In the spring, I published School Rethink 2.0: Putting Reinvention Into Practice with Michael Horn, a co-founder and distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute, and Juliet Squire. We recruited 13 contributors who lead organizations involved in the hard work of changing assessment, curricula, staffing, and more, and got them to talk about what happens when the rubber meets the road. We’ve been pleased by the early reception to this book, some of which prompted Juliet to pen a note reflecting on some of the lessons she learned. A veteran of the New Jersey education department and a senior partner at Bellwether, Juliet always has useful things to say. I asked if she’d mind dressing up her note and allowing me to share it with you. She assented, so here you go:
—Rick

Dear Rick,

It’s easy to bemoan how K–12 pandemic-era learning loss has erased decades of progress nationwide. But before the downward trend in student outcomes began, it was just as easy to celebrate incremental improvements. It is harder to confront the reality that, even when scores ticked upward with relative consistency, progress has always failed to keep pace with the changing demands of today’s economy and society. If we truly want to prepare all students for long-term success, we need bold new ideas for the future of learning, and they must be paired with the hard-won insights of practitioners who have navigated real change.

Bold ideas and skillful practice are both needed to create lasting change. When discussing policy, implementation rarely gets the spotlight, but when you bring experts in curriculum and assessment together with practitioners on the bleeding edge of personalized learning, artificial intelligence, the education workforce, and beyond, the path to rethinking K–12 schooling becomes much clearer. That’s because the real key to transformation isn’t just coming up with new ideas—it’s ensuring those ideas are grounded in the realities of what is required to translate them into action. This principle is evident in three lessons from practitioners featured in School Rethink 2.0.

First, rethinking K–12 education requires breaking away from entrenched systems. Corey Mohn, the executive director of the CAPS Network, asks us, “How many times have we let the routine operations of our systems become invisible, such that they are no longer top of mind when we consider what we can add, what we can remove, and what can evolve or otherwise change? We assume that some things are absolute truth and therefore immovable.” Challenging invisible routines like daily school schedules was essential to Mohn’s efforts to expand profession-based learning. Rethinking the status quo of classroom-based learning allows the CAPS Network to take students out of the classroom and ask them to solve real problems in their communities—in one instance, by designing a chair that provides sensory pressure to help autistic students. Real change in education requires challenging long-held assumptions of what schooling looks like.

Though rethinking these assumptions is important, it’s not easy. Scott Ellis of Mastery Track describes the challenges of setting aside systems and norms like seat-time requirements in favor of mastery-based learning. Joel Rose saw similar pushback when implementing his personalized math program, School of One, since structural barriers related to school schedules and state assessments made scaling the program a significant challenge.

Second, rethinking K–12 education requires clarity of purpose—the why behind a big change. Because the underlying systems and structures of how we use time, talent, and technology are so familiar, changing them is necessarily disruptive to the daily experiences of students, educators, and parents. For a change to be successful, its proponents must clearly and consistently articulate why the disruption is worth the hassle. The Learning Accelerator’s Beth Rabbitt says that clarifying the why behind a change is just as important as the what or the how. Reflecting on one of The Learning Accelerator’s school partnerships, Rabbitt recalls the challenges of supporting an instructional team to adopt personalization strategies: “We often forget that we are in the business of human development and that schools and districts are social systems.”

Defining the “why” also clears the path for the way points that are often necessary for bold change. Stand Together’s Adam Peshek has rooted his work, which is deep in the weeds of education choice policy, in a clear “why.” Keeping this broader goal in sight helps ensure that policymakers and advocates don’t mistake short-term compromises for long-term goals. For instance, legislation often gets watered down in the process of political negotiation and can dilute its impact. When that legislation passes, effective advocacy requires taking the win—but it also requires that policymakers and advocates not lose sight of the additional work required to continue to push toward the legislation’s original purpose. In policy and practice, it’s too common to become wedded to a proximate or incremental success in the short term and lose sight of the long-term goal.

Third, rethinking K–12 education requires iteration and adaptation. Mike McShane of EdChoice considers the short-cycle opportunities to test and refine ideas to be a major benefit of the emerging sector of small schools. He observes that education is rife with new approaches that work in one school but have limited impact when replicated in another—often because of insufficient time and attention to the adjustments that are necessary for the solution to fit the needs of a new context. In narrating their experimentation with ChatGPT in late 2022 and early 2023, Sal Khan and his co-authors Kristen DiCerbo and Rachel Boroditsky describe the cycle of iteration and the experience of “riding the Gartner hype cycle, going from the peak of inflated expectations ... To the trough of disillusionment … and finally climbing the slope of enlightenment.” Khan’s team gives voice not only to the need for iteration but also to the moments of frustration and discouragement that often accompany that process.

Real changes are needed; incremental changes to student outcomes are not enough. But the most effective leaders in transforming education aren’t looking for silver bullets. They know real change involves challenging existing assumptions, communicating why change is needed, and iterating on new solutions. It also requires listening to the skilled practitioners who are engaged in the messy day-to-day work that should be at the center of any efforts to rethink education.