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鈥檛 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鈥檚 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鈥檛 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 鈥� 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.

鈥淢y mind was blown,鈥� said Fagerburg. 鈥淚 had no idea education could be this good.鈥�

She applied to open her own Acton Academy, and was accepted into the fast-growing network of approximately 300 independently-operated schools, emphasizing learner-driven education. Fagerburg launched last fall with 13 students, including four of her own children. Today, she has 26 K-6 students enrolled in her secular microschool, with plans to add a middle school and high school program in the coming years. 鈥淧arents want this. They love it,鈥� said Fagerburg, adding that some families drive up to 45 minutes each way for their children to attend her program. 

She says she sees enormous demand for the Acton Academy model, and hopes to open more locations in Tennessee, but access is a key concern. 鈥淚 grew up poor,鈥� said Fagerburg. 鈥淚 never would have been able to attend a school like this.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

With the current expansion of school choice programs, such as Tennessee鈥檚 new universal education savings accounts (ESA), many more families are able to access innovative schools and learning models. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a complete game changer,鈥� said Fagerburg, explaining how the ESA program enables Tennessee families who previously had limited education choices to now use a portion of state-allocated education funding to select the school or learning space that is best for their child. 

But there鈥檚 a catch. In order to participate in Tennessee鈥檚 ESA program, Fagerburg鈥檚 school must be accredited, and its current accreditation by the , isn鈥檛 recognized by the state. 

That is why Fagerburg jumped at the opportunity to participate in a fledgling program offered through the (MSA), one of the four major K-12 accreditation entities, with 3,200 member schools worldwide. In with Stand Together Trust, MSA鈥檚 Next Generation Accreditation pilot program seeks to offer a faster, more affordable, and more flexible route toward accreditation for today鈥檚 emerging schools. 

鈥淲e created this flexible protocol around how a school actually works,鈥� said Christian Talbot, President and CEO of MSA. 鈥淭hat gives mostly microschools, but really any innovative school, the opportunity to tell their story with the production of evidence that makes the most sense to them.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Talbot offered the example of a hypothetical urban 鈥減lace-based鈥� learning environment, with no designated school building and students taking classes at various museums, public parks, and historic sites throughout a city. 鈥淭hat school is going to have the opportunity to describe the learning environment in ways that existing accreditation protocols really don’t allow because you have to have a certificate of occupancy, or a lease, or some other thing that is tied to this mental model we have that school has to be in a building,鈥� said Talbot. 

He emphasized that these innovative schools are 鈥渕eeting all of the exact same standards of accreditation鈥� as conventional schools, but they are able to demonstrate these standards in ways that reflect the ingenuity of their models. 

MSA is the world鈥檚 second-oldest accrediting agency. It launched more than a century ago, as interest grew from schools and colleges for independent, third-party verifiers of quality. For higher education, accreditation eventually became a requirement for U.S. colleges and universities to participate in federal student financial aid programs, but at the K-12 level, mandatory accreditation is less common. 

Most states don鈥檛 require schools 鈥� public or private 鈥� to be accredited, but some schools choose to become accredited to earn an external 鈥渟eal of approval,鈥� which may help them to attract and retain students and educators. With the expansion of school-choice programs nationwide in recent years, certain states, such as Tennessee and Texas, require accreditation in order for a school to participate in these programs.

Cammy Herrera had been exploring the possibility of accreditation for her secular microschool , in Mansfield, Texas, well before the state introduced a new universal school-choice program this spring. A former public school teacher, Herrera had been running a licensed in-home preschool for more than a decade when she decided in 2021 to add a Montessori-inspired school-age program. She now serves over 50 students through middle school, with plans to open a high school if she can find a larger space to accommodate more students.

For Herrera, accreditation was appealing as a signal of quality, but she felt that most existing accrediting organizations took a traditional view of education that didn鈥檛 reflect her personalized, flexible approach. 

鈥淥ur school is so different. We are not trying to fit into a one-size-fits-all box when it comes to schooling,鈥� said Herrera, whose students are technically considered homeschoolers. They can attend her school full-time at an annual tuition of $10,250, or customize their enrollment based on their own learning needs. Tuition for Herrera鈥檚 two-day-a-week option is about $4,000 annually. 鈥淲hoever we get accredited through has to believe in our vision and has to be on board with what makes our school special because we don’t want our school to lose that special part that makes us different from a traditional school,鈥� she said. 

When Herrera learned about the MSA鈥檚 pilot accreditation program for microschools, she eagerly applied. Next Generation Accreditation would offer Herrera that third-party validation she has been seeking while retaining her program鈥檚 originality. It would also enable her to participate in Texas鈥檚 new school choice program, should she choose. 

MSA hopes to run the Next Generation Accreditation pilot with 10 to 15 innovative schools over the next several months to learn more about these schools鈥� distinct needs and structures, and then iterate and adapt protocols to provide a valuable accreditation pathway for today鈥檚 creative schooling models. 

As the creator of the Facebook group, Herrera sees mounting interest in microschooling and the diverse educational models and methods that the movement fosters. She thinks that accreditation options that reflect this diversity can be beneficial to founders and families who value that credential, or who need it to participate in certain school-choice programs. But she also warns of potential drawbacks: 鈥淭here are all these special schools, and if everybody has to follow the same standards to be accredited, then I think they’ll be more alike than different. That’s the only thing I could see being a downfall.鈥�

Disclosure: Stand Together Trust provides financial support to 社区黑料.

The March event was the culmination of the second annual STEM competition hosted by , a national curriculum company. Students in grades 7 to 12 were invited to submit projects last fall that addressed real-world problems in six categories: aerospace, food, technology, health and medicine, energy and the environment. 

From thousands of submissions, 106 students from 47 states and four U.S. territories were selected as National STEM Champions and advanced to the festival to present their findings.

Here are six students who attended the festival and their innovations:

Sammit Chidambaram, 16

Junior at Dunlap High School, Dunlap, Illinois

Sammit came up with the idea for his project during his high school engineering and design class. 

He wanted to explore how to remove contaminants from water in a cost-effective way after learning how many 鈥� and their impact on children. One found that nearly 70% of young kids in Chicago are exposed to lead through drinking water.

Sammit鈥檚 idea developed from a pipe filter to a removable spout for public water fountains. 

鈥淚 simply made a spout for the water fountains and put certain filters inside of it 鈥� like as well as hollow fiber membranes 鈥� which both assist with removing different types of heavy metals,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 was actually able to screw these onto water fountains and get it to work. It’s a much lower-cost alternative to the normal methods.鈥�

Sammit鈥檚 product costs about $5.50 apiece, which would be easier for low-income schools to purchase instead of removing lead pipes from their buildings, he said.

鈥淚鈥嬧��’ve done science fairs since eighth grade, and it’s just really, really fun. Not only nerding out about what I like, but watching other people nerd out about their own projects,鈥� he said. 鈥淏eing a STEM Champion has kind of given me the motivation and, honestly, the confidence to continue working on this project, and I’m really excited to see where I can move with it next.鈥�

Divinefavour Osuji, 17

Senior at Lane Technical High School, Chicago

Divinefavour is from Nigeria, where workers sometimes lose their limbs in industrial accidents. Because each prosthetic can , Divinefavour wanted to create one that was cost-effective.

鈥淲ith how much money the average family in Nigeria makes, they can’t necessarily afford to buy prosthetics,鈥� he said. 鈥淓ven in the United States, a cosmetic prosthetic can cost up to $5,000, and then myoelectric prosthetics 鈥� controlled by muscle contractions 鈥� can cost anything from $20,000 to $100,000.鈥�

Divinefavour used 3-D printing to create two versions of a myoelectric hand prosthetic. The first design used surface muscle sensors attached to the prosthetic that tracked contractions, but the movements were sometimes inconsistent. His second design used computer recognition software to track hand motions.

鈥淭he idea is that you have a little camera module, and assuming the individual has another working limb, essentially what happens is the webcam views the movement of the hand and mimics that movement into the prosthetic design,鈥� Divinefavour said.

Both versions were brought to the National STEM Festival. 

Riddik Sri Satya Neetipalli, 12

Seventh-grader at Cab Calloway High School of the Arts, Wilmington, Delaware

This is Riddik鈥檚 second year as a National STEM Champion. In 2024, he created a project to help capture water from air. His passion transitioned into inventing a water quality detection tool powered by artificial intelligence for this year鈥檚 festival.

After six months of work, Riddik created a small, hard case with data sensors that can be placed in water and detect pH level, temperature and cleanliness. The information is transmitted to a smartphone app.

鈥淚t visually shows and tells people if their drinking water is safe,鈥� he said.

Riddik said he wants to continue STEM through school and eventually become CEO of his own company that helps people around the world.

鈥淪ince a young age, I鈥檝e really loved STEM,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 like learning new things and questioning things. I really like it.鈥�

Bryan Hijam, 18

Senior at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute

Hijam started researching prostate cancer after landing a position at a local professor鈥檚 lab while still in high school. 

Through the , a Baltimore nonprofit for youth STEM education, Hijam was able to leave school early to work at the lab. More than a year ago, he began his experiment for the National STEM Festival and focused on helping the body recognize and fight prostate cancer.

Hijam鈥檚 project uses a synthetically developed antibody to target a pathway that cancer cells use to evade the immune system. 

鈥淢y project aimed to block this pathway from happening,鈥� he said. 鈥淪o your immune cells are further able to recognize the cancer cells and then kill the cancer cells.鈥�

Hijam鈥檚 goal is for the approach to be incorporated into immunotherapy, along with traditional treatment like chemotherapy, to improve outcomes for patients with advanced prostate cancer.

鈥淭he whole experiment as a whole took six months or seven months because there was a lot of trial and error,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 had to learn a lot of different techniques and read a lot of different essays. And some of those were the first time I’d ever done them.鈥�

Aadhi Umamageswaran, 16

Junior at West High School, Salt Lake City

For her project, Aadhi created a green alternative to commercial bandages, which contribute to pollution from medical waste and . 

鈥淚 basically made my own homemade biodegradable adhesive bandages for topical drug delivery from materials that I found in my kitchen pantry,鈥� she said.

Aadhi said she made glue from flour, wheat and rice so her bandages could stick to skin. The glue is mixed with water and natural healing ingredients including aloe vera and turmeric. The bandages themselves are made out of seaweed and rice paper.

鈥淚 found that it withstands a lot of vigorous body movements, and it’s just as effective as commercial bandages, but a lot more cost-effective,鈥� she said. 鈥淵ou can make them as you need them, and it won’t degrade into microplastics.鈥�

Aadhi said she was excited to present her project to the public and for others to see what STEM can do.

鈥淚t’s really cool to learn about all the other problems that are happening in the world and really creative approaches to solving those problems,鈥� Aadhi said. 鈥淚t’s also cool to learn from others to see how we can improve our own project.鈥�

Sara DeVolld, 17

Junior at Connections School, Soldotna, Alaska

Alaska鈥檚 dark winters inspired Sara to create , which combines her passion for art with STEM.

She creates dresses and costumes with LED lights and motorized parts to bring 鈥渓ight and joy to a world that can seem dark and overwhelming.鈥�

Sara said that because Alaskans are more prone to depressive conditions like than people who live farther south, she makes her clothing to raise awareness of suicide prevention. In 2022, Alaska had the in the nation.

Two of her projects were included in the National STEM Festival: a blue dress with LED lights and a gold gown that comes with a pair of 6-foot motorized wings. Each creation takes her 150 to 350 hours to make.

Sara said she鈥檚 received a lot of positive feedback for her products, especially for her work combining design and technology.

鈥淚 also want to show young women that we don’t have to choose between the arts and the sciences,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 want to share with them that we can do both.鈥�

returns to Austin, Texas, running March 3-6. As always, it鈥檒l offer a huge number of panels, discussions, film screenings, musical performances and workshops exploring education, innovation and the future of schooling.

Keynote speakers this year include neuroscientist , founder of Ness Labs, an online educational platform for knowledge workers; astronaut, author and TV host , and , CEO of Search for Common Ground, an international non-profit. Idriss will speak about what it means to be strong in the face of opposition 鈥� and how to turn conflict into cooperation. Also featured: indy musical artist Jill Sobule, from her musical F*ck 7th Grade.

As in 2024, artificial intelligence remains a major focus, with dozens of sessions exploring AI鈥檚 potential and pitfalls. But other topics are on tap as well, including sessions on playful learning, book bans and the benefits of prison journalism. 

To help guide the way, we鈥檝e scoured the to highlight 25 of the most significant presenters, topics and panels: 

Monday, March 3:

A new independent film features a Seattle school counselor who builds a world-class Ultimate Frisbee team with a group of immigrant children at Hazel Wolf K-8 School. 

Generative AI is accelerating the adoption of a skills-based economy, but many are skeptical about its value, impact and the pace of growth. Will AI spark meaningful change and a new economic order, or is it just another overhyped trend? Meena Naik of Jobs for the Future leads a discussion with Colorado Community College System Associate Vice Chancellor Michael Macklin, Nick Moore, an education advisor to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, and Best Buy鈥檚 Ryan Hanson.

The Clayton Christensen Institute鈥檚 Julia Freeland Fisher headlines a panel that looks at how generative AI can help students access 24/7 help in navigating pathways to college. As new models take root, the panel will explore what entrepreneurs are learning about what students want from these systems. Will AI level the playing field or perpetuate inequality? 

New research shows students who are engaged in schoolwork not only do better in school but are happier and more confident in life. And educators say they鈥檇 be happier at work and less likely to leave the profession if students engaged more deeply. In this session, LEGO Education鈥檚 Bo Stjerne Thomsen will explore the science behind playful learning and how it can get students and teachers excited again.

Mike Yates of The Reinvention Lab at Teach for America leads an interactive session offering participants the chance to build their own AI tools to solve real problems they face at work, school or home. The session is for AI novices as well as those simply curious about how the technology works. Participants will get free access to .

Join Charlotte West of Open Campus, Lawrence Bartley of The Marshall Project and Yukari Kane of the Prison Journalism Project to explore real-life stories from behind bars. Journalism training is transforming the lives of a few of the more than 1.9 million people incarcerated in the U.S., teaching skills from time management to communication and allowing inmates to feel connected to society while building job skills. 

Tuesday, March 4:

Amid the hand-wringing about what AI means for the future of education, there鈥檚 been little conversation about how a few smart educators are already employing it to shift possibilities for student engagement and classroom instruction. In this workshop, attendees will learn how to leverage promising practices emerging from research with real educators using AI in writing, creating their own chatbots and differentiating support plans. 

AI-enabled tools can be helpful for students conducting research, outlining written work, or proofing and editing submissions. But there鈥檚 a fine line between using AI appropriately and taking advantage of it, leaving many students wondering, 鈥淗ow much AI is too much?鈥� This session, led by Turnitin鈥檚 Annie Chechitelli, will discuss the rise of GenAI, its intersection with academia and academic integrity, and how to determine appropriate usage.  

Explore the real-world impact of AI in education during this interactive session hosted by Zhuo Chen, a text analysis instructor at the nonprofit education startup Constellate, and Dylan Ruediger of the research and consulting group Ithaka S+R. Chen and Ruediger will share successes and challenges in using AI to advance student learning, engagement and skills. 

In 2025, authors face unprecedented challenges. This session, which features Scholastic editor and young adult novelist David Levithan, as well as Emily Kirkpatrick, executive director of the National Council of Teachers of English, will explore the battle for freedom of expression and the importance of defending reading in the face of censorship attempts and book bans.

Kate Arend and Kim Lessing, the co-presidents of Amy Poehler鈥檚 production company Paper Kite Productions, will be live to record their workplace and career advice podcast 鈥淢illion Dollar Advice.鈥� The pair will tackle topics such as setting and maintaining boundaries, learning from Gen Z, dealing with complicated work dynamics, and more. They will also take live audience questions.

With rising recognition of neurodivergent students, advocates say AI can revolutionize how schools support them by streamlining tasks, optimizing resources and enhancing personalized learning. In the process, schools can overcome challenges in mainstreaming students with learning differences. This panel features educators and advocates as well as Alex Kotran, co-founder and CEO of The AI Education Project.

Assessments are often disruptive, cumbersome or disconnected from classroom learning. But a few advocates and developers say AI-powered assessment tools offer an easier, more streamlined way for students to demonstrate learning 鈥� and for educators to adapt instruction to meet their needs. This session, moderated by 社区黑料鈥檚 Greg Toppo, features Khan Academy鈥檚 Kristen DiCerbo, Curriculum Associates鈥� Kristen Huff and Akisha Osei Sarfo, director of research at the Council of the Great City Schools.

Wednesday, March 5:

Gun violence is now the leading cause of death for American children and teens, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, yet coverage of gun violence鈥檚 impact on youth is usually reported by adults. Run, Hide, Fight: Growing Up Under the Gun is a 30-minute documentary by student journalists about how gun violence affects young Americans. Produced by PBS News Student Reporting Labs in collaboration with 14 student journalists in five cities, it centers the perspectives of young people who live their lives in the shadow of this threat. 

Educators are at the forefront of testing, using artificial intelligence and teaching their communities about it. In this interactive session, participants will hear from educators and ed tech specialists on the ground working to support the use of AI to improve learning. The session includes Stacie Johnson, director of professional learning at Khan Academy, and Dina Neyman, Khan Academy鈥檚 director of district success. 

As AI becomes increasingly present in the classroom, educators are understandably concerned about how it might disrupt their teaching. An expert panel featuring Jake Baskin, executive director of the Computer Science Teachers Association andKarim Meghji of Code.org, will look at how teaching will change in an age of AI, exploring frameworks for teaching AI skills and sharing best practices for integrating AI literacy across disciplines.

Generation Alpha is the first to experience generative artificial intelligence from the start of their educational journeys. To thrive in a world featuring AI requires educators helping them tap into their natural creativity, navigating unique opportunities and challenges. In this session, a cross-industry panel of experts discuss strategies to integrate AI into learning, allowing critical thinking and curiosity to flourish while enabling early learners to become architects of AI, not just users.

Join a panel of educators, tech leaders and nonprofit officials as they discuss AI鈥檚 ethical complexities and its impact on the education of Black children. This panel will address historical disparities, biases in technology, and the critical need for ethical AI in education. It will also offer unique perspectives into the benefits and challenges of AI in Black children鈥檚 education, sharing best practices to promote the safe, ethical and legal use of AI in classrooms.

Is teacher morale shaped by where teachers work? Find out as Education Week releases its annual State of Teaching survey. States and school districts drive how teachers are prepared, paid and promoted, and the findings will raise new questions about what leaders and policymakers should consider as they work to support an essential profession. The session features Holly Kurtz, director of EdWeek Research Center, Stephen Sawchuk, EdWeek assistant managing editor, and assistant editor Sarah D. Sparks.

While most students in U.S. public schools are now young people of color, more than 80% of their teachers are white. How do white educators understand and address these dynamics? Join a live recording of a podcast that brings together white educators with Christopher Emdin and sam seidel, co-editors of From White Folks Who Teach in the Hood: Reflections on Race, Culture, and Identity (Beacon, 2024).

Schools are locked in a battle with students over fears they鈥檙e using generative artificial intelligence to plagiarize existing work. In this session, join Elliott Hedman, a 鈥渃ustomer obsession engineer鈥� with mPath, who with colleagues and students co-designed a GenAI writing tool to reframe AI use. Hedman will share three strategies that not only prevent plagiarism but also teach students how to use GenAI more productively.  

Thursday, March 6:

Join futurists Sinead Bovell and Natalie Monbiot for a fireside discussion about how we prepare kids for a future we cannot yet see but know will be radically transformed by technology. Bovell and Monbiot will discuss the impact of artificial intelligence on our world and the workforce, as well as its implications for education. 

Young children spend 80% of their time outside of school, but too many lack access to experiences that encourage learning through hands-on activities and play. While these opportunities exist in middle-class and upper-income neighborhoods, they鈥檙e often inaccessible to families in low-income communities. In this session, a panel of designers and educators featuring Sarah Lytle, who leads the Playful Learning Landscapes Action Network, will look at how communities are transforming overlooked spaces such as sidewalks, shelters and even jails into nurturing learning environments accessible to all kids.

In this session, participants will build an AI chatbot alongside designers and engineers from Stanford University and Stanford鈥檚 d.school, getting to the core of how AI works. Participants will conceptualize, outline and create conversation flows for their own AI assistant and explore methods that technical teams use to infuse warmth and adaptability into interactions and develop reliable chatbots.  

In this session, participants will learn how educators, technologists and policymakers work to develop AI responsibly. Panelists include Isabelle Hau of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, Amelia Kelly, chief technology officer of the Irish AI startup SoapBox Labs, and Merlyn Mind CEO Levi Belnap. They鈥檒l talk about how policymakers and educators can work with developers to ensure transparency and accuracy of AI tools.聽

Fortunately, the U.S. Department of Education鈥檚 Office of Educational Technology (OET) released new guidelines for EdTech companies earlier this year called 鈥�.鈥� The report underscores the need for 鈥渞esponsible innovation,鈥� adding, 鈥渆ducator and student feedback should be incorporated into all aspects of product development, testing, and refinement to ensure student needs are fully addressed.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;As , 鈥淭he era of tech-first solutions is over. Developers must collaborate meaningfully with educators from day one. Understanding pedagogy is as crucial as coding skills.鈥�

The shares this mindset as part of our mission to reimagine the high school learning experience so it鈥檚 more relevant and engaging for today鈥檚 learners, while better preparing them for the future. We see AI as a tool with transformative potential for educators and makers to leverage 鈥� but only if it鈥檚 developed and implemented with ethics, transparency and equity at the forefront. That鈥檚 why we鈥檙e building partnerships between educators and AI developers to ensure that products are shaped by the real needs and challenges of students, teachers and schools. Here鈥檚 how we believe all stakeholders can embrace the Department鈥檚 recommendations through ongoing collaborations with tech leaders, educators and students alike.

