A Mandate and A Framework for Action
I had two experiences this past summer that strengthened my sense of urgency and resolve to continue to work for change in our schools. And in recent research for a new book, my colleagues and I have seen successful work in communities that has transformed learning for all kids. Taken together, what I have recently learned suggests both a mandate and a framework for action.
The first experience came when I was asked to speak at a state’s end-of-school-year superintendents’ conference—including a formal presentation and a breakout. I decided to bill my small group session as simply “a conversation” with no formal agenda. This was the first time I'd had an opportunity to talk informally with a group of superintendents since COVID, and I wanted to hear what they might have to say.
Given that I had already spoken to the full group, I didn't expect many superintendents to come to this second session. I was wrong, though. More than half of the superintendents came to my breakout. But what came as even more of a surprise was what they wanted to talk about.
Superintendents’ Despair
One by one, they began to describe their and their communities’ dissatisfaction with the systems they were leading. Several talked about difficulties in passing increases to their budgets, but amazingly, they were not blaming their communities. In fact, they said they understood why the community was reluctant to keep spending more money for schooling that didn’t seem to be meeting kids’ needs. Absenteeism was a growing problem. And even when students were physically in classrooms, most seemed mentally checked out.
The curriculum didn't engage the kids, several acknowledged. But again, they were not blaming the teachers who were teaching the required curriculum. They blamed the system, their system. “It doesn’t offer kids meaningful choices,” one superintended said. “The world has changed, kids have changed, and the curriculum hasn’t. Most of what’s taught in their academic classes just seems irrelevant to these kids.”
Another superintendent admitted to the group that he couldn’t wait for his son to get out of his district’s comprehensive high school. “He wants to work with his hands,” this man said. “There’s nothing for him in our high school. He’s totally unmotivated, and he can’t wait to go to the career technical school. The problem is that there's not enough space in the program for all the kids who want it—and need it,” he continued. “The system ought to respond to the needs and desires of kids and families, but it’s just not doing it!”
His comment led a female superintendent to reveal that she was sending her daughter to a charter school. “She was unhappy in our ‘good’ school system. Nothing engaged her. But I feel badly sending my own child to a charter school rather than having her attend a school in the district I'm leading.” I sensed that this superintendent felt like she was betraying her own school district by sending her child to the “competition.”
In more than 35 years of working with and listening to superintendents across the country, I had never heard comments like these before. And it wasn't just a couple of outliers who were voicing criticisms. Many of the others who did not speak listened intently and often nodded their agreement.
The hardest part for me was to hear their sense of resignation. For quite a few years now, since the dramatic increase in testing requirements and punitive education reforms have filtered their way down from national and state legislators to school districts, I’ve heard the sense of despair in some teachers’ voices as they’ve told me they feel like victims of a broken system. I have also heard growing numbers of parents complain about their children's boring classes and lack of responsiveness from “the system.” But never superintendents. In years past, when I have spoken with district leaders, most projected a sense of optimism and a belief that they were in control, had all the answers. But not this group. They knew their systems were broken, and they felt completely powerless to do anything about it.
What I Learned from My Grandchildren
Several months later, I had another conversation that shook me. And it was in my own home.
My two eldest granddaughters and a good friend of theirs had come to visit us on the lake for the weekend. They all went to high school together in a school system that was considered one of the best in the state—a state that is considered to have one of the best education systems in the country. The best of the best. Only it wasn't for them.
For years, when I have asked my two granddaughters what they were learning in school that was of interest to them, they've answered with a shrug and a frown. Their classes were boring, they told me, over and over again, year after year. It wasn't just some of the classes, some of the time. It was their overwhelming experience of school.
These are good, conscientious kids—kids any parent would be proud of, any teacher would be pleased to have in their classroom. They are lively, engaged, fun to be around. But in school they did the minimum needed to get decent grades and trudged on. It was only on the athletic fields where they found some purpose, something that engaged them.
Their parents had a modest home, yet they were paying exorbitant property taxes in a state known for its high property taxes. They saw their kids’ disengagement, and they sometimes struggled with getting them out of bed and to school in the mornings. But they, like their daughters, believed this was just the nature of the universe, and there was nothing that they could do. So they spent an enormous amount of time each week taking their kids to sports practices and to games, knowing that these were what excited their children.
For some reason, on this warm summer evening, with my captive audience of three adolescents sitting around the dinner table, I decided that I wanted to have a different kind of conversation about education with them. I asked them simply: Were there things that they would like to learn more about? What made them curious?
The dinner table erupted. Between the three of them, there was an outpouring of questions and ideas. As they spoke, I tried to write down some of the things they were eager to learn about, but I could hardly keep up. It was as if one girl's answer to my question triggered two more answers from the girl beside her.
