Most Likely To Be a Timeless Classic
When it was released in 2015, the film Most Likely to Succeed had a profound and lasting impact on my life—one that continues to shape my actions, even today. I can still sense the excitement and clarity I felt on that crisp day in 2015 as I left Lyndale Theater, a quaint, historic movie theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota that screened the film. The screening was part of a tour of America conducted by Ted Dintersmith, the film's executive producer, to rally people around the film and its message. That rallying call was the catalyst for a movement that lives on today.
Prior to the screening, I had recently won a national teaching award and been approached to create a new public charter school based on the principles of my teaching practices. Before seeing Most Likely to Succeed, my vision of what school could be was largely limited to what I had experienced growing up as a student in the public school system and the pedagogical shifts I had experimented with in my classroom. After seeing the film, my mind was buzzing with the potential of a new educational paradigm, one that met the moment and the challenges I was seeing on the ground.
In my day-to-day experience as a young teacher, I saw firsthand the problems kids were experiencing in high school. While I was able to help my students grow as humans and develop their math skills in the isolated domain of my classroom, I knew it wasn’t enough. The trust and rapport I built with students opened my eyes to the myriad of hardships young people were facing. Most of my students felt trapped in the game of school, having little to no say in what or how they learned. Some saw school as a means to an end; they were hyper-competitive about grades, but learning was of little importance. The ripple effects of these issues were deeply troubling to me.
Before seeing Most Likely to Succeed, I was just beginning to understand the relationship between America’s youth mental health epidemic and our antiquated schooling system. It felt like an urgent crisis to address, and yet I didn’t feel that society at large or educational decision-makers recognized the weight of the problem. I was becoming increasingly frustrated by the complacency of those around me and, more broadly, by an educational system that was neglecting the needs of students and our society.
Then I saw Most Likely to Succeed, and everything changed.
The film did two things remarkably well:
It made a compelling case for why the conventional public education system is not aligned with the needs of individuals or society today.
It showcased an example in High Tech High (HTH) of what a reimagined school could look like when it was aligned with the educational needs of today—without offering a prescriptive formula for change.
By pairing together the big-picture why with a hyper-contextualized how, the film was able to open people’s minds to a different possibility–one that was tangible, real, and successful.
Barriers to Change
It’s not just that legacy systems in education persist—things like seat time to earn credit, isolated classrooms where teachers teach alone, and prescribed curricula that have students moving in lockstep with their same-age peers. It’s also that the people operating these systems—teachers, administrators, and policymakers—are emotionally invested in perpetuating what worked well enough to get them where they are today. Many adults have a clear mental picture of what school looks like, and it’s typically some version of the school they experienced as children. As a result, large-scale changes to education have been more elusive than in any other industry.
This is why Most Likely to Succeed was such a revelation. It illuminated the need for change and showed how it could be done while working within the constraints of the public education system. The film didn’t just criticize conventional education for being outdated and misaligned with today’s world; it offered hope by showing an alternative vision. HTH wasn’t just an abstract idea or a fleeting experiment—it was a functional learning ecosystem with real students thriving in an environment that valued collaboration, problem-solving, and public exhibitions of learning. The film was equal parts practical and aspirational, offering a tangible vision of what school could be while reminding us that it doesn’t have to follow a rigid formula.
To honor the film’s ongoing legacy at its 10th anniversary, I want to call out some of the reasons it has such staying power.
A Clear Why
Most Likely to Succeed powerfully articulates that our educational system isn’t broken—it was designed for a different era. The film traces the roots of our current system back to 1892, when the Committee of Ten set recommendations for standardizing curricula to help transition from a primarily rural, agrarian society to an increasingly urban, industrial society. Decades earlier, Horace Mann visited Europe and became enamored by the Prussian system of education in which kids were sorted by age and taught discrete subjects in isolation—something completely new to the world at the time. Popularized by Mann, the Prussian model took off in America with the growing need to prepare workers for factory jobs where basic literacy, obedience, and the ability to do rote tasks were paramount. Fast forward 120 years and, as the late Sir Ken Robinson describes in the film, “We [still] divide the day up in high school into bits of time, to 40 or 50-minute blocks typically, and then we ring bells and people start to shuffle around the building. That’s an organizational device, not an educational principle.”
While obedience and basic literacy fit the needs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the film makes a strong case for aligning with the vastly different needs of our time. Today’s world values creativity, adaptability, and critical thinking—skills that are often suppressed in the Prussian model. The routine jobs of the past are now becoming automated, leaving a gap between what students are learning and what will help them succeed throughout their lifetimes. As Stanford’s Linda Darling-Hammond points out in the film, the traits that lead to success today—resourcefulness, resilience, and a growth mindset—are not developed through rote memorization or standardized systems but through hands-on, meaningful learning experiences.
One of the film’s most striking moments illustrates this gap: A group of high-achieving students is asked if they would rather their teachers prepare them to ace a test or apply their learning to real life. Unanimously, they choose the test—a telling reflection of how deeply ingrained the system’s focus on test scores and grades has become. Sadly, many students have been conditioned to prioritize rank-and-sort metrics over real-world applications, and Most Likely to Succeed brought this to light.
This is the crux of the film’s argument: our conventional education model, designed for a bygone industrial era, is fundamentally misaligned with the needs of today’s students and society. Most Likely to Succeed makes it clear that the time for incremental change is over—whole-scale transformation is needed to prepare students for the challenges of their lifetimes.