Keeping Tech and Learning Student-Centric

XQ鈥檚 approach to high school redesign is always student-centric. In that spirit, we must shift from the mindset that AI and other tech tools are solely for educators; they also exist to improve students鈥� learning. Rather than focusing exclusively on improving output (such as lesson plans and assessment materials), makers should also emphasize improving outcomes, such as student proficiency and engagement. Ann-Katherine Kimble, XQ鈥檚 Director of School Success, said that鈥檚 why it鈥檚 wrong to focus only on how AI can save teachers time and make their jobs easier. 鈥淥ur young people, teachers and classrooms don’t deserve that,鈥� she explained. 鈥淭hey deserve a point of view that believes that AI can enhance your practice and knowledge, deepen your creative and responsive approaches and help educators capitalize on the sweet spot where the art of teaching and the science of learning meet.鈥�

At , an XQ school in Memphis, Tennessee, computer science teacher Mohammed Al harthy sees AI as a partner in the classroom 鈥� something students engage with during the learning process but never rely on for the finished product.

For instance, in one project his students explored how to build AI applications to track hand movements for American Sign Language, highlighting the value of learning how AI works, writing code in Python and experimenting with tools like Google鈥檚 MediaPipe. Al harthy isn鈥檛 so worried that his students will simply copy and paste as they learn. 鈥淎rtificial intelligence never sounds like a high school student, so the concerns about cheating are kind of silly,鈥� he explained. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e concerned about that, you should step back and reassess what your students are doing from the start.鈥� This approach aligns with a national shift toward focusing on and collaboration rather than rote answers, allowing students to use AI as a tool to enhance their problem-solving and critical-thinking skills.

AI is just one of many topics covered by the, a newsletter that comes out twice a month for high school teachers. Check it out and subscribe now.

Ensuring Equitable Learning Opportunities

At XQ, we believe that ensuring equitable access means creating AI-driven learning experiences that are flexible, adaptive and tailored to the unique needs of diverse student populations, especially neurodivergent students and multi-language learners. AI can help by creating tools designed to serve all learners fairly and effectively without stripping away our students’ individuality.

One of the technology鈥檚 most promising capabilities is its ability to provide real-time, actionable feedback to students and educators. Tim Brodsky, a thought leader on AI who taught social studies at the XQ high school in Santa Ana, California, was recently for his innovative use of generative AI to support multilingual learners in his AP courses. With automated feedback occurring in real-time, Brodsky said systems can analyze data and provide immediate insights about student engagement, attendance and other factors to predict risk factors. 鈥淭his takes the load off teachers, who often have to sift through spreadsheets to find trends and nuances,鈥� he said. 鈥淎I provides a better method for holistic data collection and a more effective way of measuring it.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

However, student data always comes with caveats. Too often, algorithms mirror the on which they鈥檙e trained. found this can result in mischaracterizing the writing of non-native English speakers as AI-generated, and experts found language models that classified certain jobs, like secretary or flight attendant, as feminine. XQ addresses this problem by working closely with developers to ensure their products are more culturally responsive to the needs and outcomes educators are looking to provide for their students.

For example, teachers at Crosstown worked with the EdTech company to develop (PBL) experiences. The company鈥檚 CEO and co-founder Aatash Parikh said this collaboration was helpful for both sides and influenced the evolution of the company鈥檚 AI products. 鈥淗aving educators at Crosstown High School walk us through their workflow designing project-based learning experiences helped us realize what would make Inkwire a more complete solution for schools,鈥� he said. 

A former PBL teacher himself, Parikh wanted to ensure that Inkwire鈥檚 generative AI tools don鈥檛 just stop at creating PBL plans, but also incorporate deeper pedagogical layers to be more responsive for educators and schools. At Crosstown High, educators, including science teacher and Head of Innovation and Research Nikki Wallace, showed the Inkwire team what they were learning from each other, and how to integrate that professional feedback into their platform. 鈥淲e鈥檙e helping these makers understand how equity is created in the classroom, helping them make more responsive products,鈥� Wallace said. 鈥淭eachers learn best from other teachers.鈥�

Fostering Ethical Collaboration Between Educators and Developers

The days of tech-first solutions are over; what鈥檚 needed now is a deep partnership where developers and educators work hand-in-hand to ensure AI tools are technologically sound and pedagogically effective. The DOE鈥檚 new guidelines for EdTech refer to this as a 鈥渄ual stack鈥� approach鈥攁 framework that combines the 鈥渄evelopment stack鈥� applied to product creation alongside a 鈥渞esponsibility stack鈥� to ensure these products are built with ethics, transparency and public trust for classroom use.

While many AI tools help create engaging projects and lessons, Wallace wanted a tool to better support personalized learning. While working alongside Inkwire, she said XQ connected her with other AI makers, such as , to build an AI Chatbot that would support an interdisciplinary, community-centered project for her students. 

鈥淲e frontloaded the bot with all the information I need to build a successful learning experience in my classroom,鈥� Wallace explained. Her students looked at statistics for infectious diseases that impact Memphis. Their chatbot then served as what Wallace called a 鈥渃ognitive partner.鈥� It helped them progress through the science project by unpacking and generating complex questions such as 鈥淲hat community partners in Memphis can I reach out to?鈥� and 鈥淲hat information in the research might I have overlooked?鈥� and 鈥淲hat governmental systems are in place?鈥� From there, Wallace said, students figured out which were associated with the project.

鈥淲e wanted the students to be able to identify, build and then reflect on the project benchmarks, learning outcomes and pathways they would need in order to progress at their own pace.鈥�

Wallace said this experience was grounded in two of the : and . The chatbot helped make learning more personalized and rigorous.

Betsey Schmidt, founder and CEO of MeshEd and a veteran curriculum designer, said customizable large language models (LLMs) like PlayLab and Inkwire can transform lesson planning. 鈥淏y understanding what excites and motivates students, educators can more easily adapt core curricula to resonate on a deeper level with learners, incorporating their passions, hobbies, strengths and growth areas 鈥� and making real-world connections to learners鈥� profiles,鈥� she explained. Schmidt has been collaborating with XQ to bring teachers and high school leaders into the AI-for-learning product design cycle 

Looking Ahead

By this time next year, generative AI will likely , whether we鈥檙e ready or not. However, education systems and policies are incredibly resilient to change. The recent pandemic made that painfully clear as schools often went back to business as usual rather than embracing new learning models, such as awarding credit for content mastery instead of seat time (Carnegie units), a rigid system that鈥檚 been used for more than a century and . (XQ and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching have to address this problem.)

AI is already showing us how to make education more individualized and equitable. By encouraging tech leaders and makers to continue collaborating with educators, at events like in New York City next month, we can work toward a future in which all students can reach their potential 鈥� and where teachers can make the most of their talent.

Want to learn more about how to create innovative teaching and learning in high schools? Subscribe to the , a newsletter that comes out twice a month for high school teachers.

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of 社区黑料.

The creators of a new, artificial-intelligence-assisted publishing effort called hope that offering interactive, personalized guidance and commentary from well-known writers, scholars and celebrities will help bring classic books alive for students.

They鈥檙e also aiming to help adults who might otherwise struggle in solitude through these weighty volumes.

In the process, they predict, the titles could capture a much bigger audience, one that someday may be able to talk back to the experts and even influence how scholars interpret literature. 

The challenge is whether they can make the AI work without being creepy or intrusive.

The price: $29.95 per book, with multi-book subscriptions available. They also plan to offer discounts to schools and find philanthropic partners as underwriters. 

Among the key selling points of Rebind鈥檚 e-books is that it offers a clever synthesis of original commentary and 鈥渓ite鈥� AI that seamlessly matches the experts鈥� utterances to readers鈥� queries. So a student studying George Washington鈥檚 could pose a question to none other than historian 鈥� or at least the version of her already pressed between the covers of an e-book on presidential speeches.

The improbable effort grew out of an equally improbable meeting between the philosopher and John Dubuque, great-grandson of the founder of the retail chain Plumbers Supply. Dubuque had spent 14 years as its CEO and sold the company in 2021, at age 38.

Suddenly retired, he set about reading philosopher Martin Heidegger鈥檚 famously difficult Being and Time, hiring an Oxford scholar for twice-weekly private tutoring sessions. 

鈥淚 had this amazing experience and realized at the end of it, 鈥業t’s too bad more people can’t access this,鈥欌�� he said. 鈥淭his is the only way I ever could have read this book.鈥�

Dubuque also began playing with ChatGPT, asking it to summarize passages from equally difficult books like Alfred North Whitehead鈥檚 Process and Reality. He was deeply impressed with the AI, warts and all, and concluded that if someone could tame it for students, cut down on 鈥溾�� and focus it on the books, it鈥檇 be a game-changer. 

He shared his ideas with Kaag, who had helped him get through William James鈥� The Varieties of Religious Experience.

Kaag had just published Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life, which resonated with his benefactor. Kaag, who as a kid had been a poor reader with a stutter, recounted to Dubuque how his mother would sit at their kitchen table and help him muscle through assignments. 

They realized that many people want to tackle classics like Moby Dick and James Joyce鈥檚 Ulysses, Dubuque said, but get intimidated by big, difficult books. 鈥淪o they just give up and read things that they can read, not the things that they really want to read.鈥�

鈥榃e’re choosing the people 鈥� and they’re choosing the books鈥�

Kaag soon recruited his friend Clancy Martin, an author and professor at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, who signed on to help find 鈥淩ebinders鈥� for at least 100 AI-assisted e-books, offering readers what amounts to a one-on-one conversation with a novelist, critic or historian about the book.

The endeavor already boasts an impressive stable of author-experts: The Irish novelist John Banville on Joyce鈥檚 Dubliners, Goodwin on U.S. Presidents鈥� speeches, novelist on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Deepak Chopra on Buddhism and environmentalist on John Muir.

But there are also some unlikely pairings: Margaret Atwood on A Tale of Two Cities, Roxane Gay on Edith Wharton鈥檚 The Age of Innocence, producer, actor and writer Lena Dunham on E. M. Forster鈥檚 A Room With a View, and the critic on Romeo and Juliet. 

鈥�We’re choosing the people 鈥� and they’re choosing the books,鈥� said Martin. 

To avoid copyright fights, the company is limited, for the moment, to books in the public domain, published before 1928. But Rebind is also in conversation with the world鈥檚 three largest publishers about offering contemporary books like 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and David Foster Wallace鈥檚 1996 novel Infinite Jest.

Kipnis, who last spring wrote a of becoming a Rebinder, has said the endeavor 鈥渨ill radically transform the entire way booklovers read books.鈥�

Acknowledging her misgivings about AI more broadly, she finally admitted to herself that perhaps this particular bet is worth pursuing. 鈥淭he nihilist in me thinks if humans are going to perish, we might as well perish reading the Classics,鈥� she wrote.

On occasion, Kaag, 44, and Martin, 57, have tried to politely steer a few scholars away from their first choice, with mixed results: When he offered the gig to novelist , for instance, Martin promised he could tackle any book he liked. So Greenwell proposed Henry James’ The Golden Bowl 鈥� a classic, but not exactly James鈥� most widely read novel. 

鈥淚 said, ‘O.K., Henry James is a great idea,鈥� Martin recalled. 鈥溾�榃hat about The Portrait of a Lady?’鈥�

Sorry, Greenwell said. It was The Golden Bowl or nothing. 

Martin threw out a few other titles: The Turn of the Screw? Daisy Miller?

Eventually, he said with a laugh, they resolved it: 鈥淗e’s doing The Golden Bowl.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

So far, only a few prominent authors have opted not to participate 鈥� the literary novelist Andre Dubus III, a close friend of Kaag鈥檚, told him he was 鈥渄ancing with the devil.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Kaag said he鈥檚 getting a mixture of 鈥渞eally good鈥� emails and 鈥渞eally serious hate mail鈥� from colleagues fearful of AI. He takes that fear to heart, having spent much of his career . His classes, he said, have always been 鈥渧ery personal and very one-on-one.鈥�

But he shifted his thinking a few years ago, after suffering from heart troubles that culminated in a cardiac arrest at age 40: 鈥淚 just thought to myself, ‘I really would like to explore things that I hadn’t explored before.’鈥�

Invoking Dubuque鈥檚 intimate tutoring sessions, he thought, 鈥淵ou can only scale one-on-one tutorials, or one-on-one conversations, so far.鈥�

If AI can make that happen and bring the joy of reading to more people, he thought, perhaps it鈥檚 worth trying something new. 鈥淪o to me, I don’t think it’s scary.鈥�

鈥楤asically every question that I could possibly imagine鈥�

Each book begins with a high-production-value video offering a sneak peak of what lies within. In the case of Henry David Thoreau鈥檚 Walden, we get sweeping drone shots of Walden Pond, complete with the Rebinder 鈥� in this case Kaag himself 鈥� taking a swim. He lives in nearby Concord, Mass., and has taught the book for more than a decade at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. 

For the Walden Rebind, Kaag recorded 30 hours of audio commentary, answering 鈥渂asically every question that I could possibly imagine鈥� a college student asking. 

The volume of commentary ranges widely, from 10 hours for Dubliners to nearly 80 for Ulysses by the philosopher .

As for how Rebind will be used, Kaag sees it not as a replacement for class discussions, but as preparation, a tool that can field questions readers might be too embarrassed to ask in class.

The way Rebind works will be familiar to anyone who reads e-books, but with a revelatory twist: Readers can highlight and annotate text, but they can also open up a chat window anywhere and type or dictate questions about a passage or sentence. They can wonder aloud about ideas or passages they鈥檙e curious about, or simply type: 鈥淚鈥檓 lost.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

AI analyzes the query and matches it to the pre-loaded commentary, telling readers, if they click on a little icon, which parts of the answer are original and which are the AI smoothing out the syntax to be responsive to the query.

Antero Garcia, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University and vice president of the National Council of Teachers of English, said he likes the transparency that comes with that breakdown. 鈥淚 actually hope more AI does something like that, where you can see the sources of things鈥� it presents to readers.

But he worries that tools like Rebind could draw users more into reading as a solitary pursuit. 鈥淚f I’m lost in Dubliners, that’d be great to go to my English teacher or to a friend and, God forbid, have a reading group or a book group and just have a conversation about this text,鈥� he said. 

Garcia said he was reluctant to overstate the isolating effects of AI, 鈥渂ut I do think there’s something missing as a result of relying on AI to guide us in our reading, rather than relying on reading being an inherently social thing.鈥�

In the long term, Rebind actually seeks to integrate social elements that allow students in a class to 鈥渞ead and work together鈥� within a text. Eventually, they hope to give teachers space for their own commentary. Future versions may offer Rebinders feedback from readers and the opportunity for deeper discussions via AI-moderated book clubs.

One feature stands out as potentially game-changing: If a reader wants to basically journal within the e-book, revealing his or her personal challenges along the way, that prompts the AI to search for commentary that helps: If you鈥檙e reading Walden, for instance, and type in, 鈥淭his book makes me think of my times of loneliness and depression,鈥� the e-book will reply: 鈥淚 can understand how Thoreau’s reflections on solitude and the challenges of living authentically might resonate with feelings of loneliness and depression.鈥�

That鈥檚 then followed up with a brief discussion of Thoreau鈥檚 encouragement 鈥渢o remain attentive, even when things don’t particularly seem bountiful.鈥�

The new e-books will also allow users to take notes, then use them to challenge the Rebinder to a conversation. While that could easily become a big privacy risk, Dubuque said Rebind will never sell user data, since it鈥檚 inviting users to 鈥渟hare the deepest, most meaningful things in their life and really give themselves to these books.鈥� Profiting off those details is 鈥渘ot an option.鈥�

鈥楧ancing with the devil鈥�?

At the moment, the interactions are all through text, but the Rebinders have all given permission to have their voices reproduced so they can someday 鈥渃hat鈥� directly with users. 鈥淲e have voice clones,鈥� Dubuque said. 鈥淭hey’re very good.鈥�

But for now audio remains an open question, an option they鈥檙e not quite ready to offer. On the one hand, who wouldn鈥檛 want to chat about Dubliners with Banville? On the other hand, that could be weird. A small portion of the conversation wouldn鈥檛 be Banville at all, but a crusty, Irish-accented Banville-bot.

Dubuque predicted they鈥檒l eventually end up using voice, but he wants to do it carefully.

鈥淲e’re very sensitive to the 鈥榠ck factor鈥� of AI.鈥�

His plan is to release the first books next month. 

Though it鈥檚 a for-profit company, with Dubuque its only funder, Martin said he also sees it as an effort to ensure that more young people get the chance to read great books under the guidance of great teachers. 鈥淢ost of us don’t get to go to Columbia or to Yale or to Princeton,鈥� he said. Fewer still get to study with scholars like Goodwin, Atwood, Banville or Gay.

But Garcia, the Stanford scholar, urged caution.

鈥淭here’s something fraught about this pursuit of scale,鈥� he said. 鈥淚n trying to deliver good books or good learning experiences to people, we ultimately get funneled into this pathway: The way to get it to the most people is to take away that human element or dilute that human element through AI. It feels like that’s when you lose the spirit of it.鈥�

For his part, Martin wants to make Rebind 鈥渢he most fun, most dynamic and most interesting way鈥� to read books. It won鈥檛 supplant the solitary experience of reading, he said, it鈥檒l offer something different: the choice to read a book in solitude or to 鈥渉ave a whole rich conversation about it with someone.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Or both. 

was released on July 29 by the North Carolina Department of Commerce’s Office of Science, Technology, and Innovation. As a whole, according to the report, the state is considered to be improving innovation capacity compared to the rest of the country.

Machelle Baker Sanders, North Carolina’s commerce secretary, said in a that the report shows that we must continue to improve the 鈥渓evel of prosperity鈥� throughout the state.

鈥淔aced with a dynamic and competitive economy, the best approach is to shape it rather than be shaped by it. We must continue to innovate — to create and adopt new products, services, and business models that add value and improve economic well-being,鈥� Sanders said.

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The report tracks North Carolina鈥檚 performance across 42 innovation measures. Those statistics are then weighed against those of the United States overall and six key comparison states (California, Massachusetts, Georgia, Virginia, Colorado, and Washington). These measures provide insights into the links between innovation, resources, and economic results in the state.

According to the researchers鈥� findings, North Carolina matches or outperforms the United States as a whole in about half of the measured categories.

The report said that North Carolina鈥檚 statewide innovation ecosystem is healthy, and the state has improved since the early 2000s at a rate comparable to the country as a whole. However, the state鈥檚 poverty rate is above the national average, and income and wages of residents are also behind, despite having one of the fastest growing populations.

Janet Cowell, chair of the North Carolina Board of Science, Technology & Innovation, said that technology and innovation are key to a growing economy.

鈥淎s this report shows, North Carolina has achieved a leading role in the 鈥榖asic鈥� and early-stage 鈥榓pplied鈥� research that forms the foundation for breakthrough innovations,鈥� Cowell said in a press release. 鈥淏ut it also shows that we have room for improvement in scaling and converting those innovations to commercial uses and in ensuring that more sectors and regions of our state participate in and benefit from that activity.鈥�

More on the report’s findings

According to the report, both academic and business research and development have grown faster than the national average since 2000, providing a strong foundation for economic growth. North Carolina鈥檚 research and development performs well above the national average, and the state鈥檚 academic institutions generate a significant amount of intellectual property.

North Carolina ranks 16th nationwide for the percentage of people who have jobs related to science and engineering. Researchers considered the following as science and engineering jobs: engineers, and computer, mathematical, life, physical, and social scientists. STEM teachers are not included.

Between 2003 and 2020, the state鈥檚 science and engineering workforce increased by 50%. This is 25 percentage points higher than the national average. But the report also found that the state graduates a lower proportion of science and engineering students compared to other states.

North Carolina ranks 28th in the nation when analyzing the ratio of science and engineering bachelor鈥檚 degrees to the population aged 18鈥�24 years, which “represents the extent to which a state prepares young people to enter technology-intensive occupations that are fundamental to a knowledge-based, technology-driven economy,” the report says. The state鈥檚 results are below the nationwide average, which means there is room for improvement.

People with degrees in computer and mathematical sciences; the biological, agricultural, or environmental life sciences; physical sciences; social sciences; psychology; engineering; and health fields are included in this measure. People who have doctorates from foreign institutions and/or are over the age of 75 are excluded.

The report said the relatively low percentage of trained engineers in North Carolina鈥檚 workforce is a cause for concern because regions with a high concentration of engineers have a greater capacity for innovation and often lead in key industries.

An educated, skilled workforce is viewed as a key to success in an innovative economy, the report said.

