking City Are Reimagining Teacher Pipelines

• Teacher Prep Programs See ‘Encouraging’ Growth, New Federal Data Reveal

• Breaking Down the Walls to Teaching: Alternative Pipelines Boom

• Preserving Black History Starts with Ensuring There Are Black Teachers

Join ����Ӱ�� and the Progressive Policy Institute at 1 p.m. ET Wednesday for an online panel discussing the influence of HBCUs in revolutionizing K-12 education. You’ll hear from leaders Dr. Kathryn Procope, executive director of Howard University Middle School of Mathematics and Science; Dr. Angela Lang, founder of I Dream Big Charter School at Stillman College; and Dr. Quinhon Scott, executive director of Coppin Academy High School at Coppin University. Curtis Valentine of PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project will moderate. 

or tune in to this page Wednesday at 1 p.m. ET to stream the event.

Recent coverage of K-12 innovation from ����Ӱ��: 

• 189 Innovative School Leaders: Teacher Staffing, AI, Mental Health Top Ed Issues
  
• 40 Years After ‘A Nation At Risk,’ Could Curriculum Reform Finally Move the Needle on Academic Improvement?
  
• Black Education Entrepreneurs — and Parents — Are Pushing the Boundaries of School Choice
  
• National Poll Finds Overwhelming Support Among Black Teachers & Parents for ESAs

Join ����Ӱ�� and the Progressive Policy Institute at 1 p.m. ET Thursday for an online panel examining the role HBCUs can play as charter school authorizers, providing stronger oversight and governance and thus ensuring better educational opportunities for students. You’ll hear from experts Dr. Nina Gilbert of Morehouse College, Dr. Karega Rausch of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, and Dr. Evelyn Edney of Delaware State University.

or tune in to this page Thursday at 1 p.m. ET to stream the event.

Although the pandemic provided a natural inflection point to reassess the nation’s education system, the problems students face are not new. Even before the onset of COVID-19, for example, only 38% of third graders were reading at grade level. Achievement gaps were closing, but they are now at risk of expanding significantly due to pandemic school closures and the digital divide. Schools, teachers and parents in particular have had a chance to see the shortcomings of the nation’s education system up close, as many children learned via Zoom over the past two years. To build a stronger future for students and prepare them for the economy and society of tomorrow, Americans need reliable sources of education data to diagnose problems, determine what works, and drive an honest conversation around equity.

At the chamber, we believe that reliable data drives good decision making. Given the uncertainty around pandemic recovery and a national reckoning on systemic inequities, business and education stakeholders must have a clear-eyed discussion about what is and is not working, and why, with public school accountability and the data to back it up. That’s why the U.S. Chamber Foundation has put together a working group of education experts and practitioners from across the country to work toward a set of policy recommendations over the next year on lessons learned and options to consider moving forward.

From practitioners to policymakers to civil rights and advocacy leaders, the working group includes individuals with diverse backgrounds and a wealth of experience in education, education policy and research. Along with members who represent the business community, there are public school administrators and teachers, former high-ranking federal policy veterans and a leading thinker on new approaches to assessments. 

In selecting these individuals, we sought to bring together both people with whom we have worked for years and experts who were newer to us. Working group members include former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, 2019 teacher of the year Rodney Robinson and former Louisiana state Superintendent of Education John White. While we have a set of principles that we agree on, we wanted to create a space for open and honest dialogue. Even if we do not all agree on everything, we want everyone’s candid reflections on the current state of assessment and accountability and the policy levers they think are most promising.

Creating future education policy means wrestling with some sticky tradeoffs. Should there be narrower statewide assessments that do not attempt to be a teaching tool, or does it make sense to try again at creating something of value to educators? Should test makers be incentivized to spend years innovating, and, if so, how? Is third grade too late to start assessing students? Should sampling be used instead of testing every child? There are many questions, and we intend to closely examine every one of them.

The first phase of our action plan is a thorough review of the last 20 years of education policy, spearheaded by Dr. Dan Goldhaber and Michael De’Armond at the . Their quantitative literature review will explain what is known, and isn’t, about the impact of the last 20 years of federal education policy. From there, the working group will engage experts to hear their perspectives. We will also launch a design challenge, asking interested parties to develop and share their ideal future assessment and accountability plan. Finally, this critical input will be used to develop a set of formal recommendations for federal and state policymakers.

This three-year project will craft a blueprint for a future of data, assessments and accountability that rejects the soft bigotry of low expectations and embraces the economy and society of the future. The recommendations developed from this initiative will inform and shape policymakers’ approach at both the state and federal levels by bringing fresh thinking to the most important investment we can make — the nation’s students.

We know that other, complementary efforts are underway, and our working groups will do whatever we can to support them. I hope we will contribute to a productive evolution of federal education policy in the years to come.