A Vision of What’s Possible
While Most Likely to Succeed centers on High Tech High, it doesn’t claim this is the one right way to design schools. Instead, the film showcases key elements that differentiate HTH from conventional schools and invites viewers to consider how these features could be part of a reimagined education system.
One key feature at the heart of HTH is project-based learning, in which students learn by doing. In many ways, projects mirror how professionals work, collaboratively solving problems through a research and production-based process that utilizes trial and error as an essential facet of learning. As such, mistakes become a celebrated tool instead of a mechanism to rank and sort. These rich, human experiences activate the learning process, bringing it closer to the reality of how adults work and learn today, as well as how humans generally learned before the Prussians invented what we think of as conventional schooling.
This pedagogical shift represents a major break from conventional schooling, one that reshapes the dynamics of teaching in ways many educators find empowering and meaningful. One aspect of the project-based learning model used at HTH is co-teaching, where educators work together across disciplines. This collaborative approach breaks down the silos that typically isolate subjects and allows teachers to create rich interdisciplinary learning experiences that better reflect reality. Most Likely to Succeed captures many of these experiences through creative filmmaking, such as the powerful story of a boy who demonstrated perseverance, passion, and learning from failure on his Civilizations + Engineering project.
Another significant departure from conventional schooling is the commitment to ‘Teacher as Designer.’ Teachers at HTH have a great deal of autonomy in designing curricula and projects that deeply engage students. This shift away from a standardized curriculum prioritizes depth over breadth, giving students ownership over their learning, encouraging them to explore topics they care about, and ultimately moving them toward action. It’s a striking departure from passive experiences where teachers are asked to cover content while the student’s role is to acquire knowledge.
The physical environment at HTH is another divergence from the conventional model. Unlike many high schools, its learning spaces are intentionally designed to foster interaction, creativity, and experimentation. Most Likely to Succeed shows viewers HTH’s flexible array of spaces that support collaborative projects, active learning, and learner empowerment. Student work is prominently displayed, instilling a sense of ownership and pride in the space.
Another transformative element is the commitment to public exhibitions of learning. HTH students demonstrate their learning in school-wide showcases where they present their projects to their families, peers, and the community. This approach holds students and teachers accountable to a more meaningful standard of excellence than tests ever could. Most Likely to Succeed offers a glimpse into the preparation and execution of a public exhibition, allowing the viewer to feel the authenticity exploding like fireworks from the screen.
A Lasting Legacy
Watching Most Likely to Succeed reshaped my vision of what school could be. Inspired by the film, I co-founded Exploration High School in 2021, a school in Minneapolis that embraces being a “public school for public good.” I’ve transitioned from being a classroom teacher to a Learning Designer at Fielding International, where I can effect change in schools across America, and the world, by helping them align their learning ecosystems and create the conditions where all learners can thrive. One of the lasting lessons I’ve learned from Most Likely to Succeed is the importance of storytelling. This became crucial when Fielding International partnered with a public district in Rhode Island to document the transformation of one of their elementary schools through a film series that demonstrates how thoughtful design and implementation can catalyze learner-centered education.
Most Likely to Succeed continues to be a key reference point for educators and innovators alike. Many of the people I connect with in the education space describe the film’s release as a pivotal moment, shining a giant spotlight on how misaligned and antiquated our system is. The film continues to inspire conversations about how we can reimagine schools to better serve our students and communities. In my opinion, no other film achieves Most Likely to Succeed’s ability to articulate why we need an educational transformation or provides such a clear example from which to draw inspiration.
Finally, one of the most important legacies of Most Likely to Succeed is that it spurred a community-based movement, encouraging educators, parents, and policymakers to rethink what school could be. At a time when most conversations about education revolved around incremental improvements to a system that was never designed for today’s learners, Most Likely to Succeed offered a case for whole-scale, transformational change. It inspired hope, and that hope continues to drive the work of reimagining education today. That community-based movement helped launch What School Could Be, which houses useful resources such as the Innovation Playlist, and hosts events that bring people together to chart a better path forward.
Today, when I talk with people all over the United States, I find that the majority understand why schools must look, feel, and operate differently than schools in the past. There is an openness to rethinking things like how we use time, how we design space, how we shift teaching practices, how we empower students, and how we create holistically safe schools with goals that extend far beyond academic proficiency on standardized tests. Most Likely to Succeed has played a critical role in that collective mindset shift.
Ted Dintersmith's tour of America included filming screenings with community forums and highlighted local educational innovations that provided hope for the future, but we still have a long way to go. Pockets of innovation are happening across communities in America and across the globe, often swimming against the current of misaligned systems and well-intentioned but burdensome government mandates that make the ‘how’ inordinately difficult.
For anyone aspiring to a learner-centered future of education, watching Most Likely to Succeed is as relevant in 2025 as it was in 2015.
Nathan Strenge serves as a Senior Learning Designer with Fielding International, where he helps schools create the ideal conditions for learners to thrive. He is the co-founder and Board Chair of Exploration High School in Minneapolis, Minneapolis. Three main factors drive Nathan’s work: honoring the legacy of his brother Dan, shaping a more loving world for his three young daughters, and creating educational ecosystems that adapt to the unique needs and gifts of all.