North Carolina ranks 21st in the nation for educational attainment, based on a composite score that uses data for residents over the age of 25.

About 10% of North Carolinians over the age of 25 have not completed high school. A quarter of them completed their education with a high school degree, and 19.3% completed have a high school degree with some college experience. One in 10 have completed with an associate degree, 22.8% completed with a bachelor鈥檚 degree, and 13.2% completed with a graduate or professional degree.

Across North Carolina, the majority of counties have relatively low educational attainment levels, researchers found. Out of 100 counties, 83 have an educational composite score below the United States average composite score. The counties that have an above average score are either in urban areas, adjacent to universities or urban areas, or have a large number of retirees or military personnel.

North Carolina has a of reaching 2 million North Carolinians aged 25-44 with a degree or credential by 2030.

The 2011 State of the North Carolina Workforce report found that people without a high school diploma were more likely to be unemployed. It also was found that more than half of new jobs in the state required at least some postsecondary education, particularly in STEM areas.

鈥淭hese facts, combined with the educational attainment findings presented above, make it clear that North Carolina must improve the educational attainment levels of its citizens in order to generate innovative ideas, to support the expansion of a knowledge-based economy, and to increase the economic well-being and quality of life of its citizens,鈥� the Tracking Innovation report said.

Public investment in education is a part of environmental and infrastructure measures in the report.

Based on data gathered between 2001 and 2022, the report found that North Carolina has decreased state funding for higher education. It has also spent less on elementary and secondary education.

Between 2002 and 2021, the entire country鈥檚 average elementary and secondary public school current expenditures as a percentage of state gross domestic product decreased by 5.3%. North Carolina鈥檚 percentage decreased by 12.9%.

Courtesy of  .

鈥淔or each measure, a higher value indicates that a state has made financial support of the respective education level more of a priority. Investments in public pre-kindergarten through grade 12 are important for preparing a broadly educated and innovation-capable workforce,鈥� the report said. 鈥淚nvestments in public postsecondary education are critical to increase the ability of public academic institutions to prepare students for skilled and well-paying employment.”

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

Solving chronic absenteeism involves tackling big structural problems like transportation and infrastructure. But we also have to make our schools places where young people want to learn. Too many teens, in particular, had negative feelings about school even before the pandemic. Yale researchers conducting found most teens spent their days 鈥渢ired,鈥� 鈥渟tressed,鈥� and 鈥渂ored.鈥� Fewer than 3 in 100 reported feeling interested while in school.

Decades of research prove that students learn more when they experience high levels of academic engagement and social belonging in school. That鈥檚 why XQ developed grounded in the science of teaching and the importance of cultivating caring, trusting relationships within schools. These principles are being used to rethink the traditional high school experience in across the country to make learning more relevant and engaging for the needs of this generation.

Our partnerships are still new. But so far, we鈥檙e finding graduates from our first 17 schools have more interest in their classes and a stronger sense of belonging at school than their national counterparts. More than three-quarters of the XQ class of 2023 鈥� which includes 17 high schools 鈥� said they were at least somewhat interested in their classes. And 52% of the XQ class of 2023 felt like they belonged 鈥渃ompletely鈥� or 鈥渜uite a bit鈥� at their school, versus only 40% nationally.

I spoke with four students from XQ schools across the country to hear what makes a difference in creating high schools young people want to attend. They are: Evan Bowie, Class of 2024 from Ron Brown College Preparatory High School in Washington, D.C.; Karisse Dickison, Class of 2024 from Elizabethton High School in Elizabethton, Tennessee; Henry Montalvo, Class of 2025 from 颁铆谤肠耻濒辞蝉 in Santa Ana, California; and Lillian Roberts, Class of 2024 from Brooklyn STEAM Center. 

Create Bonding Activities

has fewer than 200 students, but Henry Montalvo didn鈥檛 know most of them when he started there as a ninth grader. That small size helped him adjust to the Santa Ana high school, but he also credited bonding activities. One called Community Week provides an opportunity for students to celebrate, pause and reflect. Students create their own schedules based on available sessions. Montalvo said they may lead the sessions alone or partner with teachers for non-academic, fun classes on topics like putting on a thrift shop and even Pok茅mon card-collecting.

鈥淚t’s just basically a time to come together as a community,鈥� he said of the most recent event this past spring. 鈥淪ometimes you write a letter to yourself, and then they give it to you at the end of the year so you can reflect on it.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Evan Bowie said teachers at , an all-male district school in Washington, D.C. that鈥檚 part of the partnership, also look for creative ways to help students bond. Students might be asked, for example, to stand or move their desks into circles and answer a question like, 鈥淲hat’s your affirmation today?鈥� Or, 鈥淗ow was your weekend?鈥� He said sometimes it can feel like you鈥檙e being put on the spot, but it works.

Bowie said if he answered with, 鈥溾�業t was boring.鈥� They’d be, like, 鈥榊ou got to give a real answer.鈥欌�� The upshot: 鈥淚t just pushes the student to think a little bit better.鈥�

Want to learn more about how to create innovative teaching and learning in high schools? Subscribe to the , a newsletter that comes out twice a month for high school teachers.

Seek Student Feedback

Check-ins like this can also happen more formally, as they do at the The program takes students from several local high schools for mornings or afternoons, five days a week, offering them concentrations in career pathways including cybersecurity, design and engineering, filmmaking and more. Brooklyn STEAM Center is in the Imagine NYC

Lillian Roberts chose culinary arts as her concentration. She enjoys how teachers meet with students quarterly. She said they ask how students feel about their classes, which includes 鈥渢he way they’re teaching, if you have any input.鈥� There are also student-led town hall meetings where students can give feedback anonymously on 鈥渢hings that you might not feel comfortable with.鈥�

Bowie said his teachers at Ron Brown College Preparatory High School also solicit feedback on a weekly or monthly basis, depending on the instructor. They鈥檒l ask questions like, 鈥淲hat went well this week? What can I improve on? What ways can you improve your grade?鈥� Bowie said students are also asked to rate the classes on a scale of one to five stars and provide suggestions for how to make a class better, such as including more hands-on activities or more Socratic seminars instead of written assignments.

Make Personal Connections

is located in northeast Tennessee, an area that has struggled for years with the loss of manufacturing and the opioid epidemic. It was selected as an XQ Super School largely because of its teens鈥� proposal for more student-centered learning to benefit the community.

Karisse Dickison, who graduated this year and is heading to college, described a close relationship with school librarian Dustin Hensley 鈥� who regularly talks to students about what they鈥檙e reading and their extracurricular activities. When Dickison helped start a group dedicated to ending gun violence, she said Hensley would ask her about related events in the news.

鈥淚t was just nice to have him reach out and make sure that I knew what was happening in the world,鈥� she said.

Bowie also valued a personal connection with English teacher Teresa Lasley, who encouraged him to apply to Georgetown University, where he鈥檚 attending this fall. He recalled her showing the class a video about how Black students didn鈥檛 feel welcome at the prestigious school. When he spoke with Lasley, he said she told him he doesn鈥檛 have to work extra hard to prove he belongs. 鈥淕oing to Georgetown means you’re adding more to Georgetown,鈥� he remembered her saying. 鈥淚t’s better for them than it is for you. You belong. You already have it in you.鈥�

He said that exchange allowed him to 鈥渂e seen,鈥� and that he鈥檚 witnessed similar exchanges between other students and teachers.

At Brooklyn STEAM Center, Roberts recalled one guidance counselor who reached out after he saw her crying. 鈥淎nd then we set up weekly meetings just to have someplace to talk about what’s happening,鈥� she said. But at her other high school, she thought guidance counselors seem to focus more on 鈥減urely more academic things.鈥�

Leave the Building

Students at all four schools experience internships, work-based learning and partnerships with community organizations, which they said make classwork feel more relevant. 

Montalvo said teachers at 颁铆谤肠耻濒辞蝉 helped him land internships at a congressional campaign and with a law firm. He said these outside experiences lead to presentations in class. At Brooklyn STEAM Center, Roberts earned an OSHA 10 as well as a New York Food Protection Certificate, and joined a class trip to Italy to study cuisine. 

Dickison worked on social media and advertising at a local nonprofit. Some classes at Elizabethton High include project-based learning, such as one in which students helped solve a cold case involving a serial killer (their work became the subject of the hit podcast this year). 颁铆谤肠耻濒辞蝉 also offers , which Montalvo said makes classes feel more interesting. In his first year, he recalled how he and another student in his English class interviewed local environmental justice experts about lead contamination and the lack of green space, then made a presentation to their school and invited the greater community.

All three students who graduated this year are going to college in the fall, and Montalvo plans to go to college after graduating next year; he wants to be a lawyer. In our senior survey, 72% of XQ students in the class of 2023 planned to attend college, illustrating a great example of students remaining engaged in school beyond their high school years. 

But a sense of belonging and engagement can only happen with student input. 鈥淪chool is about 鈥�飞颈迟丑鈥� not 鈥�蹿辞谤,鈥�鈥� Roberts said. 鈥淓verything is with the students. It鈥檚 not for the students. You have to do everything with the students in mind.鈥�

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of 社区黑料.

Yet, 41 years after 鈥溾�� caused widespread panic about our public schools, fewer than half of American students are graduating high school ready for college or career. U.S. teens than students in many other countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, South Korea and Estonia. 

When young people are discouraged from pursuing a STEM-related career, they get locked out of , all of which come with salaries. And that means we all lose out 鈥� because the jobs needed to keep our country running go unfilled, and the inventions, treatments and technologies for our rapidly changing society go undiscovered. 

Our two organizations, and , are deeply committed to ensuring all students have access to joyful and rigorous schools where they know they belong and can succeed. Research shows those three qualities 鈥� joy, rigor, and a sense of belonging 鈥� will prepare them for the future, whether that鈥檚 STEM or any other pursuit. 

XQ partners with schools and districts to rethink the high school experience by making learning more meaningful and engaging through tools such as our Design Principles and Learner Outcomes. Beyond100K unites leading STEM organizations to co-develop and implement solutions to end the STEM teacher shortage by 2043, especially for those most excluded from STEM opportunities.

Sparking Joy in STEM

Guided by and insight from young people across the country, Beyond100K heard that to help spark the brilliance of millions more young minds, schools need to prioritize a focus on equity, representation, and especially belonging in STEM education. But that鈥檚 an increasingly difficult job.

Based on a recent conducted by Beyond100K, it鈥檚 clear that schools and educators are facing dueling pressures. They鈥檙e tasked with reshaping classrooms to foster inclusivity and joy while developing career- and culturally-relevant curricula. Simultaneously, they鈥檙e under heightened scrutiny due to residual pandemic learning loss, ongoing declines , and and teen mental health. 

Beyond100K interviewed educators who expressed concerns about the fear of repercussions for teaching about bias and inequity and the difficulty of creating classrooms of belonging amid pressure to focus solely on raising test scores. Identities of teachers were kept anonymous. 

One teacher noted that they are鈥渟cared to talk about the right thing, doing their own self-work to be able to talk about culture relative to their work鈥�.Regulations in states prevent teachers from having these conversations.鈥�

Yet a positive correlation between a sense of belonging in STEM classrooms and academic performance, retention, and persistence 鈥� particularly for Black, Latino, and Native American students. Similarly, students engaged in SEL programs improve and social well-being. 

Given that nearly 60% of girls and young women who were interested in STEM careers when they entered high school by the time they entered college, there is no question that developing a sense of belonging in the STEM fields is an essential element in nurturing learning environments that lead to STEM persistence. The rigidity of high school STEM education is preventing too many students from pursuing their dreams. 

We see an emerging trend: many teachers and other education leaders view joy, belonging and relevance not in conflict with academic rigor, but as the pathway by which academic success can be achieved. Evidence supports the idea that , particularly for students of color. 

The Beyond100K Foundational Math CoLaboratory, composed of partners from across the STEM learning ecosystem, has developed a of joyful mathematical resources and activities for educators and families to use in making math joyful for their students.

One Beyond100Kpartner, employs a student-belonging-centered science teaching approach in their Bay Area Scientists Inspiring Students program, where scientist and engineer role models bring real-world connections, diversity, and inquiry-based learning into school environments. Teachers observed that students who engaged with these career scientists demonstrated skills above their typical classroom level.

Eliminating Systemic Barriers in High School

Creating a greater sense of belonging is one way to encourage teens to enter STEM. But our young people 鈥� and our creativity 鈥� are also trapped by a structural problem. The American education system, as we know it today, was built around the Carnegie Unit, or 鈥渃redit hour,鈥� a concept developed in 1906 that defines the amount of time a student needs to devote to learning a subject and earning a degree. 

The Carnegie Unit made sense in its day, bringing order and even a degree of equity to a disconnected system. But that day has passed. There鈥檚 no need to limit math, science, English and other required subjects to 50-minute classes with no relationship to one another or to how learning relates to the world beyond the classroom. The Carnegie Unit as we know it today kills student curiosity, inhibits exploration and keeps educators from looking beyond the walls of their school to their communities and our world. Not to mention that clinging to a system that prioritizes time in the classroom over mastery of a subject is actually contributing to the inequity it was designed to prevent.

We are long overdue for It is time to redefine and re-credentialize what it means to be a high school graduate. It鈥檚 time to develop new ways to teach, learn, measure and recognize student achievement, knowledge and growth. We can and must offer young people more immersive, relevant, hands-on experiences that prepare them for a rapidly changing world. 

That鈥檚 our mission at XQ. When we launched in 2015 with an open call to design a transformational high school, 50,000 people signed up. Today, we鈥檙e working in about 60 schools. We have teamed up with school districts in , and the state of to transform high schools at the system level. Partnership is the common ingredient for these high schools and others like them. They鈥檙e forging ahead with new designs based on feedback from their local communities. They take the best ideas and visions 鈥� from educators, students, parents and other stakeholders 鈥� and turn them into life-changing progress for young people. 

Consider the , which is partnering with the computer engineering firm to offer students in the engineering and multimedia pathways an opportunity to take on industry-based projects and earn stipends for their work. Or the Purdue Polytechnic High Schools in Indiana, which resulted from a partnership between Purdue University, business leaders, the state and Indianapolis city leaders to increase the number of students from underrepresented backgrounds attending Purdue and going into STEM careers. PPHS students work on projects that combine math, science and other topics to solve local problems. PPHS has sent more than twice as many students to Purdue University as the entire Indianapolis Public Schools district, most of whom are students of color.  

These examples are only a small sampling of the national movement to transform high schools. XQ and Beyond100K are just two of many organizations engaged in this essential work. Let鈥檚 do everything in our power to give our high school students the tools, resources and inspiration to make that possible. Ensuring that STEM education in high school is inclusive, relevant, engaging and rigorous will help every learner achieve their dreams 鈥� and ours 鈥� in a changing world that will depend on their ideas.

Want to learn more about how to create innovative high school experiences in STEM and subjects? Check out The XQ Xtra, a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. Sign up .

Interested in how you can commit to ending the STEM teacher shortage? Learn more .

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of 社区黑料.

In a recent robotics shop class the teacher was hard to spot among a sea of students working in small teams designing, coding and tinkering with their mechanical creations. Every student had a role, from shop foreman to time manager to cleanup crew. Allyson Ordonez, an 11th-grader, was a class ambassador, welcoming guests and showing them around the classroom.

鈥淵our normal classes 鈥� English, math, science 鈥� you learn fundamentals, but this class takes those subjects and combines them,鈥� Ordonez said. 鈥淢ath and science make up robotics and we use everything we learn from these normal academic classes and apply them to what we learn here.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Ordonez sounded more like a seasoned engineer than a high school student as she showed off a small drone she was building and described the equipment. 

Edison attracts teens from all over the city thanks to its 13 career tracks 鈥� the most of any New York City public school. Students can earn college credits through a partnership with the City University of New York, take part in internships and work-based learning with companies like Apple and Google, and receive industry certifications. If students pass those industry-recognized exams, they can start working in technical jobs right out of high school 鈥� while also pursuing associate鈥檚 and bachelor鈥檚 degrees.  

In some ways, Edison鈥檚 offerings are similar to other innovative CTE models across the country that are applying the excitement and engagement of career classes to rigorous academics. But Edison is taking that a step further by giving students tremendous power in its redesign. 

Shifting to Career- and College-Readiness

Edison opened in the 1950s as an all-boys trade school. Today, it serves a diverse population of nearly 2,335 students. Principal Moses Ojeda is about as close to an Edison lifer as it gets: he graduated in 1993, later returning as a teacher before becoming an assistant principal and then principal in 2012. He transformed the school from the days of typewriter and copier repair programs to state-of-the-art offerings including robotics, automotive technology, graphic arts and cybersecurity. 

All of this stemmed from Ojeda鈥檚 early days as principal when a student asked him a question that would change the trajectory of Edison鈥檚 teaching.  

鈥淲e know we鈥檙e here for CTE,鈥� Ojeda remembered the student saying. 鈥淏ut why do we need the academics?鈥�

Ojeda asked the student, who was in the automotive track, if he had learned about Pascal鈥檚 law in his physics class. 鈥淎nd the kid was like, 鈥榊eah, I remember that.鈥� I said, 鈥極K, well, that鈥檚 your brake system.鈥� And I went across the room and made a connection to each academic area.鈥�&苍产蝉辫; 

Ojeda then turned to social studies teachers Phil Baker and Danielle Ragavanis to help students see the relevance of academic classes to their careers. 

鈥淔or them, CTE felt useful while academics too often left them wondering, 鈥榃hy are we learning this?鈥�” Baker said.

Ojeda supported Baker and Ragavannis in creating a Research and Development department to engage students in design thinking, including articulating what makes learning meaningful for them. The R&D department has grown to include teachers from every department working with students to figure out how to integrate essential skills into core academic classes. In this way, they鈥檙e applying one of the 鈥檚 crucial for innovative high schools: .

鈥淚n order to take on a project, teachers have to partner with one of the kids,鈥� Ragavanis said. 鈥淪tudents are fully at the table, and they have to be our equals, and in some cases, our bosses.鈥�

Edison was later selected for Imagine NYC 鈥� a dynamic partnership between New York City Public Schools and XQto design innovative, high-quality schools with equity and excellence at their core. Faculty members said brought additional support and resources to scale their ideas for making the academic courses feel as relevant to students as the CTE classes.

Mastering Essential Skills 

Driven by employer demand for 鈥渟oft skills,鈥� Baker and Ragavanis worked with student designers and teachers in the R&D department to establish 鈥渇ive essential skills鈥�: communication, collaboration, giving and receiving feedback, design thinking and professionalism. These skills reflect XQ鈥檚 and now guide the learning objectives in many of Edison鈥檚 academic classes. Research shows these outcomes, or goals, can help students succeed in college, career and life. 

English Language Arts teacher Jason Fischedick, for example, created a student-run community theater, which he called 鈥渢he most ambitious thing I鈥檝e ever tried to do in the classroom.鈥� Apart from selecting the four student directors, Fischedick ceded almost complete control of the process. Students were responsible for hiring a crew, casting actors and organizing and running rehearsals.  

鈥淲e鈥檙e on a time crunch and we need to figure out how to manage that time effectively to ultimately get a good product to show off,鈥� said 12th grader Colin Zaug, one of the student directors.鈥淚t鈥檚 all about teaching independence and preparing students for the real world. I don鈥檛 know how many of these kids will ultimately be actors, but it teaches time management and how to stay on task.鈥澛�

Baker said this is how the R&D department is modernizing Edison. 

鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to make a link between academic classes and CTE classes, and bridge the gap that existed between the two, and make sure that academic classes have a career-centered application to them,鈥� he said.

Baker said ninth graders in the R&D department designed the essential skills rubric for their grade so that regardless of what content classes students take, they all get the same immersion into critical career skills. Student voice is now so integrated into Edison鈥檚 core that teachers work with student designers to plan their units. And he said teachers are becoming comfortable with the language of career-centered learning and essential skills while students appreciate the engagement and develop a new level of confidence. 

Yordani Rodriguez, a 12th-grader, employed the essential skills in a number of leadership positions, from his work on Model UN to serving as editor-in-chief of the school鈥檚 literary magazine. And those are abilities that will serve him long after he leaves Edison. 

鈥淲hen you lead somebody and they look to you, you have to be sharp,鈥� Rodriguez said, noting these skills are always in the back of his mind now. 鈥淚 have to communicate, I have to take feedback and most importantly, I have to be professional.鈥�&苍产蝉辫; 

Rodriguez will be a first-generation college student when he enters Columbia University in the fall. Baker emphasized, however, that the essential skills will serve students wherever they go next. 

鈥淭his is the kind of thing that all of our students should be able to use no matter what they do in college or in a career,鈥� he said. 

Want to learn more about the latest best practices for innovative teaching and learning? Subscribe to the , a newsletter that comes out twice a month for high school teachers.

Making Time for Innovation

The R&D Department鈥檚 work touches students in every grade. Nearly 40% of 9th graders are involved in classes taught by R&D members, with plans to expand. In addition to essential skills, students also participated in using a . Thanks to word of mouth, as well as student showcases to exhibit their work, Baker and Ragavanis have grown their R&D department to include 18 faculty in ELA, math, and science, including new recruit  Fischedick.