When was the first person born? How did languages come about? What are universes and how many are there? What was 9/11 about? What really happened in the Holocaust, and how could people have allowed it to happen? One girl wanted to learn more about the life of Helen Keller. Another wanted to understand what slavery was really like, and why it existed for so long. Still, another wanted to know all about Alzheimer's. Then there were questions about Native American tribes, Salem witches, and the founding of the US. How to bake a cake.
And this was just in the space of ten minutes or so. I was surprised and delighted by their exuberance and incredible energy. But then, after they left the table, I wept.
The human waste! Years and years of going to classes, and “the system” had never made time to ask what was it that these kids really wanted to learn. It was the same when I went to school. That’s why I became an educator and have written books. I wanted so much more for my children, my students, and now for my grandchildren and their generation.
For these kids and the superintendents, the routines of school feel inevitable and unchanging. They grind down students and adults alike. But it doesn't have to be this way. We, the adults, can and must act. We are powerless only to the extent that we remain isolated and disconnected from others who might share our views.
Places of Hope
In researching our new book on mastery-based learning to be published in 2025, my colleagues Ulrik Christensen, Sujata Bhatt, and I have visited many communities where things are very different—where the adults have taken collective action. These are places around the country and elsewhere in the world where adults have come together to talk about what school could be and have crafted a new profile of a graduate—expectations of what students should know and be able to do. And once the new graduate profiles were commonly understood and a part of classroom instruction, parents and community members then attended student defenses of learning and exhibitions of mastery connected to the new graduate profiles. They have also worked together to create new opportunities for student internships and to learn outside the classroom.
Curiosity, enthusiasm, creativity, and joy have replaced boredom and resignation in these schools. Students have both voice and choice. Teachers relish the flexibility they’re given to craft a more engaging curriculum for the needs and interests of individual children. School leaders excitedly describe their schools’ and districts’ new directions. The communities express pride, ownership and responsibility for their schools.
Challenging Conventions
What these and other efforts to transform education have in common, we've learned, is that they challenge three fundamental conventions of our education system. First, instead of focusing primarily on the acquisition and retention of academic content knowledge, most graduate profiles and other successful efforts to rethink learning outcomes focus primarily on students’ development of essential skills.
Learning to write well for a variety of audiences is a vital skill and far more important than memorizing the parts of speech that are quickly forgotten, for example. You don't need to know the definition of a gerund to write an effective paragraph. More generally, we have come to understand that in an age of information glut and constant change, the world simply no longer cares how much our students know. What matters most is what they can do with what they know. Academic content knowledge still matters, but in the 21st century, the skills needed to apply knowledge to new problems matter more, and motivation matters most. Developing the skills required for productive work, active and informed civic engagement, and personal health and well-being must take precedence over an ossified academic curriculum that has seen little change in more than a century.
Efforts to standardize education outcomes at the beginning of the 20th century led to the second fundamental design flaw of our education system. Around the world, learning is measured by units of time—Carnegie units and credit hours. A high school degree requires that students earn sixteen Carnegie units. Each unit represents one hundred and twenty hours of “seat time served” in a classroom, nothing more. Credit hours in college are the same. As one woman told me in a recent interview, her high school and college diplomas were really only “certificates of attendance,” not evidence of mastery.
For decades, research has documented that people learn in different ways and at different rates. To expect every student to arrive at the same level of competence within a given timeframe is a holdover from a century-old education system that was modeled after factory assembly lines. The most successful schools my coauthors and I visited allow students to take whatever time they need to be able to demonstrate proficiency in essential skills, assessed by clearly defined performance standards. Given sufficient time, virtually every student can succeed in such a system.
Finally, these transformed school systems strengthen curiosity and intrinsic motivation for learning by encouraging students to show mastery in ways that reflect their own needs and interests. There are many ways to demonstrate that one can write well or think critically, for example. And so students are empowered to document their learning and skill development in digital portfolios as they pursue their own questions, interests, and ideas. A standardized curriculum gives way to individualizing learning while maintaining consistently high expectations for all students.
Dialogue versus Debate
So how does a school or district initiate the journey to reimagine education for the 21st century for all students? We’ve found that successful change efforts begin with respectful dialogue about what our kids most need to thrive in a rapidly changing world. Adults must understand the risks to kids of not being prepared for a future that will be very different from their parents’ past. Such conversations are the springboard for creating a meaningful graduate profile. Over time, these dialogues can nurture trust and build a sense of shared purpose.
Across the country, our communities need to heal from deeply divisive wounds and overcome isolation and ennui. This healing can and must start with our schools. Change is possible, but only with courageous leadership and educators who are willing to take responsible risks. Rabbi Hillel, one of the great thinkers in Jewish history, challenged his followers two thousand years ago, saying: “If not you, then who? If not now, then when?” Our kids’ futures and the health of our democracy hang in the balance.
Tony Wagner is a former high school teacher and the author of seven books, including The Global Achievement Gap, Creating Innovators, and his recently published memoir, Learning by Heart. His latest book, Mastery: The Future of Learning will be published in 2025 by Basic Books. He can be reached via his website tonywagner.com