Education Reimagined & The Big Idea

I noticed Education Reimagined, a Washington D.C.-based group committed to a different learning system for our young people, released a new resource titled The Big Idea. According to ER, “The Big Idea is designed to spark new conversations and inspire people to imagine a world of thriving learner-centered ecosystems. We are eager to grow the number of people exploring this possibility and grappling with what it would take to invent a public education system capable of supporting and enabling ecosystems to thrive.”

ER’s vision for a vibrant, inclusive, community-based ecosystem of learning suggests “The possibility before us is a future in which education is no longer an isolated institution that judges and promotes young people based on comparisons to averages (built to sift and sort kids into century-old categories of expected lifetime achievement.) Rather, the education system becomes the backbone to dynamic, interdependent ecosystems where the community and world are the playgrounds for learning: equity, human dignity, and liberation are fostered; and young people – no matter who they are or where they are from – are supported to thrive and contribute in a complex, fast-changing, and interconnected world.”

ER believes “What is missing for these learner-centered experiences to spread and be made equitably available is the infrastructure (bold type added by ER,) or the connective tissue, to enable them. We have an infrastructure that undergirds the current system, reinforcing the standardized, stratified approach to education invented in the Industrial era. We need to invent a learner-centered infrastructure that can support thriving, dynamic ecosystems of learning and demonstrate what those ecosystems make possible in enough communities to prove their results for the full diversity of youth in our country.”

Sound good? We thought so several years ago when a several educators and I formed a group within Education Reimagined called “School’s Out.” Our School’s Out group believed much of what Education Reimagined writes above. We favored a community-based strategy over a school-based one to achieve a true learner-centered approach. At the time, it seemed Education Reimagined was unsure what role the school plays in this new order. School’s Out (of which one member continues to serve as a school superintendent) believed the traditional system might be able to play a role in the new order, but schools could no longer think of themselves as the “be all, end all” when it came to being an effective and efficient learning system.

If ER is looking for the infrastructure needed to launch their “Big Idea,” then it seems unlikely they will find it within the traditional public school system. Sure, you can find a leader here and there that is progressive in their thinking, and that has a supportive school board willing to make change. But I’m afraid the reality of most public school systems tells us that they are unwilling to make this shift, a shift that could cost them power and authority when it comes to making decisions related to our kids.

It will be interesting to see how Education Reimagined, and others like them, approach traditional school leadership moving forward. Will they continue to believe the traditionalists can and will change their practice and embrace their “Big Idea?” Or will they conclude that most traditional districts are not interested in change, for whatever reason, and “cut the cord” to begin the process of building a new and improved learning system.

Traditional districts often behave like biological organisms practicing predation, where they attack, kill, and consume whatever they feel is threatening them. It will be interesting to see how the traditional system reacts to ER’s “Big Idea.”

Til tomorrow. SVB