鈥淭hey鈥檝e been letting me innovate every year and that鈥檚 why I joined this team because I鈥檓 someone who likes to try new things,鈥� he said. If something doesn鈥檛 work, he added, 鈥淭hat鈥檚 OK. I鈥檝e become more open with my classroom and what I can do in the classroom because I feel supported to do so.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Edison’s lessons are now influencing broader change in New York City high schools. It is an anchor school among the 100-plus city high schools participating in , a bold new vision for career-connected learning. 

Edison students are also applying their essential skills off campus. Once a week, a group of them visit PS 175 in Queens. They lead 10-week cycles for students in kindergarten through 5th grade in more than 25 different courses, from cooking to robotics and Model UN. 

As with the other opportunities at Edison, Baker said students are getting a much deeper understanding of learning and careers by applying the essential skills outside of the classroom.  

鈥淚t鈥檚 been an incredible experience for our students,鈥� Baker said of the teaching opportunity. 鈥淭hey gain so much in terms of professionalism, confidence, and the ability to explain complicated processes to people, which is a really difficult skill.鈥�

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of 社区黑料.

That kind of itinerary would be nearly impossible for Gestel at any traditional high school, which is why she chose to attend A School Without Walls, a first-of-its-kind hybrid program in New York City that blends in-person and remote learning. 

鈥淚 do a lot of other stuff, so I thought it was easier than going to another school and being extremely exhausted and late with work,鈥� Gestel said. 

While hybrid learning might still hold negative connotations for many students and families after years of COVID-19-disrupted schooling, leaders at SWoW say their model reimagines the hybrid structure for a truly student-centered program 鈥� allowing students like Gestel to follow their passions while still mastering rigorous academics. It鈥檚 the first public school to win approval from New York State for a hybrid learning model.

鈥淭he hybrid schedule is really not meant for students who just don鈥檛 want to be in a building every day,鈥� SWoW principal Veronica Coleman said. 鈥淭he goal of the hybrid schedule is for students to have flexibility so that they do real-world learning.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Learning Inside and Outside the Classroom 

SWoW launched in 2022 in partnership with , a nonprofit that supports a network of public schools that incorporate an expeditionary learning model through project-based curricula. It鈥檚 also part of Imagine NYC Schools, a dynamic partnership between New York City Public Schools and the to design innovative, high-quality schools with equity and excellence at their core.   

Through support and funding from New York City Public Schools, XQ and the , SWoW designed its program to emphasize 鈥� one of six research-based XQ . 

Students were deeply involved in shaping the school from the start. SWoW recruited 50 students from other schools across the city during its pilot year to serve as interns and test program ideas, provide feedback on what worked and what didn鈥檛 and help think through the school鈥檚 grading policy (an approach that鈥檚 been gaining momentum nationally, and which is also ). 

In place of traditional letter grades, teachers use narrative reports to guide students in developing seven competencies: collaboration, investigation, interdisciplinary connection, analysis, design, communication and reflection. Students receive quarterly progress reports and reflect on their learning through student-led conferences that occur twice yearly.   

鈥淲e鈥檝e really tried to amplify student voice and choice,鈥� Coleman said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the piece for us that feels like the focus and all of the other pieces fit into that being the center of what we鈥檙e really trying to do.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Students learn in person at the Lower Manhattan campus two to three days a week. The rest of the time is a mix of synchronous and asynchronous online learning and real-world learning, including internships, fieldwork and early college coursework through the City University of New York. 

Every Friday, students and staff also meet in an auditorium to discuss what鈥檚 going well and share their wants and needs, from designing new clubs to giving input on school-wide policies and procedures. 

鈥淲hat I like about this school is that you can really communicate with them,鈥� Gestel said. 鈥淚f I鈥檓 feeling really stressed or overworked, they help me balance it out and help me organize.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

SWoW borrowed many of its principles from NYC Outward Bound Schools and expanded them within its model. These include 鈥淐rew,鈥� an advisory and community-building time with teams made up of a dozen or so students and an adult. At SWoW, however, Crew is more than an advisory period. It鈥檚 also where students earn their humanities credits by working on their passion projects 鈥� student-led and student-designed research projects that are the core of the SWoW curriculum.  

Passion-Driven Projects 

Students select a passion project based on a topic that is meaningful to them and their communities. is another . Working with their advisor, each pupil creates an individualized learning plan, setting project goals that align with New York State curriculum standards.  

In 9th grade, students research a service learning project that can address a broad range of issues, from youth homelessness to the environmental impact of illegal fireworks in New York City. In 10th grade, each student starts a passion project in earnest, formulating a research question through reading materials and interviews with experts in the field, culminating with an internship in the spring to put their learning to the test in the real world. All students will take on full-fledged independent projects by 12th grade and find an internship. 

鈥淭he goal is to build that agency and independence while the students are exploring something they are passionate about,鈥� Coleman explained.

For her passion project, 10th grader Gestel is exploring the lack of representation of different body types and skin tones in ballet and how to create a more inclusive dance community. Another 10th grader, Lily Paraponiaris, is researching film restoration and preservation. 

SWoW uses a case study framework to model for students what good research looks like. For example, in January they explored a unit on the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the country鈥檚 history of cobalt mining. In addition to earning their humanities credits, students also figure out the ingredients of high-quality research to apply to their own passion projects. 

Some students will devote much of their time at SWoW to their passion projects, diving deeply into a topic while exploring it from different angles and applying that knowledge through real-world learning in an internship. But some teens may take longer to land on a subject that is truly meaningful for them, and Coleman said SWoW makes sure that flexibility is built into the curriculum. 

 鈥淭he idea is that you go through that cycle of making and doing and reflecting, and that reflection can lead you to say, 鈥業鈥檓 done with this topic,鈥� which is totally normal for a teenager,鈥� she explained. 鈥淥r you can continue, but you continue in a way that requires a new avenue of research.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Throughout their projects, students get regular opportunities to present their work to an audience, including an end-of-year presentation of learning, a resource fair where students have the chance to network with potential internship mentors and summer employers, and a mid-year presentation called roundtables where students share their passion projects with outside guests, sharpening not only their research questions but also their public speaking skills. At a roundtable in early 2024, one student gave a presentation exploring the rising cost of public transit fares while another investigated the fashion industry’s environmental impact. 

Want to learn more about how to inspire high school students with the latest best practices for teaching and learning? Subscribe to the , a newsletter that comes out twice a month for high school teachers.

Hybrid Learning Post-Pandemic

SWoW鈥檚 launch hasn鈥檛 been without bumps along the way 鈥� in part because another completely virtual program opened at the same time, causing confusion for students and parents. That program has since been renamed, but figuring out whether hybrid or fully virtual is best for individual students is still a question for families.   

Ava Smith, who is in her first year at SWoW, said she likes learning online, but ultimately, the school is not for her. 

鈥淚 just think I like traditional school more,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 like the schedule. I feel like here it鈥檚 very mishmashed, and here every day is different.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

The school has its own saying: SWoW is for anyone but not for everyone. 

鈥淚 think it鈥檚 been a struggle for us to find the right matches,鈥� Coleman said. 鈥淎nd I think it鈥檚 going to take a few more years for that to really settle, for people to really know what they are getting when they come to A School Without Walls and a sense that this is right for me and for my child.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

While some students like Smith might end up missing the traditional school environment, overall, SW0W students seem happy with the experience. Out of the 60 original 9th graders who started in 2022, 50 returned for year two, with 35 new students joining in 10th grade. 

Coleman said those numbers, and what she hears from the students, prove this new kind of high school is needed 鈥� not only because of its small community, flexibility and the safe space it offers. 

“Their families are saying their student was at a big high school and experiencing anxiety,鈥� she noted. 鈥淎nd they like this model because of the individualization.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of 社区黑料.

But they can鈥檛 succeed if they aren鈥檛 treated like part of a greater community. This is why believes high schools deserve more attention and support to fully prepare every student for college, career or whatever comes next. Since 2017, we鈥檝e been working with dozens of schools and systems around the country to help high schools and their communities design learning experiences more suited to the 21st century 鈥� for example, by encouraging partnerships with local organizations so young people can see how their academics show up in real life. 

That鈥檚 how classes work at , the subject of a new documentary. 鈥�,鈥� directed by Lee Hirsch (of 鈥淏ully鈥�), follows students from ninth grade to graduation at this innovative Memphis public high school as they figure out how to sustain life on Mars and interview refugees for an interdisciplinary project combining history and English. 

Community partnerships are among six research-backed XQ developed for high schools to create engaging and rigorous learning opportunities. Like the , which we also introduced, these design principles were originally created for educators and communities involved in building or redesigning a school. But they are also very useful for parents and students who want to better understand whether their local high school is serving students as well as it can. Below are some questions to ask when visiting a school.

Educators interested in a detailed approach to the Design Principles can download c, a tool designed to gather and assess evidence about where they are on their journey to becoming the best high school they can be.

1. Are there high expectations and equal opportunities for all students, regardless of income level, race, ethnic group and special needs? Do the AP and honors classes resemble a cross-section of the community? 

These are signs of a , a set of unifying values and principles that give a school a sense of common purpose and a fundamental belief in the potential of every student to achieve great things. in Tennessee, for example, is committed to making students feel invested in their community. That investment shone through when one sociology class solved a murder, now the subject of a podcast series. When visiting a high school, it鈥檚 also worth checking whether there are opportunities for dual enrollment in postsecondary courses, which can benefit all students.

2. Does the school use an interdisciplinary curriculum 鈥� do teachers combine subjects like math, science, English and electives? Can students and teachers dive deep into topics with project-based learning?

These are examples of Research tells us that young people learn through the combination of what they encounter as learners, through curriculum, relationships, challenges and supports; what they do as learners, through their active commitment in producing and persevering; and how they make meaning of those experiences. Our schools can offer much more powerful ways of learning. For example, students built a hydroponic system through a science project at Purdue Polytechnic High School in Indiana. They conducted extensive research as they designed and constructed a method for growing produce sustainably and cost-effectively.聽

3. Does the school ensure all students have at least one adult who knows them well enough to provide academic and social support? Is there a system in place that helps students connect and check in with the adults so they feel safe, valued and seen?

Those are hallmarks of . The science of adolescent learning shows that learning is a social process, particularly during the high school years, and this aspect 鈥� when intentionally addressed 鈥� can result in a transformative high school experience. Schools that emphasize getting to know students, inside and beyond the school walls, set a foundation for trust that carries over into academic work. At in Oakland, California, co-founder Christian Martinez takes pride in building a place where the goal is to never let a teen slip through the cracks like he did at their age. During the college process, for example, staff guide and support students at every step, from having highly personal conversations about their choices to ensuring that they submit their applications on time.聽

Want to learn how to create innovative high school experiences like those at Crosstown High? Check out The XQ Xtra, a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month.聽.

4. Does the high school support students to build their sense of agency and autonomy, and explore postsecondary goals?

Schools need to provide A student-centered school gives students a say in their learning. They can choose projects and topics and decide whether to present their knowledge as a research paper, slide show or even a documentary or podcast. Staff members should foster this environment, not feel threatened. The D.C. Public Schools recently published a booklet . It argues that student engagement is crucial when communities come together to redesign local high schools, as in thepartnership, because students have higher attendance and learning outcomes when they鈥檙e treated as partners in their own education.

5. Is the school partnering with local entities such as cultural institutions, businesses, nonprofit organizations, colleges and universities and health and service providers? 

These can take many forms. But at their heart, these powerful relationships create opportunities for learners to explore and envision their future and set goals toward making it real. At Florida鈥檚 in Seminole County Public Schools, students have numerous opportunities to work with outside organizations and leave the campus. Some of that activity slowed down during the pandemic 鈥� especially for those who are now seniors. 

Members of the class of 2024 wanted more outside experiences before graduating. They devised a plan: a trip later this spring to New Smyrna Beach, more than an hour away. But it鈥檚 not just a day at the beach, said one of the organizers, Daniella Mu帽oz. The students researched local nonprofits and got excited about . They鈥檙e planning a visit that includes a talk with an expert because it鈥檚 important 鈥渢o hear from someone who isn鈥檛 a teacher鈥� about 鈥渁 real-world problem,鈥� Mu帽oz said. They also plan to clean the beach, using gloves and other supplies provided by the environmental group.

6. Does the school review, reflect on and make decisions based on data that ensure inclusion and access to advanced courses? Does it use data to eliminate disproportionate remediation, disciplinary practices and other inequities?

Data is just one aspect of a high school that makes . Another example is breaking away from the traditional schedule of six or seven single-subject periods, each about 50 minutes long. 

The has an agreement with its district so students and teachers can easily visit local nonprofit groups and businesses and take classes at other schools and colleges. Junior Kate Ruel says she鈥檚 getting science credit this year for taking culinary courses at Kent Career and Tech Center. She also enjoyed visiting Dwelling Place, which provides support services and affordable housing, during a ninth-grade project on English, history, social studies, and science. 

鈥淚 found it really interesting and cool,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 was able to go out and talk to people.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Surveys show students at GRPMS feel connected to their learning, and they’re doing better than their counterparts in the state and city on many measures.

This flexibility is why we argue high schools need a new 鈥渁rchitecture鈥� for learning without the Carnegie Unit, a century-old system that equates time with learning. When students and teachers are freed from earning credits based on seat time in single-subject classes, they can see how academic content is connected to the world around them and gain a fuller appreciation of what they鈥檙e learning. These experiences are important for teens in so many ways beyond school. Today鈥檚 high school students are the leaders, workers, doctors, inventors and teachers of tomorrow.

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of 社区黑料.

Rachel isn鈥檛 the only one challenged by this and other projects at Crosstown High. In the film, we see a teacher stumped by a student鈥檚 idea for making a hologram as well as candid conversations about the relevance of an interdisciplinary math and science project exploring how to sustain life on Mars.

This student-led, creative approach to teaching and learning is the goal at Crosstown High 鈥� a public high school built by parents, educators, teens and community members in Memphis as part of the Super School Challenge in 2015. This challenge spurred communities to create innovative high schools, by building new ones and redesigning existing models, that depart from the rigid, century-old model that鈥檚 no longer suited to today鈥檚 learners. 

As part of the challenge, dozens of community members came together and gathered input from more than 200 students to design and open Crosstown High. They wanted to create a school that would engage students in real-world, motivating projects that would make a difference and reflect the diversity of their historically-segregated city with equitable learning opportunities for all.

Years in the making, 鈥淭he First Class鈥� follows the founding cohort of students and educators from ninth grade to the triumph of their graduation 鈥� and all the challenges in between. Directed by award-winning documentary maker Lee Hirsch (of 鈥淏ully鈥�), we see learning in a way that鈥檚 rarely captured on film. No single principal or teacher is the sole superhero who 鈥渟aves鈥� the students. Instead, we see learning as it really happens: through ideas, collaboration, committed educators who genuinely care about students and 鈥渁ha鈥� moments.

As we watch the students and teachers at Crosstown High work through the school鈥檚 growing pains in the film, we see them taking obvious delight in their progress and personal growth.  鈥淭he First Class鈥� shows what鈥檚 possible when we put our heads together to create a new type of high school. Crosstown High鈥檚 journey will inspire educators and communities everywhere to look at the challenges facing students in their own high schools and start the conversation about how they, too, can rethink learning for teachers and students. 

XQ Institute is proud of Crosstown High鈥檚 story, and the incredible progress this community made since responding to our challenge almost a decade ago. We鈥檙e thrilled to provide this exciting documentary and related materials free of charge for educators, families, students, policymakers and other community members. Find everything you need to be among the first to , , and get inspired to rethink high school at .  

Want to learn how to create innovative high school experiences like those at Crosstown High? Check out The XQ Xtra, a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of 社区黑料.

One of the first self-directed learning centers for homeschoolers, or what today we might call a microschool, opened just outside of Philadelphia in 1978. has grown and flourished over the past four decades and inspired the creation in 2016 of , a microschool in the Germantown section of Philadelphia that embraces non-coercive, self-directed education for homeschoolers of all ages who attend the center several days a week. 

When I visited Natural Creativity in the winter of 2018, it had about 20 learners in a bright but cramped section of a local church. Now, Natural Creativity has 50 learners ages 4 to 18 in a large, loft-style building a few blocks away from its previous location. Krystal Dillard joined Natural Creativity as co-director in 2020 after seeing a about the center and its embrace of unschooling and self-directed education principles. 鈥淚 have a Master鈥檚 degree in education and never heard about this idea,鈥� said Dillard, who taught in public schools in Fairfax County, Virginia and in an inner-city charter school in Los Angeles before moving to Philadelphia and working as a literacy coach in the Philadelphia Public Schools. 鈥淭here was so much violence and trauma in the schools here,鈥� said Dillard, who began to feel that education could and should look different. When she discovered Natural Creativity, it showed her what was possible. 

The story was similar for David O鈥機onnor. He was teaching theater courses at the University of Pennsylvania when he and a group of parents learned about (ALCs), a global network of microschools and self-directed learning communities. The parents had been inspired by the educational philosophy of the , a Sudbury-model school that opened in 2011, but they gravitated to the tools and practices of the ALC approach. The group launched in 2018 with 20 learners in a church basement. 

Today, 50 learners of all ages learn together in a spacious building in Philadelphia鈥檚 Bella Vista neighborhood, with a second location at the Awbury Arboretum. 

鈥淲hat shocked me the most at the university level was how much my students had to unlearn in order to have the curiosity again to learn new things,鈥� said Philly ALC staff member, Jessie Dern-Sisco, who taught college students at Villanova University for several years during and after receiving a Ph.D. in philosophy there. 鈥淗ere, we don鈥檛 have that problem.鈥�

鈥淎 lot more families are looking for something like this,鈥� added O鈥機onnor, who explained that about 16 of the current learners attend Philly ALC as full-time recognized private school students, while the rest attend part-time as homeschoolers several days a week. Tuition is pay-what-you-can and accessibility is a key priority. O鈥機onnor said the average family is paying about $7,000 per learner, with the maximum annual tuition at $11,000. Fundraising and philanthropy, such as the microgrant Philly ALC and other local microschools received from the , help to make these programs even more affordable to more families鈥攅specially in a state like Pennsylvania that has minimal education choice policies. 
It was a VELA grant that helped Lauren Umlauf and Hannah Mackay to grow their program, build community, and begin to find ways to help other prospective founders launch similar spaces in their own neighborhoods. Previously part of the Philly ALC community, Mackay and Umlauf spun-off their self-directed learning center, , in a separate neighborhood where they now serve 18 learners ages 5 to 12, with plans to create a teen program. Both former public school teachers, Mackay and Umlauf wanted a radically different approach to teaching and learning for their own children and others in their community. They piloted their program outside in a public park in 2021 and opened the doors to their dedicated space in a bright and colorful building in South Philly in fall 2023. In addition to The Dandelion Project鈥檚 three-day program for homeschoolers, it also offers afterschool programming and vacation and summer camps for local youth.

Beyond Self-Directed Education

While the City of Brotherly Love has seen escalating interest in low-cost, self-directed learning models like those described above, I was particularly pleased to see the growth of other alternative education models that embrace different learning philosophies while placing children first. A diverse, dynamic ecosystem of decentralized education options enables families to find the learning environment that best meets their distinct needs and preferences.

Some of that growth has occurred as a result of the pandemic response and prolonged remote schooling that led parents to consider 鈥� or create 鈥� new educational options. That was how came to be. A local mother of four children began offering a space in her home for local families who removed their children from school in 2020. That evolved into an established non-profit learning cooperative that centers the experience of Black and Brown homeschooling families. Since fall 2023, learners meet up to four days a week in a warm, welcoming storefront location, tucked along a quiet, brick street in Germantown. 

鈥淭he model of traditional schooling doesn鈥檛 fit with kids鈥� desire to move and have a voice in their day and in their learning,鈥� said Jasmine Miller, a mother of three who helps to lead Koku-Roko. Miller was drawn to homeschooling but wanted something more collaborative. As a learning center for homeschoolers with hired educators, Koku-Roko enables Miller and the other founding parents to continue to work as full-time professionals, while taking turns being on-site to help steward their center, which emphasizes family-focused, child-led, project-based learning.

Miller explained that Koku-Roko鈥檚 founding parents actively sought a location for their co-op in the largely African American Germantown neighborhood in order to be closest to the families they serve. That was the same catalyst for Imani Jackson and Kareem Rogers, two educators currently working in a traditional private school in Philadelphia who are opening Poinciana Montessori this fall in Germantown. Part of the fast-growing microschool network that emphasizes affordability, equity, and an inclusive, culturally-responsive learning environment, Poinciana will be the second Wildflower elementary microschool in the city, following in the footsteps of Hyacinth Montessori that launched in West Philadelphia in fall 2022.

Philadelphia resident Sunny Greenberg works for the Wildflower network helping to support new and prospective microschool founders. She sees rising interest in microschooling, both in her city and nationwide. 鈥淢icroschools like Wildflower can meet children where they are more quickly and pivot when necessary,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ecause of their size, it is easier to build community and the sense of belonging that can be missing in larger school settings.鈥�

It’s breathtaking to witness the expansion of affordable, learner-centered education options in Philadelphia in just six years. Not only have the microschools I visited in 2018 grown in size and space, they have helped to lay a foundation for education innovation throughout the city. 

As Madeleine Nutting, co-founder of Hyacinth Montessori, told me: 鈥淭he school I wanted to teach at didn鈥檛 exist.鈥� Like so many other entrepreneurial parents and teachers in Philadelphia and beyond, she built what she couldn鈥檛 find.

High schools are essential to preparing young people for these challenges, regardless of whether their future includes college, career or a combination of postsecondary plans. But how can families and students understand how any individual high school approaches learning?

While districts and states provide a variety of data points, many agree these metrics don鈥檛 paint a complete picture and don鈥檛 necessarily mean students are well-prepared for postsecondary life. Helping all students reach their full potential requires passionate and inspired teaching and meaningful learning experiences that encourage them to think critically. Schools should also empower teachers as professionals. 

When those ingredients are combined, the sky鈥檚 the limit. As just one example, Alex Campbell鈥�s sociology students at in Tennessee solved a cold case with (and became the subject of the true-crime podcast series 鈥溾��). All high school teachers can tap into students鈥� natural curiosities in exciting ways that connect with the world around them 鈥� and prepare them for their lives beyond graduation. 

identified research-backed or goals, that recognize the full range of knowledge, skills, habits and mindsets students need to be successful in life. The framework guides educators to transform teaching and learning. They鈥檙e also helpful for families looking for ways to determine if a particular high school fully prepares all students for the future. 

Here are five things parents should look for in their kids鈥� classrooms to ensure they鈥檙e ready for the world.

1. Are students learning to be literate in the fullest sense? Do they know how to read information, understand it and apply meaning to it 鈥� with language, numbers, digital content and other subjects?

This is where the XQ goal, 鈥溾�� comes in. In addition to required subjects, such as English and math, students should learn how to interpret and use data, which is increasingly essential in many fields beyond the sciences. For example, at , one student 鈥嬧�媘ade a documentary about 鈥渇ood deserts鈥� 鈥� neighborhoods where residents have limited access to nutritious foods.

2. Can students think in ways that apply art, literacy, science, history, economics, math and STEM 鈥� and connect these disciplines?

This relates to 鈥�.鈥� The goal is to foster curious young people who are knowledgeable about the world: its history, culture, sciences and underlying mathematics, biology and cultural currency. They鈥檙e engaged participants vital to creating a more just and functional democracy.

3. Are students given opportunities to think creatively about subjects they’re passionate about? Can they also explore their interests in the 鈥渞eal world鈥� through internships or partnerships with local businesses and community organizations, so they can think about future professions? 

Students must be taught to be 鈥溾�� In our information age, students must learn to become sense-makers who can deal with conflicting knowledge and abundant data points. How do they know if something was generated by artificial intelligence? They also need to adapt to changing situations. For example, with XQ鈥檚 help, are redesigning existing schools with new approaches, like having students build their own businesses and applying the U.N.鈥檚 Sustainable Development Goals. 

4. Does the school foster collaborators who value the expertise of others? Are there group projects where students learn to be co-creators in what they bring and how they show up?

Successful high schools cultivate 鈥�,鈥� self-aware team members who bring their strengths to support others. At , students responded to a devastating storm that hit the Cedar Rapids region and destroyed up to 70% of the local tree canopy. Students contracted with local chainsaw artists to turn fallen wood into sculptures and used the funds to 鈥渞e-leaf鈥� the damaged tree canopy. 

5. Do students understand their own strengths and areas for growth? Is there an opportunity for them to reflect on their learning?

We want to ensure that schools are nurturing 鈥�.鈥� Any high school鈥檚 role is to foster a love for learning and the ability to keep learning. Students must become self-driven, self-directed, curious learners 鈥� about themselves and the world. Many great high schools have capstone projects where students present what they鈥檝e learned and then celebrate their growth and achievements. At student presentations showcase the projects and issues they鈥檙e passionate about, including climate change, immigration and gun violence.

Preparing students for the future is no easy feat when so many industries, from STEM to manufacturing and media, are in a constant state of flux. But with a nimble approach to learning and foundational knowledge, high schools can help their students feel equipped to succeed on whatever paths they choose. Next month, we鈥檒l give more tips for looking at what a high school鈥檚 design says about how students learn.

Want to learn more about innovative ways of reaching high school students? Subscribe to the a newsletter that comes out twice a month for high school teachers.

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of 社区黑料.

The American high school is broken. The pandemic underscored just how broken. American teens are鈥攁s a September 2023 Gallup poll shows鈥攄isengaged, stressed, and questioning the value of high school and college. At the same time, they are hungry to make a difference in the world and to use new technologies and ideas toward that end. 

In 2013, Ted Sizer wrote a book called The New American High School. Large national foundations invested in smaller, more personalized high schools. The pandemic made clear it鈥檚 past time to finally remake high school, but with an eye toward the future. 

Rather than seek to provide a comprehensive set of learning experiences under one roof, the new American high school would connect students to meaningful work in their communities and to expert knowledge around the globe.

Rather than dumb down concepts or activities to make them easier for teenagers, it would support young people to do meaningful work that makes real contributions and leads to credentials that hold weight in the adult world.

Rather than sort students into tracks or marshaling all of them toward a single objective, it would provide every student adult guidance and technological support to understand their own conception of a good life, and provide them with the support, connections, knowledge, and skills to pursue that life鈥攁nd to change course where necessary. 

Rather than focus on a centuries-old curriculum and memorization, it would recognize the transformative forces of AI technology, climate change, and geopolitics and prepare students to thrive, collaborate, and innovate in a rapidly changing world. Yes, students would still study Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Newton, but in a more relevant, contemporary context. 

Arizona State University鈥檚 Michael Crow conceived something similar for the postsecondary world鈥攖he New American University. These institutions would be designed for access rather than exclusivity, and would develop knowledge that could improve student鈥檚 communities and address global challenges. 

New career and technical education (CTE) programs popping up across the country provide a great starting point. They鈥檙e building tighter integrations between high school and postsecondary education, delivering industry-recognized credentials on the way to graduation, resourcing students through college via learn-and-earn programs, and developing students鈥� social capital to strengthen their support circles and professional networks. 

Seamless and permeable pathways

It is key that the New American High School does not place students into tracks or find them in dead-ends. Instead of 鈥渢racks,鈥� there should be a seamless and permeable set of pathways between high school, college, and career. 

To provide a few examples:

• Colorado鈥檚 Homegrown Talent Initiative is a grant-funded program designed to help rural districts create career-relevant learning experiences aligned to the needs and aspirations of their local economies. Participating districts have redefined student graduation requirements, designed new courses, integrated career exploration into existing classes, and created new learning opportunities via internships with local industry and dual enrollment in local higher education institutions. 

• Seckinger High School in Gwinnett County, Georgia, is the district鈥檚 first artificial intelligence themed high school and is part of a broader district vision to foster excellence and a sense of belonging in every school. Once the school opens, students will receive a college preparatory curriculum that is taught through the lens of artificial intelligence. Students will also be able to pursue an education in developing artificial intelligence. 

• Indiana鈥檚 Purdue Polytechnic High School is a public charter school network designed to prepare students for careers in the STEM fields. The school implements hands-on and project-based learning, industry and higher ed partnerships, and a flexible and personalized approach. Students leave high school with college credit, in-demand industry credentials, as well as preferred admission to nine out of the 10 colleges at Purdue University. 

• Another Indiana charter school, GEO Academies, offers a College Immersion Program, a hyper personalized dual enrollment program where high school students take college classes on the college campus of their choice beginning as early as the ninth grade. GEO pays for everything and provides the academic, social, and emotional supports so that kids learn real-life skills and grow the confidence necessary to earn college degrees鈥攁nd a path to escaping poverty鈥攂efore they graduate from high school. When they are on the high school campus, GEO students can engage in direct, teacher-led instruction, independent learning and practice, and teacher-assisted small group instruction. 

• At the state level, Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Louisiana, and Virginia are moving toward more coherent state-wide career pathways, using federal funds and industry partnerships to create a more permeable path between high school, college, and career. (Colorado Governor Jared Polis and Virginia Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera elaborate on their states鈥� work in essays on pages 76 and 39, respectively.)

There is plenty of evidence that the current American high school is outdated and irrelevant. The best source of data is coming from students themselves. Adolescents report feeling isolated, bored, and disengaged in school. In this volume, we report plenty of evidence that they are calling for change and they are voting with their feet by failing to attend school or dropping out to get a job in larger numbers than ever. 

Despite the very obvious need to update and refresh secondary education, high schools are notoriously resistant to change. Shifting existing curriculum, coursework, instructional strategies, counseling, industry partnerships, and teacher expertise are all onerous prospects. What鈥檚 more, the old model of high school is hard-wired: core graduation course requirements are geared toward a 鈥渃ollege for all鈥� mentality. Do students intent on pursuing a career in music, for instance, really need to take calculus? Schedules do not easily shift to accommodate a student who must leave during the day for an apprenticeship. If a student wants to take an online pre engineering course in place of a course offered by their high school, they must pay for it themselves. 

Much of schools鈥� inability to change stems from outdated state policy. State teacher licensing laws often prevent would-be teachers with industry expertise from teaching credit-earning classes. State graduation requirements often do not allow students to count industry credentials toward graduation. Funding models are outdated and assume high school students will receive all of their education in one building. 

A New National Initiative

To overcome these and many other barriers, we need a new national initiative for the New American High School. We need more states to follow the lead of vanguard states such as Colorado and Virginia鈥攁nd for these states to continue to push for lasting changes to the core aims and structures of their schools. 

The growing movement to add or update career and technical education is a good start, but ultimately, career focus needs to grow rapidly from small, peripheral programs to a widespread, core element of all secondary education. 

As the other essays in this report suggest, we need to start thinking, talking, and acting bigger. Career preparation in high school is essential for every student. At the very least, students should leave high school with a guarantee that they have mastered the core skills the business and nonprofit sectors say they will need for the middle-class jobs of the future.

We can do this, but the business community, philanthropies, governors, and state school chiefs must lead. Here are some first steps that could make a real difference:

• Create a national council on the New American High School to set national goals and guide federal and state funding strategies 
• Support more state- and district-level initiatives for business-education partnerships like Colorado, Louisiana, and Virginia have done 
• Incentivize every state to collect data across states on long-term outcomes like Indiana has done
• Build a global network of schools and school districts that are committed to the New American High School
• Create a national research center on the New American High School to amass evidence on innovations, best practices, and policies to support schools and states that want to re-tool their high schools 

Tinkering around the edges of American high schools won鈥檛 ensure that every student graduates on a viable pathway to a family-sustaining career. We don鈥檛 need to remake career and technical education鈥攚e need to remake high school. 

Skeptics will understandably ask: how is this possible when school systems are struggling just to keep their heads above water, grappling with record levels of mental health and behavior challenges and declining achievement? 

My response to the skeptics: high schools across the country began this transformation before or even during the pandemic. They did so because they know there is no alternative but to shift toward the future. They know they must catch kids up, but they also know that the best way to do so is to engage them in deep, meaningful, and relevant ways. With the right help from the federal government, states, businesses, and philanthropies, this is doable. 

But the first step on any road to recovery is to admit that there鈥檚 a problem. Given the reality of the past few years, can anyone really argue that the American high school has not reached its bottom?

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

The researchers found these schools, five out of six with high numbers of students of color and those on free and reduced-price lunch, asking how to offer students multiple pathways to postsecondary success, beyond just college, without lowering academic rigor or expectations. Chosen because they had a track record of innovation, the schools were questioning whether the accommodations given to students during the throes of remote learning or right after the return to in-person instruction were still serving them well.

In doing so, they are expanding their visions of success and reimagining their purpose, a move which researchers note could mark a departure from past understandings of schooling. They titled their study 鈥淎 鈥楪ood Life鈥� for Every Student.鈥�

鈥淲e saw high schools starting to adjust the goal posts, where they were taking on more responsibility for student success in the long run,鈥� said Chelsea Waite, senior researcher at the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University.

Between April 2022 and November 2023, Waite and her partner, Maddy Sims, from Columbia University鈥檚 Center for Public Research and Leadership, did 266 interviews with current high school students, graduates, parents, teachers and school administrators. Of the six schools, including some in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, four were traditional public and two were charter schools. 

Two were alternative programs for students who are overage and undercredited, pregnant or parenting or have a history of chronic absenteeism. These students, administrators said, would have once been considered a success if they just reached graduation. Three other schools were focused on increasing access to Advanced Placement and other rigorous academic courses and to “Early College Experience” offerings.

Participating students and families identified three major priorities for post-high school futures: happiness, fulfillment and stability. For some, this included college. For others, it meant immediately entering the workforce. The concept of a 鈥渉appy life鈥� included financial security, but no one interviewed said salary was the main determinant of success.

These schools were not just trying to get students across the finish line to graduation and then directly to college, Waite said. Instead they were asking 鈥淲hat are students鈥� individualized understandings of who they want to be as adults and what they want to be in the world?鈥� And 鈥淗ow can we set them up with a corresponding, individualized plan that can help them on that path to a good life?鈥�

Each of the six schools prioritized students graduating with a 鈥済ood plan鈥� in place, but educators also acknowledged that 鈥渢here really hadn’t been full alignment on what constitutes or what defines a 鈥榞ood plan鈥� in practice,鈥� said Sims.

Looking to provide roadmaps for other high schools, researchers asked what success means to school communities, especially for students who have been historically marginalized; what solutions schools were exploring to help all students achieve; and what obstacles they were facing in this attempt. 

Challenges they observed across schools:

• Educators鈥� concerns that increasing flexibility could decrease rigor
• Desire to give students room to define their own paths to success without perpetuating historical 鈥渙pportunity gaps鈥�
• Overreliance on traditional data (such as test scores or graduation rates), despite recognizing that these are insufficient to meaningfully track success

 Examples of innovations they observed schools introducing to ensure students were academically engaged and supported:

• Shifts to interdisciplinary units and coursework. For example, in one school students were learning about marketing, social science, financial literacy and ratios in a multi-week course on the loan industry. One administrator said, 鈥淚 think we can do a much better job of trapping kids in the honey of each content area. To be a writer is such a powerful thing. To be a scientist is such a powerful thing.鈥�
• AP courses and 鈥淓arly College Experience鈥� courses, which partner with local colleges and universities
• Shift in grading towards 鈥済rading for equity鈥� practices that focus on measuring what students know rather than how they behave
• Moving toward using the classroom as a space of exploration of identity and student-driven learning. One school allowed students to build credit-bearing 鈥減ersonalized learning experiences,鈥� essentially independent studies with an advisor
• Individualized mentoring and counseling. For example, two schools used a 鈥減rimary person鈥� model, in which each student has one adult mentor who they check in with regularly 
• Alternative approaches to discipline, such as 鈥渞estorative circles,鈥� which they defined as 鈥渃onversations intended to repair relationships and find mutually-agreeable solutions, after a behavioral incident or conflict鈥�

鈥淲e did feel ourselves really compelled to illustrate how many different actions鈥� taken by different people at different levels of the system鈥� are necessary to support high schools systemically to be the kinds of places that set students up for a life of their own choosing,鈥� said Waite.

While most of the schools started this transformational work before 2020, the pandemic provided a unique opportunity to study high school reform, according to the researchers. These challenging few years 鈥渟trengthened educators鈥� dedication to achieving new designs for high school,鈥� while increasing their focus on race, racism and equity.

Waite and Sims noticed that educators and administrators across the board were reflecting on how to provide students with flexibility and support without compromising rigor and high expectations. As teachers welcomed students back from remote learning, they needed to prioritize creating a supportive environment to see young people through a disruptive, traumatizing period. But now they鈥檙e questioning what comes next.

In discussing leniency during the pandemic, one teacher said, 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 teach coping mechanisms, we just protected [students].鈥� Teacher turnover and burnout also made it hard to hold students accountable. At two of the schools studied, the teaching staff was so new that they didn鈥檛 know what the classrooms looked like before COVID hit.

As for 鈥渃ollege for all,鈥� the researchers found a number of reasons some students are moving away from that mindset, including financial stress and risk, burnout, high-stakes testing and applications, and an understanding that there are an increasing number of jobs that don鈥檛 require a college degree. Schools wanted to ensure that college doesn鈥檛 become a privilege for a select group of students, while also communicating that a wider variety of options exist. 

High schools alone cannot be held wholly responsible to address all of the challenges presented in the report, the researchers said. 鈥淚nstead, what we really observed is the incredible power of bridge building between high schools and the higher education sector, as well as between high schools and local employers.鈥�

Waite acknowledged the study’s limitations, noting that these six schools don鈥檛 necessarily represent the entire country or even the Northeast. 鈥淲hat we do believe is that the themes and ideas and challenges that came through in the research 鈥� are really widespread and challenging issues that feel relevant to many different kinds of high schools.”

I鈥檝e always believed that education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet for life success. A quality education leads to greater personal earnings, better health outcomes, a stronger economy, and lower community crime rates, among many other benefits. For example, bachelor鈥檚 and associate degree holders take home median weekly earnings of $1,334 and $963, respectively, compared to $809 for their peers with only a high school degree, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But as the global economy rapidly evolves, we must rethink the way we educate students and our workforce. A fragmented approach鈥攚here high schools, postsecondary institutions, and employers all work in their own silos鈥� shortchanges everyone.

We need to create more seamless pathways from school to careers. In Colorado, for example, 91.4% of jobs that can support a family of three require postsecondary education or some form of training or certification in high school beyond diploma requirements. Conventional four-year degrees alone cannot solve this problem, as more and more jobs value skills over a formal college diploma.

Blurring the Lines

In Colorado, we refer to breaking down silos as 鈥渂lurring.鈥� Advanced degrees and credentials are now table stakes to participate in the modern economy, but accessing them usually requires students to persist through four years of high school work that often doesn鈥檛 feel relevant to their futures. Then they proceed to postsecondary programs where they must take on debt, pay tuition, or forgo work while they pursue credentials. Blurring can make high school more relevant and credentials more attainable for all students.

While Colorado has seen one of the strongest economic recoveries in the country following the pandemic, employers across our state still struggle to find the right talent for their available jobs. One factor: we have historically asked students to make choices about their careers after leaving high school, often without the appropriate data needed to identify industry-specific needs or what kind of return on investment a particular pathway will afford.

That鈥檚 why we have been laser-focused on blurring the lines between high school, higher education, and the workforce. Students and young professionals deserve more opportunities to gain skills.
By increasing those opportunities, we can save people time and money, create a better-trained workforce, and better support our businesses.

Today, roughly 53% of high school graduates in Colorado earn college credit or industry credentials through dual and concurrent enrollment while in high school, saving them an estimated $53 million annually on tuition costs. A growing number also participate in apprenticeship and 鈥渓earn while you earn鈥� models.

Innovative intermediaries, such as CareerWise Colorado, are working between education and business to provide youth apprenticeship opportunities in industries such as banking, finance, health care, insurance and advanced manufacturing.

Additionally, Pathways in Technology Early College High School models (PTECH) provide students the opportunity to learn on the job while in high school, earn an associate degree and be first in line for those jobs following graduation.

However, more students can and should be participating in these opportunities. Our vision is that every student will graduate with a diploma in one hand and a certificate, degree, or meaningful job experience in the other.

That鈥檚 why the Colorado Legislature created a task force that brought together partners from schools, postsecondary pathways, and industry. Its mission was to 鈥渄evelop and recommend policies, laws, and rules to support the equitable and sustainable expansion and alignment of programs that integrate secondary, postsecondary, and work-based learning opportunities.鈥�

This past year, the task force identified several impediments to the various pathways available to students: lack of awareness, confusion about program goals, affordability, and inadequate data on outcomes. Schools are already working to better target and maximize their resources, and the task force will present a final report with clear recommendations on how to scale this work by the end of 2023.

A Skills-Based Ecosystem

The four-year degree is still a great choice for many students, but we must also create opportunities for those who choose a different path. That鈥檚 why we are creating a skills-based ecosystem, where people of all ages can get the skills they need to fill jobs that will earn them a good living and support their families.

To lead by example, we implemented skills-based hiring practices for our state workforce, and we expanded apprenticeship opportunities within state government, implementing best practices already in place at many major employers in the state.

Colorado has removed or provided flexibility on degree requirements for most state jobs, such as entry-level positions, project management, IT and supervisory roles, replacing them with the opportunity to show experience and transferable skills. In the private sector, companies such as Google and Slalom Consulting now list degrees as optional for most positions in Colorado.

To ensure all students have access to these various pathways, Colorado has created a zero-cost credential program, making it completely free to pursue a number of healthcare certifications at any of our community and technical colleges. More than 1,000 students have taken advantage of this program, and we are working to expand it to other in- demand industries, such as early childhood and education, law enforcement, fire and forestry, skilled trades and green jobs. We also created a new state scholarship program that will provide eligible students who graduate in 2023-24 with $1,500 each to pursue higher education or postsecondary training.

We have also implemented a series of programs that help ensure our agencies, schools, and industry partners work together to break down silos and integrate our 鈥渂lurring the lines鈥� vision at a statewide level. In recent years, we鈥檝e created other programs that encourage agencies, schools and businesses to collaborate in ways that offer students more opportunities to pursue credits and degrees. Those include expanded state apprenticeships, more scholarships for students in high-needs fields, and an $85 million grant program that helps businesses work with schools to grow their own talent.

All of this work creates a more integrated talent pipeline that serves students, professionals, and businesses alike. Blurring the lines means creating new opportunities, taking a bold new approach to training the workforce of tomorrow, and meeting Coloradans where they are鈥攖o help everyone achieve a successful future in a career that they love.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

Elizabethton is a small city in northeast Tennessee bordering the Appalachian Mountains. In the 1980s, a police task force was called to investigate the killings of several redheaded women whose bodies were found in Tennessee and neighboring states. But the crimes were never solved. Campbell thought revisiting them would make his sociology class more interesting for his students while also putting them on a mission. Elizabethton High School students had been asking for more engaging classes and from to reimagine teaching and learning.聽

Over the course of the semester, the student spoke with professional investigators, gathered evidence, and pieced together a nearly 40-year-old mystery to identify the killer responsible for at least six murders of redheaded white women. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigations has agreed with the students鈥� theory, but no charges have yet been filed against the suspect.

Now, their dogged classwork is the subject of the iHeartRadio true crime podcast series 鈥� and a master class in project-based learning and rethinking high school.

We spoke with Campbell about the assignment and how this type of project-based learning is key to his teaching style at . Below are excerpts from our conversation, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

XQ: What gave you the idea to ask a class of high school students to solve a cold case?

Alex Campbell: I had noticed that in my past couple of years teaching sociology, any time we talked about profiling or things like that, the students were just mesmerized. And when I found out that true crime is [one of the top podcast genres] in the world, I thought, 鈥淗ey, people are interested in it. The students are interested in it.鈥� The No. 1 thing about being a good teacher is you鈥檝e got to have the students interested in your subject. So I said, 鈥淗ey, let’s use it and see what happens.鈥� And I guess they were really interested because they did a great job with it.

How did you pick the ?

The only cold case murder that we knew of in our county was the . But when I was researching, I found out there were lots of young redheaded white women killed and dumped beside the road in Tennessee in the 1980s. And I thought, 鈥淲ow, I’ve never heard of this.鈥� So we should work on it and see what we can do since it didn’t seem like anybody else was really doing anything with it.

You鈥檙e a teacher, not a detective. But you鈥檝e done a lot of at your school. How did you fold this cold case into your class?

What I usually think about is, what are the skills and the [standards] that the students would need to do a good job with this? I kind of write those up and then you see if those fit with your standards or your goals as a teacher. 

So, knowing how to research and understand people’s backgrounds, how their upbringing, the five agents of socialization impact them, the person they become. I felt like those were things that we could cover in the [sociology] curriculum while helping the students figure out how to go about this project.

And I think that’s where teachers have to start. Once you say, 鈥淲here do they use this, and what are some [real-world] problems?鈥� then you just turn your kids loose trying to apply their knowledge and help with some of these problems. 

What other tips do you have for teachers who want to try partnering with folks in their community?

When it comes to teaching, l choose to do most of my work before the class. People say, 鈥淢r. Campbell just sits around all day while different people teach class for him all week, and he did nothing.鈥� I really think that teachers need to be really busy outside of the classroom and then do a lot less inside the classroom. Let those experts make great connections for the kids, and let the kids do the work鈥攂ecause whoever’s doing the most work gets the most benefit.

You put the work into the structure and create opportunities for students and then you let them or somebody else help them do the work. And then teachers find the resources they need, support the kids where they need the support, figure out where their gaps are in their learning, and fill those in. 

Community partnerships, student voice, and meaningful, engaged learning are key ingredients in XQ schools and partnerships. Read more about these research-backed

The community partnerships in this class were so striking. You asked professional investigators to talk to your students. You also partnered with a true crime podcaster. How did you bring these experts into the class?

The first chapter is to admit that you don’t know anything. A lot of teachers want to pretend like we know everything, but we don’t. I think teachers do that because they think students won’t see them as the experts or they’ll lose some type of respect. But I don’t think that happens at all.

I saw somebody had a podcast about the Redhead Murders. One of the students found it. It was brand new. And I thought, 鈥淗e’s got a Facebook page. I’ll just send him a Facebook message.鈥�

And I remember he got back with me and said, 鈥淗ey, let’s talk.鈥� I knew one FBI agent. And he just happened to be really good friends with a profiler. I just email people. I look online. I look on social media, I call local people.

Your administration was supportive of this project, what did you tell them? 

I talked it over with our principal, and I just said, 鈥淭hese murders are over 30 years old. They鈥檙e not really close to us. One was about an hour away but a lot of them were like eight hours away. If the person is still alive, they’re going to be, like, geriatric. I don’t think they’re going to come chase the kids down.鈥� But also, we would be talking about some things that parents may not [think would] be the normal thing their students talk about. Sex work, prostitution, murder. But I sent something home to tell the parents what we were doing. If they had any questions, they could always contact me.

What advice would you have for schools that want to do what you’re talking about?

A couple of things. We did this with some of our grant money from XQ because we felt it was important. We have a community partnership director [a new position to help all teachers at Elizabethton High School]. And so when I need five law enforcement agents, I can send them an email and say, 鈥淚 need five law enforcement agents any time this week or anytime next week between one and three, would you reach out for me?鈥� And then they do that for you because that does take some of that burden off the teacher. 

Number two, I think that schools should build a network of community partners and invite people to come in, put your name on this list and tell me what your experiences or your expertise is. And then just build a master list.

In the podcast, the students talked about the victims as their 鈥渟isters鈥� 鈥� the fact that the teens thought about the women that way was so striking. How did they settle on that language?

I think part of that was because they started seeing [the six victims] that way. The students really internalized it and started saying it back to me and calling them 鈥渙ur six sisters鈥� and writing about them that way.

I think sometimes people see young people as not great communicators; that they don’t care about others. You know, they’re isolated on their social devices. But that’s not really true. If you give them a chance and a reason to care about people, it really does seem that they’re really open to doing that. 

Do you think the podcast will interest more teachers in project-based learning?

Something I really like about the podcast is that KT Studios [the production team] was interested in how [I] did this in the classroom. And I think that’s important. I want people to hear that. I want teachers to say, 鈥淢aybe that’s what it looks like, or that’s how it works.鈥�

So I hope we can help people. I wish it would start some fire that would burn down the whole establishment of, 鈥淟et’s just let kids read textbooks and memorize things.鈥� Maybe it will. 

Hear more about how Campbell鈥檚 students helped crack the case. New episodes of 鈥淢urder 101鈥� drop on Wednesdays wherever podcasts are found. You can also access them directly through these links on , , , , and .

Want to learn more about innovative ways of reaching high school students? Subscribe to the , a newsletter that comes out twice a month for high school teachers.

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of 社区黑料.

In the first episode of the new year, Diane and Michael look back on the past three discussions of Class Disrupted鈥檚 fifth season through the lens of disruption. They discuss the future of AI education tools; consider the opportunities and challenges as the Carnegie Foundation embarks on creating innovative new assessments with the Educational Testing Service (ETS); and highlight how Americans鈥� ideas of a success are changing and what that means for schools.

Listen to the episode below. A full transcript follows.

Diane Tavenner: Hey, Michael.

Michael Horn: Hey, Diane. I know you have had a hectic last few weeks, but I still have been excited to catch up with you as we say goodbye to 2023. That still doesn’t sound right coming off the tongue. And I’m hoping that the pneumonia cases in China that are starting to be reported are not portending something worse for 2024. But here we are.

Diane Tavenner: Oh, Michael. Pneumonia in China. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I don’t want to know what you’re talking about.

Michael Horn: Don’t look it up.

Diane Tavenner: I’ve been heads down. Wow. That makes me realize that we started this podcast during the pandemic, sort of the beginning, the height of the pandemic, and I can’t believe we’re in our fifth season. And I kind of feel like we’re starting to see some opportunities that haven’t been there for the last few years. And so I really hope pneumonia is not on our way because our kids and our system and our country really need us to be rethinking how we’re doing school. For us this season, to that end, we鈥檝e just been talking to some really interesting people and people who we think are kind of pushing our thinking and everyone’s thinking and the work forward. And so that’s been amazing. But one of the things I’m realizing is I’m craving the opportunity for us to just talk and process and think about what they’re saying. So I’m hoping that we can do that today.

Michael Horn: A good plan. And hopefully our listeners are excited for the same because that’s what we’re going to do: use today’s session to step back and think about the last three conversations that we’ve had with Todd Rose, Irhum, Shafkat, hopefully I pronounced that correctly, and Tim Knowles, so that we can reflect on a lot of the points that they made and how they stretched our thinking and how they might intersect with each other and, frankly, ask each other any questions that we have as we march into the new year.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, that just is crazy. And I always have a lot of questions. So I’m excited to talk with you about this. But one of the things I noticed, Michael, when I think back across the last three conversations is there is an undercurrent of disruption in all of those. It’s maybe more than an undercurrent, quite frankly. And while I will acknowledge that people in education don’t really like the word disruption, they don’t like it in reference to schools and education. And I get that. But I think it’s useful to say it here, because when I say disruption, I’m referring to the work that you study and you write about and you talk about, and quite frankly, a lot of the work that I have done in my career, because innovation doesn’t come without disruption. Those two things sort of come hand in hand. And so I think we need to be mindful, but we also can’t be afraid to talk about what is really happening and needed.

Michael Horn: I want to return to that theme as we go through today, but let’s start where you just left, which is afraid and fear, and I think a lot of fear is being sparked by AI. And so would love to dig into the conversation as a starting point, if you’re good with it, with Irhum, because my big takeaway from that was that the art of building valuable tools in education will firstly be based on a deeper understanding of what large language models the current AI phenomenon that has people’s imagination, but really understanding what they can and can’t do when you train them appropriately. And then second, and I think this is maybe reassuring for educators, I hope it is, the actual real life use cases in schools are the other thing you really need to understand. And what I took away from it was when you have both of those things, then you can create robust tools with presets in essence – that’s sort of my word – but think scripted buttons instead of wide-open chats that you put a lot on the individual that support the things that you’re trying to accomplish. And not only can that be more efficient, but it can also be much more valuable and efficacious. And I think it can lend toward a real purposeful use of AI, which is what I think we should all be hoping for. What did you take away from it, and how does that add up?

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, well, I want to linger on the combination of your two points together because I think this is a persistent issue in education and I’ve been thinking about it a ton. I think we’ve acknowledged this a lot. Education is one of the few industries that has been relatively unchanged by modern technological advances. And I’m not talking like printing press modern advances, clearly that had a significant impact, but that was a while ago now. And so I’m talking software, personal computing, and now AI obviously. The big question is why. Why is education sort of untouched or unfazed when everyone else is really impacted by these advances? And one of the things that I’ve been noticing over the last six months in being out of the direct working of and leading of schools is just how complicated schools are. And my beloved former board chair would call that a BGO, a blinding glimpse of the obvious.  So there’s that. But I think it’s hit me pretty profoundly, kind of in two ways now that I’m leading a company that is focused on education, but not running a whole school or a whole system. You know that I’m a student of leadership, and I have studied and practiced for a very long time, and I love learning about it. And one of sort of the universally accepted truths in leadership is that an organization can only focus on, like, one, two, maybe three things at a time, and that’s really stretching it. And really, the best organizations have that sort of laser focus. And for 20 years, I tried really hard to live that as truly as possible in schools. But the reality is that in a school, if we only had one or two priorities, we would literally be shut down. Like, schools have so many obligations and responsibilities just to keep the doors open. It’s not real to think that they only have one or two priorities. And you can play all these sort of Jedi mind tricks, if you will, and say, we’re prioritizing here, but the reality is you’re doing all of these other things that ultimately take priority because they’re compliance oriented or they’re legally mandated or all of those things. And so to pretend that those are not priorities really is not authentic. And so it’s just really hit me to be leading an organization now that truly can have only one priority and what that actually means in terms of our ability to focus and to innovate and to really integrate new technologies and advances and think about how to use them in powerful and meaningful ways. And so I’m just thinking a lot about, and we come back to this theme a lot, like, can we expect of schools what I think everyone expects of them, which is to be these innovative places that are going to redesign and sort of remodel themselves using modern technology, AI in particular. It just feels like such a heavy, heavy lift. I’m dancing around this because I’m nervous about where this line of thinking takes me. And I think it’s also important that we have this conversation.

Michael Horn: Yeah. Reflecting on that, I guess I have a couple thoughts. One, our friend Paul Peterson, the professor at Harvard, who’s studied and written a lot about education in schools, he has this line in his book, Saving Schools. I think that’s the title of it, where he talks about, it’s a very economist sort of view of the world where he says, like, one of the big things that creates innovation in the world is when organizations shift tasks to their end consumer. And the example he has is like Walmart. As opposed to a department store back in the day where you would have someone follow you around and curate the experience with you, like your shopper. Walmart’s basically like, 鈥淒iane, you walk in there, figure it out. It’s all on the shelves, but it’s on you.鈥�

Diane Tavenner: Well, now you even check yourself out, right?

Michael Horn: That’s a very good point. Look at the Amazon stores. And Whole Foods and stuff like that. And I think it’s interesting in terms of education, because if we’re serious about building agency and learners, actually having them take over things is actually good, like, that’s a goal, right? I think so. A second thought I had is on the do one thing well in my head right now when you say that is Mallory Dwinnell, who’s the chancellor, as you know, of Reach university. And I’ve been with her a few times in the last few months, and she knows Reach University exists to do one thing and one thing only, and it’s trained teachers in rural contexts. And as a result, they’re able to be incredibly focused and optimized and so forth. When I zoom up from that a little bit, one of the lines that we’ve had – because I don’t know the answer to your question, so I’m going to use theory here – through a jobs to be done perspective, the way we’ve said it is organizations can only really be good at one job to be done. So, for example, like Ikea, it’s not that they do low-cost furniture, it’s that they’re really good at helping you do the job of, like, I need to furnish this apartment today when I move into a new city, right. And everything is built around that. They do lots and lots of things, but that’s the job to be done, and they integrate around that. And I guess my reflection on that is, and I love your take on this, is that schools, as you know, we’ve been asking them to do multiple jobs. Like when we analyze this through why people switch schools, we’ve now done this with micro-schools, independent schools and charter schools. We see that there are four reasons or jobs to be done that cause people to change schools. And the design of those are pretty radically different depending on what job it is to get it done. And so I guess I wonder, to your point, have we just been forcing schools to do all the jobs and therefore they stink at all of them. And they’re pulling against each other and maybe like moving back to a smaller-size school where we allow individuals to choose not based on race, politics, or other unsavory characteristics, but based on job to be done. Like what’s the progress you’re trying to make? Might that help us a little bit? I’ll give you my other thought in a moment, but I just want you to react there.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah. And what you’re making me think about is – this wasn’t the current conversation we had with Todd Rose a few episodes ago – but certainly the body of his work, which is the introductory body, and you did The End of Average, which is why do we think that everyone needs the same thing. We’re in this race where everyone’s trying to be exactly the same, only a little bit better than everyone else on a very narrow set of things. And I think what you’re offering is schools could have different purposes and look really different. And why is that bad or wrong? And the thing that’s coming up for me and what you’re saying though is the approach you’re taking is that the school’s actually primary purpose is to serve their students and their families. And here my experience is that’s not who they’re serving. When I talk about compliance and legality and all of those things, there’s a whole bunch of other people that end up stack ranking above parents and students. And that is the fundamental – well, there’s so many – but that feels like a fundamental challenge.

Michael Horn: I’m going to point us to something really uncomfortable. But this is why I think some of these new school designs that are fundamentally focused on the learners and the parents are probably a really important force in education because they’re not confused about who they’re serving. And I think my hope would be that it helps districts wake up and be able to do the same sorts of things. But TBD on that one, I guess.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, districts, states, policy.

Michael Horn: A lot of layers, right? Yeah, it’s a lot of layers. So let’s maybe leave that conversation there. I have other thoughts, but I think that’s a good provocative place to leave it for the moment.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, I agree with you because there’s another provocative space we can go. When we talked to Tim Knowles from the Carnegie foundation, he of course brought up one of my favorite topics, assessment and the promise of assessment to sort of enable a lot of what we talk about, which is competency-based and personalized and talk about student autonomy and self-direction and all of those things. Because if individuals can show what they know in valid and reliable ways, that frees up the space of how they actually learned that and how they know it and gives us a lot of different options and possibilities there. And if we’re measuring things that are more directly related to valuable work people do in the world, that should both better prepare people and help clarify what things are valuable to teach and learn. And so I’m so curious. I know you went into that conversation like a little bit鈥�

Michael Horn: I’m nervous. I want them to really succeed. But I love both of your points. And I loved the broader conversation, as you know, with Tim. I left with a much clearer idea of what the partnership with ETS is trying to do and why. And I feel like when he anchored it in the why, it just helped so much. And I left with a deeper understanding of, to that end, why they’re not tackling assessments for the learning standards as they exist today and are already in place, because there’s so many players that do that, rightly or more wrongly, but nevertheless, there and then I left with an understanding of why they are tackling these cognitive skills and habits of success. To use your language, Diane, not Tim’s. And I like that the effort is demand driven. I think that’s really important. There’s some grassroots nature of it in the sense that, as Tim pointed out, all of these states, both red and blue, are building portraits of a graduate that at least pay lip service to the notion of developing students with agency and executive functioning skills and critical thinking on and on. But as he pointed out, they’re kind of empty promises because those states have no way at the moment to measure these skills or habits or assess whether they’re delivering. And so I like that Carnegie and ETS could be an answer to that problem where there really is none at the moment. And I think my questions from that, that sort of follow on for it, are one, or I guess, thoughts more broadly. And I have five of them. I’ll do three maybe and then let you jump in. How about that? Okay. One, I really like the approach from a disruptive innovation angle, as I mentioned, because it tackles non-consumption, where the alternative is nothing at all at the moment. They are competing against nothing, rather than going headfirst into this heavy space of formative, summative interim assessment providers, and they can really define something. The performance bar in some sense is simple. All it has to do is be better than nothing. I said it earlier. Second, I think that they are chasing what seems like real demand. That’s good. It’s not top down. I hope we keep it that way and don’t force something on people. And third, I think from a worry perspective, and this is going to contradict number one a little bit, but disruptive innovation, I think the theory suggests over and over again that you should tackle the simplest problems first. And I guess my concern is that figuring out how to assess these skills and habits in a way that is accepted outside of the school networks that exist doesn’t feel simple to know. Your point that they can learn it anywhere and we’re going to assess it. I know you’ve done this at Summit, but that’s one network. And Carnegie is now trying to assess across a student’s life, not just in school. That seems really complex and complicated to me, even if all the bar is is better than nothing. And so I guess I hope I’m wrong, but it’s a question that I have coming out of the conversation.

Diane Tavenner: I’m curious to pick your brain on that one a little bit about what constitutes simple, because it seems like what you’re saying is the complexity might be coming from all these different contexts and things like that, less the actual assessment itself. And so I’m wondering, this is a little selfish too, as I think about trying to build a product that is in a space where there is non-consumption. I would argue there’s non-consumption right now, but it’s certainly not simple what we’re trying to do at some level. But maybe it is. So what’s simple mean?

Michael Horn: Yeah, I have to think through this more obviously. I guess my thought is, right, just to go again to disruptive innovation, the first application for the transistors weren’t computers and incredible consumer electronics products. They were simple hearing aids that just enabled some hearing. Steel. You take mini mills, they first did rebar, right, stuff that would show up in concrete, not finely finished, beautiful products. So maybe it’s the case that they can find their niche there. I just think it’s going to have to be sort of the simplest applications first of demonstrating these skills rather than taking on all the complexity at once and not trying to maybe, and I’m thinking out loud here, not trying to maybe bill it as like the, 鈥淥h, we figured out how to measure perseverance across all domains and locations and et cetera, et cetera.鈥�

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, and maybe it’s something like, I mean, you’re referring back to some of the work that we did when I was at summit with some startup partners and, for example, we just were building one sort of easy simulation that felt like an hour of video game playing to students, but really was able to say, like, 鈥淟ook, this student seems to indicate higher levels of the ability to collaborate to solve a more complex problem, which for an employer was super useful information.鈥� And so maybe something more, I would call them quick and dirty assessments like that that aren’t about taking a whole assessment schema, but are like, if that helps an employer trust and believe that that potential employee is capable of a skill, maybe that’s what simple looks like in this particular case.

Michael Horn: I like that. I can imagine a second one which might be simply looking at student effort in school, right? Do they struggle in math? And then they keep at it. And so we see perseverance in mathematics, right? I could imagine sort of simple, not survey based, but more like observational based assessments maybe as well, I don’t know.

Diane Tavenner: Fascinating, but it’s narrow and zeroed in on a particular thing that might be meaningful in the world but doesn’t have to like 鈥�

Michael Horn: To boil the ocean from day one, I think. I think that’s exactly right. And that’s maybe the way to think about it. Like, let’s take some bite-sized pieces. I guess it bleeds into the other two thoughts I had. I really do like the way that they’re connecting this to academic domains and content knowledge. I think I’d be concerned if they weren’t. And here’s my 鈥渁nd鈥� I think they would benefit from taking a page from Summit and breaking out the skills or the cognitive skills versus the habits of success in the ways that you all did. Because they are different, and I suspect the approach to measuring them is different. Now, I grant you, from a public relations perspective, that might involve some education and some complicated messaging, but I think it would also be helpful for those of us in the field who are like, 鈥淗ey, agency is different from critical thinking in science.鈥� Or whatever it might be. And then I guess the last thought I had is, I do still wonder鈥 love that he’s tackling this for all the reasons that he said. And I don’t know if it pulls us away from the Carnegie Unit of time, because at some point we do still need to help say, 鈥淗ey, this student has mastered these sets of learning standards or progressions or whatever, and therefore can move on.鈥� And so maybe their role becomes sort of an arbiter of what is valid and reliable alternative forms of assessment, rather than trying to be the assessor itself. But it does seem to me like you have to solve the 鈥淗ey, I’m a student in math or I’m a student in ELA or I’m a student in civics or whatever it is.鈥� And by the way, I don’t know that it has to be every academic domain, but that there’s some way to sort of say like, 鈥淵eah, if you master these bite-sized assessments or show this project or whatever else, that’s a good demonstration.鈥� And therefore you can mark mastery of that as opposed to 鈥淕ee, sit in the seat for another year.鈥�

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, that’s interesting. Two quick thoughts that are coming up for me. One is that seems like such a good historical role that that foundation has played where they start something and they kind of figure it out because they can, but then they don’t own it and keep it. It moves out. You know, Tim in our conversation mentioned a whole bunch of different things that were actually started by Carnegie 鈥� including ETS 鈥� that spun out and continues to do the work. And the foundation then kind of moves on to putting some resources behind the initial thinking around. So that feels like a good potential role that they’re playing. I’m going to say something that I think is going to shock you, which is because you know how much I hate the Carnegie Unit and the measurement of time and think it is just so ruining everything. But I will admit that in my new work, I have been really looking at post-high school young people, young adults, and how they figure out pathways besides a straight to four-year college pathway. And one of the things I have encountered is time really matters to them, like how long is it going to take me to get a credential or a certificate or a degree or whatnot? Because that’s a real calculation and factor in their lives. And to my great disappointment, we still have the Carnegie Unit, but it’s no longer representative of a common unit of time. And so you go from college, mostly community college, to community college, and they all have these credits which are based on the Carnegie Unit, but they’re all measuring different amounts of time and sometimes even within the same institution. And so the one potentially useful job for this unit is not even usable anymore to the user, and it actually can be misleading.

Michael Horn: Wow. Okay, so that’s fascinating. I’ll let you transition us to Todd in a second. But one quick thought is I do think rate matters through these different things that we expect. It’s one of the reasons I think Joel Rose’s work at New Classrooms has always been so interesting because they have this notion of, they probably call it something different now, but it was originally par. Like, how many times or days does it take for a student to learn a particular concept? And you’re sort of above par or below par. You all at summit had the. Are you on track? Ahead of track. And so I do think it’s not, that time is not relevant. And Paul LeBlanc makes this point beautifully in his writing, which is, frankly, those who have low incomes, they have the biggest deficit of all, which is not just money, it’s time poverty. And so that’s a very relevant number, and it’s not a number that the Carnegie unit helps us with at all. And in fact, it disadvantages them further I think.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah. Well, note to me and to others that time, we can’t just totally do away with time as we really try to rethink this, that it is, as you point out, an important factor, and we need to think about that. So, learn something every day. Michael, I was having this super interesting conversation with the parents of a Gen Zer, and they’re particularly interesting because they also have two millennial children, and they feel like there’s a real difference between the two. That’s a different conversation. But they were in their sort of conversation, talking about how their perception that their Gen Z daughter has really got a different definition of success than they do, than is familiar to them, and that they understand. And this is causing some tension. And I shared Todd’s work that he shared with us, and I was, you know, I think you’ve got your finger on the pulse of what’s happening in America according to Todd’s work, which is there is an evolving, changing definition of success. And the response I got back was, well, if you’re someone who hasn’t been reading that work, it can be a very jarring experience. I just thought it was such an interesting grounding of what Todd was talking about and what that actually means in families and across generations. And I don’t know that I want to go here, but we’re at a moment in time where there’s just societally so much anger and angst and division. And it did make me wonder if this generational divide along these lines might be underneath some of that. So I’m curious what you think, what you thought about Todd’s鈥�

Michael Horn: Wow. As always, I’m so impressed with Todd. But just to stay where you were. And then I have a question for you, I do think, and I’ll go here, because obviously the Israel-Palestine stuff has really been on my mind, as you know. And I’m going down rabbit holes every single day on it. I’ve been really struck by how, when you provide some basic level of education to younger people, all of a sudden phrases that they thought were innocuous, they realize, 鈥淥h, that might be really harmful in a way I hadn’t understood before.鈥� And so I guess my thought is, I think we have to hear and honor from where they’re coming because there’s some real good there in terms of, like, if they’re resetting definitions of success. And that doesn’t mean we as educators should back off grounding them in some of the things that we know to help inform that conversation. And that’s sort of our role, I think. Not sort of – that is our role. David Gergen always loves saying education literally means lead forth. And that’s how I might think about it here. But let me ask you a different question – you may want to reengage with that one – but let me ask you a different question, which is you said disruptive innovation pervades all three. I get the first two, and I think our audience do. I’d love to hear your thinking on how this one does as well.

Diane Tavenner: Well, thanks for keeping me honest, as you always do. And I might loop back because this might just be too rich of a week in the news to pass by. Okay, so I did say it was a theme across all three. This might be a stretch, but this is sort of how I was thinking about it. I think we’re living in an era that we are moving out of. And I think this changing definition of success is related, where education has sort of been perceived as the end, if you will, versus the means. And for, I think, most of our nation’s history, which is not that long, but still, education was a means to an end. And one of the things I think we’re hearing from younger generation, especially coming out of the pandemic, is like, and this is related to their disillusionment with higher ed. And a lot of what Tod was talking about is like, I need a job. I need a career. I need to be able to support my family. I need to have a life. I don’t want to go into debt. I don’t want to get a degree that gets me a job that doesn’t actually pay for itself. And I don’t know that they use ROI, but there’s not an ROI on what my education is. And so, if we take that, and I think that suggests a shift to what you’re doing in education, what really matters is what you’re learning and the skills you’re building. And that I think necessitates pretty disruptive changes in our learning models and our schools and the experience. And again, these are the things we’re always advocating for. But I think this takes us back to the root of why we’re advocating for it, because I think you and I actually are embracing that changing definition of success. And I’ll speak for myself, it’s also hard because I have benefited from the old definition and that was an undercurrent of that conversation I was having with these parents who have been very successful by conventional definitions, and that’s hard to let go of. And that some of that tension underlying these conversations with younger folks. And I will connect it back because I just can’t resist. Who knows? By the time we release this, this might be all over and done, but we are sitting right in the moment where I can’t help but say it. Three top university presidents were called to Congress to testify. I will note that they were all women. And the vast majority of top 50 presidents are not women, they are men. So I’m curious about that. But that’s a separate side story. One has already resigned for her comments. The second is under massive pressure. There鈥檚 so much going on here in this whole conversation. But for me, the interesting pieces, and I think it’s tying back to what you were just talking about, which is what is the role of an institution that is designed to educate young people? I think at the heart of why people, there’s so many reasons why they were unhappy with what the president said. But one of them is where’s your responsibility to actually take a stand and guide and mentor and do exactly what you just said, Michael? Educate them about the things they don’t know about because, yeah, they’re brilliant and they’re young, but they don’t know a whole bunch of stuff yet. And that’s our job. And so where are you in that equation, I think is the question that’s being called of those educators.

Michael Horn: No, that is brilliant. It reminds me, a friend of mine, Gunner Councilman, used to always say students are much more like clients than customers. And his distinction was that clients are often wrong. It’s your job as the organization is to guide them. And whereas we have the saying the customer is always right. That’s not really true with students. And so I think that’s interesting. On the second one, another point you made about the changing sort of framework of education where for a while a place where I went, Harvard, was seen as like success. That was the destination, if you will. And that was a big finding, as you know, from my Choosing College book was how many individuals were like, they wanted to get into the top college for its own sake. They had no sense of what came afterwards. It was just like that was the prize. A lot of admissions officers did not like that that was the prize. But that’s how they thought about it. And we just did a Future U podcast recording with a couple folks from Wake Technical Community College and Portland State. And one of them made the point that increasingly people see college as a station, not a destination. I thought that was a really good language to sort of capture this shift. And I guess finally I’ll say, I see your point. Like disruptive innovations fundamentally, in the words of the theory, change the Y axis of performance, as we like to say in Wonkland. So in normal speak, it just means that the way we think about performance changes, like what we measure and value, and that’s what disruptive innovations fundamentally do. And frankly, traditional organizations really struggle with those changes because they’ve organized, to your much earlier point about how schools are complicated places, they’ve organized themselves around one set of things that we have measured and valued, and disruption tends to change that in line with new individuals that haven’t been served. So I take your point. It’s a really interesting one. Maybe let’s leave this conversation here for now, because I think it makes for a juicy 鈥�24 as we go in. But as we wrap up, let’s just sort of round out the 2023 year. It occurs to me, by the way, in future years, maybe we’ll look back at our year and name some of our top reads and things that we’ve watched. But I am not in the mood for that at the moment. I will be totally honest. So I’m just sort of curious what’s on your TV at the moment or your bedside table that you’re reading at the moment?

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, well, I will definitely answer that, and I will just say, I’m so glad we had this conversation because I have so many questions for us to explore in the new year and so many people popping in my mind that I really want to talk to now based on this conversation. So I’m very excited to hang up here and then start brainstorming with you for the new year. So I think you had this moment, too. When we interviewed Tim and asked him this question, he said that between December 1 and January 1 he always reads poetry. And I think we both were like, whoa. And so I took that as an invitation and have been reading – this summer I got to meet a poet, David Wyatt – and I’ve been reading some of his poems and pieces, and he’s got this one, I’m going to mess up the title, but where he takes words and he just really has a whole contemplation on the meaning of that word that is just like, so mind shifting. And so that’s been really fun. And on my bedside table. How about you?

Michael Horn: That’s good. And good for you to actually follow the advice. I have not because in classic sort of efficiency mode, I’m like, but there are a few other books I need to read first. So that said, I’ve put aside Klossovitz for the moment. It鈥檚 just I’ve not made the progress that perhaps I had hoped for and have delved into a few different books, one of which I finished over the weekend. And it’s called Writing for Busy Readers: Communicate More Effectively in the Real World. It’s by a friend at Harvard, Todd Rogers, and another professor or member of the community, Jessica Lasky-Fink. And it’s a good, quick read and some good tips as I’m finishing up my next book on helping people better navigate the job market. And so, I will say their big messages, not surprising, are less is more. And so, with that wish, maybe for brevity, levity, clarity and charity in the new year, I’ll just say, thank you, Diane. And thank you to all of those tuning in for joining us on Class Disrupted.

Parents have been kept in the dark about how far behind their kids are in school. The latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are devastating for our students, including many who are just starting high school and don鈥檛 have time to waste. 

We all agree the stakes have never been higher. The COVID-19 pandemic widened educational and economic inequality.

As the mother of five boys who struggled during school closures, and as we continue to navigate today鈥檚 education system, worries about their future trajectories are never far from my mind. As the president of the National Parents Union (NPU), I spent the last three years in constant communication with families nationwide. Parents are sending a message loud and clear: we want better, more accurate information about our kids.

about their children鈥檚 educational and life experiences and what it means for them long-term. 

The more parents learn about the state of education, the more concerned they become and for good reason: the kids are not alright. Parents widely agree that America鈥檚 education system is in despair.

• label it a major problem that students are still behind academically, according to the Nation鈥檚 Report Card, including 34% who say it鈥檚 a crisis.
• agree the mental health challenges among children is a major problem, including 34% who say it鈥檚 a crisis. 
• believe America鈥檚 education system needs to be overhauled.

We want policymakers to acknowledge the pandemic鈥檚 impact on our children鈥檚 learning and development, and comprehensively address the challenges facing our education system to ensure students fully recover with pathways to economic mobility. Elected leaders and education decision makers must move past culture wars, rhetoric, and finger pointing with legislation and policies that reflect the reimagined experience parents want for their kids.

Policymakers can contribute to a more equitable, resilient education system with some practical solutions. These proposals are based on over decades and innovative approaches developed during the pandemic. They are aligned with what parents want for their children. 

First, give parents a seat at the table

Parents should be partners with schools from the beginning: participating in strategic planning, budgeting, leadership changes, and contract negotiations. It鈥檚 not enough to ask them for permission after decisions have already been made. Only collaboratively can we create a path forward. 

After our heroic leadership as facilitators of our own children鈥檚 educations and powerful partners in school reopening and recovery, we expect to continue to be involved in decision making and want a say in how education will be reimagined. Over the past few years, we established greater transparency and communication with policymakers about strategies for addressing today鈥檚 challenges. We must continue to deepen these efforts.

As the clock runs down on billions in financial aid, we need to examine what is working and what isn鈥檛. We鈥檙e looking at an abrupt funding stop and deep cuts beginning in the 2024- 25 school year and our most vulnerable students will suffer when the fiscal cliff hits. This is the moment to rethink how we teach and finance education.

Parents want , as well as additional educational and mental health support.

Enter a new age of honesty and transparency

Policymakers and educators need to welcome a new age of honesty and transparency with parents, families, and communities. Assessment data plays a critical role in driving student progress by providing educators with a clear picture of learning and identifying areas for additional interventions and investments. 

• would like their child鈥檚 teachers to discuss their child鈥檚 performance and progress with them more often.

Data helps teachers individualize instruction and ensure all students reach their full potential. Tracking student progress over time allows educators to identify patterns in student learning and adjust instructional strategies as needed. We must also be flexible to change when plans do not yield the results our children deserve. 

Offer diverse pathways

With all of its complex challenges, the pandemic also provided the opportunity to create more flexibility in the education system. It highlighted the limitations of traditional classroom-based learning and the need for alternative approaches. Now we are hungry for more options for remote learning, hybrid learning models, and other approaches that will accommodate the diverse needs of children and families.

• want to have a personalized pathway plan for their child, outlining classes they could take in K-12 to help them achieve their individual career or college goals.

Any expectation that families will continue to conform to an outdated school model holds us all back. The path forward is clear for parents. 

• said K-12 schools should change the way they teach students reading and math to line up with what the newest research says is best practice.
• say schools should do more to have school schedules and calendars reflect research on how and when kids learn best.
• say schools should do more to provide opportunities for additional learning time, such as after-school or summer academic programs.

Urgent support for teens

Our teens need more support to ensure they aren鈥檛 simply pushed out before we鈥檝e adequately prepared them to launch. 

• say schools should do more to ensure college-bound students and students who choose different pathways have equally good opportunities to prepare for their future while in high school.

Many of our youth have lost out on important opportunities including internships, job shadowing, or other career-related experiences over the last several years. They struggle with depleted family resources and basic needs, preventing them from pursuing postsecondary education and training opportunities. 

• support student loan relief as a tactic for economic mobility.

Will families still be willing to take on unending debt to pay for tuition in our colleges and universities as a good investment for our children in the future? Multiple recent surveys suggest they won鈥檛.

Increased access to alternative opportunities for students to gain valuable career experience鈥� including virtual internships, work-based and skills-based learning opportunities, adult education programs, vocational training, and more鈥攚ill help prepare students for the future.

Prioritize mental health

In addition to academic support, parents want policymakers to prioritize students鈥� mental health and social-emotional well-being.

• believe policymakers need to prioritize addressing their children鈥檚 mental health needs. 

The pandemic took a toll on our students鈥� mental health, increasing rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns. We want to see more funding and long-term investments in school based mental health and social-emotional resources.

Needed: Transformational change

We must put an end to petty political fights, institutional racism, an antiquated status quo, and policies that prioritize adults over kids and instead collaboratively address the transformational changes our children and families need. NPU will continue to work with lawmakers on key priorities to improve the quality of life for families across the country. Now is the moment for elected leaders and education decision-makers to act with bold urgency and a renewed commitment to courageous conversations about how our nation鈥檚 schools can truly change鈥攕ystematically and thoroughly. Parents will be watching.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

After conducting a survey, administrators at Carroll T. Welch Elementary School in the Clint Independent School District found that about a quarter of its students felt they did not 鈥渇it in鈥� at school.

鈥淭here’s some students that feel like they have to be different. Like, 鈥業 can’t be my true self because of what (other students) might say about me,鈥欌�� said Daisy Garcia, principal of the school in Horizon City.

Now she hopes to create a more welcoming and affirming environment for them through the El Paso School Design Collaborative, which aims to reimagine how schools can better serve students and communities.

As part of the 10-month program which started in May, schools were tasked with identifying an issue at their campus and coming up with a plan to address it with the help of experts from Transcend, a nonprofit with the goal of improving education systems in the U.S. Out of the dozens of schools from across El Paso that applied to be part of the program, eight were selected.

鈥淥ur vision is to help young people learn in ways that enable them to thrive in and transform the world. And the way that we do that is by supporting communities to create and spread extraordinary equitable learning environments,鈥� said Transcend Managing Partner Dottie Smith.

The program was brought together by the Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Educational Development, or CREEED, a nonprofit that aims to improve academic performance in El Paso, and the El Paso Community Foundation, a nonprofit that funds initiatives in health, education, human services and more throughout the city.

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鈥淭he broad stroke idealistic goal is for there to be a systemic change in how schools approach school design,鈥� Vice President of Operations for the Community Foundation Stephanie Otero told El Paso Matters. 鈥淲e hope that each school in our region will have a student centered model where student voice is at the core of decision making.鈥�

With Transcend at their side, each of the participating schools set out to form teams of teachers, administrators and parents tasked with finding out how to improve their campuses. While the teams work directly with students, experts at Transcend help administrators conduct surveys, process data and provide them with examples of other schools that have centered student well-being in their education model.

鈥�(We鈥檙e) deepening their understanding of the research and science, and what their young people are saying they want,鈥� Smith said.

Some schools like the East Side鈥檚 O’Shea Keleher Whole Child Academy in the Socorro Independent School District included two fifth grade students, counselors and the school nurse in their redesign team to get their input on how to improve their campus.

Others talked to students to get their perspective.

Daisy Garcia said her team at Welch Elementary interviewed 75 of the school鈥檚 700-plus pupils from all walks of life, ranging from Spanish speakers to at-risk students to get their input.

鈥淲e wanted to make sure we had a really big pool of who we interviewed,鈥� Daisy Garcia said. 鈥淲e didn’t want just high achieving students who we know feel loved and they feel like they have leadership skills.鈥�

Many of the schools in the collaborative program focused on , also known as SEL, which aims to help students understand their emotions and build social skills as a way to improve educational outcomes.

Silvestre and Carolina Reyes Elementary in the Canutillo Independent School District and O’Shea Keleher put an emphasis on the social part of SEL, hoping to improve the way students connect with one another.

鈥淥ne of the things that we’ve found is that our students feel very well connected to the adults in the building, but many of them are still struggling with having that peer to peer interaction,鈥� said O’Shea Keleher Principal Laura Garcia. 鈥淪o we’re trying to find the root of that problem and then help give them tools to interact with their peers in a very positive manner.鈥�

While educators say students were already struggling to connect before the pandemic, lockdowns exacerbated the issue and were especially hard on younger students.

鈥淭here were a lot of skills that we lost, as far as interaction between our kids. It was problematic at all levels, but I think our babies in pre-K through first (grade) never learned those skills through the pandemic,鈥� said Reyes Elementary Principal Jessica Melendez-Carrillo.

After conducting research and learning about student鈥檚 needs the teams can move on to the 鈥渆nvisioning鈥� stage to make plans to address the issues they identified.

Melendez-Carrillo said her team at the Upper Valley school has been looking into implementing 鈥渕orning circles鈥� where students can have discussions, resolve conflicts and connect at the start of the day. She said the team is currently brainstorming and learning from other schools who have implemented these circles to see what that will look like.

鈥淲e’re collaborating, we’re thinking, we’re revisiting our protocols that we currently have and seeing how can we improve and make them better?鈥� Melendez-Carrillo said.

The team at Welch Elementary has looked into implementing a similar concept they call 鈥渢alk circles鈥� that allow teachers and students to have conversations on an equal playing field in the hopes of encouraging children to be themselves at school.

鈥淲hen they do the circles in the morning the teachers are going to participate just like the students so there’s not any kind of power or authority there. Everyone has the same type of authority and it goes back to that feeling of belonging and having a voice,鈥� Daisy Garcia said.

Laura Garcia said the team at O’Shea Keleher is still gathering data and working with Transcend on creating a parent survey before they plan their next move.

Once the teams have finalized their plans, Smith said Transcend will help implement them, evaluate their success and start the process all over again.

鈥淲e take schools through this to help them create a model that will match their vision,鈥� Smith said.

In the end, the school leaders taking part in the collaborative program hope it helps improve their student’s lives and prepares them for the future.

鈥淚 want to ensure that every one of our students who we send to middle school has that strong sense of self and confidence that they can be whoever they want without worrying about being judged,鈥� Laura Garcia said.

CREEED鈥檚 Choose to Excel Director Nadia Tellez said the program aims to help students succeed beyond school.

鈥淲e鈥檙e excited to support an initial group of eight schools to explore new models of student success that ensure students not only can go on and succeed in college, but that they鈥檙e prepared to succeed in our workforce and in their local communities,鈥� she said.

Other schools involved in the program include Vista Del Sol Environmental Science Academy, Jose H. Damian Elementary, Gonzalo and Sofia Garcia Elementary, Jose J. Alderete Middle School and the Canutillo Middle School STEAM Academy.

Smith said that once this first cohort has completed the 10-month program, Transcend hopes to continue working with them and expand to other schools throughout El Paso.

Disclosure: The Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Educational Development and El Paso Community Foundation are financial supporters of El Paso Matters. Financial supporters play no role in El Paso Matters鈥� journalism. The news organization鈥檚 policy on editorial independence can be found .

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

Since making its public debut last year, ChatGPT has profoundly impacted my perspective on generative AI in education. As a writer and former high school English teacher, I experienced an existential crisis watching the chatbot effortlessly generate lesson plans and rubrics 鈥� tasks that would have taken me hours to accomplish. 

Generative AI allows educators to move beyond traditional learning systems and provide a more responsive, personalized learning experience in which students demonstrate mastery, not just passing grades. 

鈥淭he future of AI in education is not just about adopting new technologies; it’s about reshaping our approach to teaching and learning in a way that is as dynamic and diverse as the students we serve,” XQ Institute Senior Advisor Laurence Holt said. He also formerly worked in the education, business and technology sectors. Through AI, we can also transcend the limitations of the Carnegie Unit 鈥� a century-old system in which a high school diploma is based on how much time students spend in specific subject classes. 

Changing that rigid system is our mission at . We to transform high school learning so it鈥檚 more relevant and engaging while also preparing students to succeed in college, career and real life. We recently co-convened a two-day summit with the Emerson Collective, in partnership with MeshEd and Betaworks, to bring educators and innovators together in a collaborative space 鈥� envisioning ways to use AI technology for transforming high school redesign. Those ideas and insights are available to explore .

After a year’s worth of conversations and observations with educators, our AI convening and , there is much to share with educators to help them make the most of the rapidly evolving ecosystem of artificial intelligence. Here are seven AI in education trends to be aware of next year.

1. Professional Development 

Throughout 2023, for educators remained high. In 2024, we should see an avalanche of districts and schools providing their educators with AI professional development materials to integrate these tools into their teaching practices.

At , an XQ school in Sanford, Florida, 鈥檚 Sarah Wharton visited to present interesting ways to think about AI in the context of the school. 

鈥淲e looked at ChatGPT as a possible tutor, personal assistant, creative tool and research assistant,鈥� said PSI High School Coordinator Angela Daniel. 鈥淚n our PD session, we considered how these cool applications could be used in classrooms as learning tools that accelerate learning and teach the tool simultaneously.鈥�

Daniel explained that teaching students how to use AI is a first step that will change things for students going forward.鈥淏ut to really get at the heart of that question, we need to understand how generative AI can change our processes and resources right now,鈥� she added. For the team at PSI, that means learning how to use generative AI effectively with ongoing support as the application continues to evolve.

Workshops, online courses and collaborative learning communities are also increasingly popular for providing educators with hands-on experience in AI.

Want to stay on top of trends to help you rethink high school? Check out the XQ Xtra, a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

2. Formal AI Policy 

Integrating AI in classrooms is no longer a matter of 鈥渋f鈥� but 鈥渉ow,鈥� making it imperative for educators and policymakers to navigate this terrain with informed and responsible strategies. However, the landscape of AI policy development 鈥� especially regarding education 鈥� has been dynamic, if not lagging.

The Council of Europe has continued for equitable policy and practice, an area where . New York City Public Schools, after initially banning ChatGPT, is now , focusing on issues such as privacy and cybersecurity. Recently, the Biden administration issued an executive order to guide the U.S. in leveraging artificial intelligence. This directive emphasized AI safety, privacy, equity and responsible use, signaling a shift in how AI is integrated into sectors like education. However, it is likely that AI policy in education will develop on a location-by-location basis first.

3. Open-Source Tool Development

Concerns about AI’s ethical implications and biases are sure to shape policy goals. One way to alleviate those pressures is the expansion and increased use of open-sourced tools 鈥� programs where the code is accessible and can be modified. , however, expect the conversation to focus less on the output of AI tools and more on .

Ensuring AI tools are equitable and inclusive goes beyond technical challenges 鈥� it requires continuous dialogue among educators, technologists and policymakers. This conversation is essential for addressing data privacy, surveillance and ethical use of student data. With a democratized, open-source marketplace, we could see the market promote as they grow in popularity.

4. Frameworks for Teaching AI

Before the start of the 2023-24 academic year, educators and schools were waiting for a . As policy moves forward in 2024 and more institutions develop professional development materials to train and support educators, expect to finally emerge. Frameworks like are being developed to guide the integration of AI in education. These frameworks focus on and promoting equitable access to technology, ensuring that AI complements and enhances student learning experiences.

5. AI Literacy, Competencies and Standards

With AI becoming more prevalent in various sectors, including education, there鈥檚 a growing need to integrate AI literacy goals and specific learning outcomes into school curricula. This involves teaching students how to use AI tools and understand the basics of AI technology, its applications and its implications.

At the network, an XQ partner with three campuses in Indiana, CEO Keeanna Warren explained how equipping staff and students with the knowledge and skills to harness AI鈥檚 potential promotes effective and responsible use of AI to enhance learning experiences.

鈥淲e firmly believe that our students’ innate curiosity drives their desire to learn, and we trust their integrity,鈥� she said. “If AI can be used for cheating, it reflects a flaw in the assessment, not in our students’ character.鈥�

The challenge lies in integrating AI literacy into an already packed curriculum. However, the opportunity to foster critical thinking, problem-solving and ethical reasoning skills through AI education is entirely possible.

6. AI-Powered Adaptive Learning Systems 

One of the more exciting pathways with AI is that student learning experiences will become more uniquely adaptive and personalized with a quicker turnaround. But creating effective programs requires training these systems on some level of student data -鈥� a delicate balance.

As policy formalizes how student data gets implemented into these programs, AI-driven adaptive learning systems will emerge to shift instructional practice. Expect these programs to appear prominently in assessments and curriculum packages before evolving into real-time feedback systems that can inform teachers even during a lesson.

7. Custom GPTs Built By Educators

While all these advancements are promising and exciting, the marketplace for AI-driven ed tech tools will become incredibly crowded quickly. Recently, OpenAI鈥檚 maker space for building and using custom GPTs, which both use and are built by ChatGPT, is guaranteed to be a massive disruptor.

Ty Boyland, school-based enterprise coordinator and music production teacher at Crosstown High, designed a custom GPT. (Crosstown High is another XQ school in Memphis, Tennessee.) Boyland鈥檚 students use Dall-E, an AI system for generating images, with GPT-4 to create designs and prints for student-driven projects. 

鈥淏ut how do you create a project combining culinary and music production?鈥� Boyland wondered. His customized GPT pairs with Tennessee State Standards to build a new project.

It will be interesting to see what educators create in this space to resolve pain points teachers and schools are intimately familiar with and what gets made to help schools achieve their vision and mission.  

The Bottom Line for Educators

From policy shifts emphasizing equity and privacy to the emergence of AI-driven curricula, the transformation is palpable. We’ve seen how AI can revolutionize and disrupt classroom practices, empower educators through professional development, and create inclusive, personalized student learning experiences. But the burgeoning AI ed tech market demands discernment. , choosing tools that genuinely enhance learning and align with ethical standards.

As we enter 2024, educators and stakeholders face a challenge: keeping pace with AI and engaging with it thoughtfully to catalyze educational excellence instead of just putting a new face on old practices. It鈥檚 the primary reason we at XQ convened so many educators and innovators into one space鈥� to rethink high school by harnessing the potential of our AI-powered future. We look forward to sharing more with you in the coming year. 

Do you want to learn more about how to rethink high school? The XQ Xtra is a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of 社区黑料.

It鈥檚 time to bring back the coffee cups!

 When I first attended the annual meeting of the Education Commission of the States in the early 1990s, they were handing out coffee cups with an exhortation that 鈥渁ll kids can learn.鈥� I remember thinking, duh, of course they can. The standards movement was in full bloom at the time, and the statement seemed like a no-brainer. 

No longer. The pandemic merely illuminated and exacerbated what has been happening in American education for years: the systematic dismantling of a culture of high expectations. Rather than continuing to work together to help all children meet these high standards, which had been the national focus for a few decades, too many state leaders have settled for moving the goalposts, , and pretending that everything was okay. It isn鈥檛.

Combating historic declines with a commitment to excellence, opportunity and innovation

On the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Virginia had a 13-point drop in fourth-grade reading since 2017 (the largest reading decline in the nation) and a 12-point drop in fourth-grade math (tied with Maryland as the largest math decline). Both declines are nearly three times the national average in learning loss, and they began before the pandemic as previous administrations lowered expectations across the board. The pandemic worsened everything, of course. As a result, we鈥檙e on the verge of losing an entire generation of students.

This tragic reality has fueled our sense of urgency and commitment to change in Virginia. Nothing but boldness will suffice. We know that Virginia has excellent schools, but not every student and family has access to that excellence. We are relying on a much broader set of innovative solutions, and tapping into the expertise of educators and community partners to ensure that every student can attend a school that prepares them for success in life.

For example, 19 (and counting) partnerships have applied to take advantage of the $100 million we have earmarked for , which will stimulate innovative approaches to teaching and learning; encourage greater collaboration among K-12, postsecondary, business and other community partners; and develop model programs that can be replicated. In Southwest Virginia, public schools, community colleges, and local hospitals are collaborating to develop a school to prepare students for careers in health care, which will help support these traditionally underserved communities. On the eastern shore, NASA, Virginia Space, the local community college, and aerospace companies are working with K-12 school districts to launch an aerospace-focused school as part of the goal to make the area the 鈥渟pace hub of the east coast.鈥� Efforts like these are breaking down the walls between education and work, blowing up the one-size-fits-all approach to education, and providing students, especially those who have been marginalized in the past, exposure to the careers of the future.

To help support and accelerate efforts such as these, we鈥檝e created an Office of Innovation within the Virginia Department of Education. This office will not only catalog innovative approaches throughout Virginia, but also network and learn from them so we can replicate success in every corner of the commonwealth. Together with education stakeholders, we will continue to dive into the important and tough questions such as:

•  Why doesn鈥檛 the commonwealth have more Thomas Jefferson High Schools, the highly acclaimed STEM school, when the waiting list shows huge demand for many more?

• Why are colleges lowering admissions standards at the end of students鈥� K-12 journeys, when it is much more effective (and fair) to focus on challenging them and preparing them from their earliest years? That鈥檚 why we are rethinking gifted/talented and similar programs to provide historically underrepresented kids access to educational opportunities that some children have always had. In addition, the is revamping how we teach all students to read鈥攅nsuring that all instructional materials, professional development, licensure, and teacher prep are based in the science of reading by the 2024-25 school year.
• What can we learn from the new tutoring and mentoring partnerships among K-12, the Urban League, and historically Black colleges and universities in the Petersburg and Hampton Roads areas that can be scaled statewide and nationally?

Empowering families

Parents matter. They deserve to not only have a seat at the table, but to be at the head. We are proactively empowering parents with more actionable information and greater options for their child to access excellence. 

Parents have inflated perceptions of student achievement. National research documents that 90% of parents believe their child is at or above grade level in reading and math. In reality, only 37% of students nationally perform at or above grade level in reading and math鈥攁 53% gap between parent perception and reality. This is largely due to a lack of transparency around student proficiency and a dearth of effective communication with parents. 

Therefore, Virginia is preparing data reports that tell the truth about where every student and school stands. This year, for the first time ever, schools sent every parent and teacher the same understandable, actionable academic proficiency report, showing a clear picture of how their students were performing and offering discussion topics to support student success. The Virginia Department of Education has also created a complementary online portal, , which includes easy-to-read charts and tables showing a student鈥檚 performance compared to their peers. 

Thanks to a work group created in our latest legislative session, we are developing an online parent portal that will give parents quality information so they are informed champions and partners in their children鈥檚 education. The State Board of Education is also revising our school accreditation system so that there is clear, easy-to-digest information about the academic proficiency and progress of students in every K-12 school in the commonwealth. 

We are using data as a flashlight, not a hammer, to inform better decisions at kitchen tables, classrooms, school boards, and the State Capitol. A professional learning community of 25 school districts is helping us develop tools and supports to use this data effectively. Our goal is for every off-track student to have a personalized learning plan with a set of actions to address learning gaps. These plans will be developed and implemented in partnership with teachers, parents, and students.  We鈥檒l also train teachers on how to communicate with parents and students about the steps to get a student to grade-level proficiency. 

To combat the drastic impact of COVID-19 school closures on students鈥� educational progress and address the earlier decline in proficiency, we provided $63 million in grants to help families access tutoring services this summer. We have also been increasing awareness of the Education Improvement Scholarship Tax Credit so that more families can afford to send their children to schools that can better meet their academic needs. In all this work, we are empowering parents鈥攚ith better information and, when possible, financial support, while always ensuring that they are at the head of the table.

Breaking down silos to provide multiple pathways to success for all Virginia learners

We must also increase exposure, experience, and expertise in the world of work in high school and postsecondary education. To achieve this, Governor Youngkin has vowed to further blur the lines and increase coordination between K-12, higher education, and the workplace. Our goal is that every high school student graduates with an industry-recognized credential and/or an associate degree. We will do this by expanding career and technical education, launching lab schools, and accelerating dual enrollment partnerships between high schools and community colleges. 

Our colleges have an equally urgent focus on connecting learning with working. The business community, higher education, administration, and General Assembly are all committed to the Virginia Talent & Opportunity Program, which aims to ensure a paid work experience for every college student while in school. Fast Forward, a short-term workforce credential and training program in Virginia鈥檚 community colleges, provides affordable opportunities for students to receive training and credentialing in high-demand industries like information technology, skilled trades, infrastructure, and healthcare. The Virginia Community College Board voted this past year to allow high school students to take advantage of this program as well. Additionally, our G3 program, a tuition assistance program for Virginia students, is aiding community college students in high-demand industries.

Virginia, like every other state in the country and every other country in the world, is competing for talent. Quality schools are the foundation and door-opener. The good news is that we know how to improve student success: with high expectations, great instruction, transparency, accountability, and a commitment to innovation. Given the setbacks of the past several years, however, we鈥檙e now in an all-hands-on-deck moment in Virginia. By law, Governor Youngkin is limited to a single four-year term. We鈥檙e not wasting a minute.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

It was 2018, and 17-year-old Daniella was one of our students at Da Vinci RISE High School. She was an artist interested in graphic design and braiding hair. 

But as a young person in Los Angeles鈥檚 foster care system, she spent less time thinking about her passions and more time worrying about her day-to-day survival because her 18th birthday was approaching. On that date, she鈥檇 age out of the foster care system overnight, lose access to youth housing resources and be on her own financially. On top of that, Daniella, whose name has been changed in this piece to protect her privacy, was pregnant. 

She was increasingly focused on questions like, 鈥淗ow do I find housing?鈥� 鈥淗ow do I prepare for motherhood?鈥� 鈥淗ow will I afford to live?鈥�

In Los Angeles County alone, there are . Another 7,000 of the county鈥檚 children are in foster care. The vast majority of these young people, like Daniella, face challenges that would disrupt the lives of even the most well-resourced adults. The result is that many attend school intermittently, if at all, and are invisible to the traditional school system, which rarely meets their complex needs.

We created to serve Daniella and many others like her in our community. We鈥檙e able to do so because we designed a school that bucks the traditional model, with more flexible, personalized learning and supports tailored for each individual student鈥檚 needs. 

For Daniella, we helped tailor her education to address her changing life circumstances: as a part of her project, she created a personalized budget, applied for jobs, explored mothering classes, investigated the process to access housing, and what it means for foster youth, all while still demonstrating her individual subject mastery on nationally recognized growth assessments. We use these assessments to inform our teaching and to help young people who feel beaten down by standardized tests get a more nuanced view of where they are making progress.

Listening to students is just one way to rethink high school. For more, check out The XQ Xtra, a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

We, as principal and executive director of RISE, both know this student population well. We are born and raised Angelenos, and while we started our teaching journeys on opposite sides of the country 鈥� Naomi at an independent study charter school in L.A. and Erin as a Teach For America instructor in Miami 鈥� we鈥檝e both spent our careers witnessing firsthand the stabilizing and healing power of flexible, personalized education for students whose lives are complicated and unstable outside of the classroom. Our shared belief that each student鈥檚 unique journey is worth embracing is what drives Da Vinci RISE, which opened in 2017 with support from the nonprofit XQ Institute.

No two RISE students are exactly alike, but almost all of the 200 young people we serve each year have been failed by the traditional school system. Of the 108 RISE alumni to date, 15% were in foster care, 7% were homeless, 8% were on probation, and 10% were involved in more than one system. These are students who may be older than the typical high school student, they might be on probation, they might be young parents and/or they may have full-time jobs, all of which can get in the way of school being their number one priority. Compared with other students across the L.A. school district, RISE students are twice as likely to have diagnosed disabilities, three times as likely to be experiencing homelessness, and 20 times as likely to be in the foster care system. 

Just like any other young person, our students want to be successful. They have passions, big dreams and goals; they just haven鈥檛 had access to the resources to achieve them. At RISE, we know our students are resilient and have had to be more strategic and agile than even many of the most successful adults. We work to access their hearts and minds, learn each student鈥檚 individual needs and circumstances and then build the education around them. 

In the traditional, one-size-fits-all school system, the challenges outside the classroom for a student like Daniella are beyond any school鈥檚 scope of responsibilities and resources. But at RISE, Daniella knew a team of people were there to help meet her needs. She trusted us enough to ask for that help. And we responded by asking ourselves: how can we design an educational track to help her build the skill sets she needs for survival while also building the academic mastery she needs to graduate?

Watch this video to learn more about Da Vinci RISE:

When we first partnered with XQ, we moved through a design process that put the needs of these diverse young people front and center. We realized that for our students, everything starts with a physical environment where they feel secure and supported. RISE鈥檚 classrooms are essentially one- or two-room schools, integrated on-site at three community-based social service providers in high-need areas across Los Angeles. These clean, high-quality sites provide a sense of physical safety to our students and allow mental health professionals, case managers, behavior interventionists, psychologists and counselors to collaborate directly with teachers and students about each individual young person鈥檚 needs so students can access critical services and resources as a part of their everyday academic experience. 

We recruit staff and volunteers with a keen eye for folks who have shared experiences with our youth and RISE centers our students in the hiring process to provide them with a voice into who comes into the community. We build a strong, small, tight-knit, nurturing community, and our educators receive special training in trauma-informed care, nonviolent crisis intervention, and restorative practices. are among the six research-backed for creating high schools that prepare all students for the future. On XQ鈥檚 latest Social Emotional Learning Survey of the class of 2023, 98% of RISE students said they had at least one teacher or other adult in the school they could talk to if they had a problem. 

Every conversation our staff has with our students, whether it鈥檚 about their circumstances outside of school, the schedules of their daily lives, or their different learning pathways, is always based around the question, 鈥淗ow can we make school most relevant to you?鈥� We use the , research-based skills describing what all students should know and be able to do to succeed in the future 鈥� whether that鈥檚 college, career or another path. All students need to be critical thinkers who can master content while collaborating and problem-solving. And because tests alone aren鈥檛 sufficient, we use the to track our students鈥� individual progress toward these goals and toward California鈥檚 requirements for getting into four-year state colleges and universities.

We also provide RISE students with personalized, project-based learning tailored to their individual needs, passions, and goals, working closely with each student to meet them where they鈥檙e at. Each student鈥檚 schedule is flexible, combining in-person learning on two to four days a week at one of our three locations with online learning year-round. We bring in partners from arts, medicine, media, engineering, business and beyond. We just bought a van to pick up students who aren鈥檛 able to come to school. Our students are not well served by the traditional testing models, so we engage with students head-on about testing in order to shift their mindset and show how testing can be an opportunity to demonstrate their growth and mastery of academic subjects and recover credits toward graduation.

Ultimately, Daniella graduated from RISE. She had a beautiful, healthy child. She developed the life and parenting skills she needed to navigate into the next chapter of her life as an independent adult and mother. Daniella graduated from cosmetology school and continued her passion for styling hair. She is a RISE success story. 

But there are a lot of Daniellas in Los Angeles, and the reality is that after the pandemic, the stakes for these students are the highest they鈥檝e ever been. The foster population is . In traditional schools, there’s an uptick in unfair disciplinary practices, and more students than ever are entering the school-to-prison pipeline. Even before COVID, California students who experienced homelessness were twice as likely to be chronically absent, . What we鈥檙e learning at RISE is relevant for schools throughout the country struggling with since the pandemic. 

Our model is expensive, no doubt. In California鈥檚 funding system, we can鈥檛 get money for keeping students enrolled and working if they鈥檙e not coming to campus or completing school work on a traditional schedule, which is why we rely on outside fundraising. But RISE is more than a national model for other schools that want to serve these students. It鈥檚 a movement built around completely reimagining how we treat and respect young people in this country. And it starts by seeing and engaging with the individual needs of every single student so they have the agency, power and joy of determining their own future.

Do you want to learn more about how to rethink high school? The XQ Xtra is a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of 社区黑料.