Earlier this summer, Kelly Young, President and Founder of Education Reimagined, shared her thoughts on what infrastructure is needed to enable learner-centered ecosystems to thrive. In her article, Young writes:
“Luckily, there are pieces of this infrastructure already out there, whether they are being deployed in a single learner-centered environment, a micro-school, or in an out-of-school-time program. We are not starting from scratch.”
Young goes on to share a few other places currently working on infrastructure needs. Specifically, she writes about funding mechanisms, navigation, credentialing, and transportation. Here are some of the highlights from Young’s commentary:
“Funding mechanisms. Utilizing a portion of the state’s per-pupil funding allocated to school districts, the ‘My Tech High’ program provides students and parents access to high-quality personalized education resources, certified teachers, tutors, and mentors at no cost to the family. Depending on how the students learn best, they can choose a mix of book-based, online, or community-based classes.”
“Navigation. ‘Reschool Colorado,’ led by Amy Anderson, has piloted providing ‘learner advocates’ to families to support them in designing engaging learning pathways. Their ‘Learner Advocate Network (LAN)’ guides learners and their working parents in forging a purposeful and relevant learning path by supporting them in making decisions about learning that happens both in and outside school.”
“Credentialing. ‘VLACS’ in New Hampshire is credentialing learning no matter where it happens, enabling learning that happens outside of the school of record to count for learners. Because of competency-based legislation in New Hampshire, ‘VLACS’ is able to credential learning that happens in conventional and non-conventional settings – from learning that happens in an asynchronous class to a robotics competition.”
“Transportation. ‘A for Arizona’ is intended to provide grant money ‘to seed community-driven solutions and test ideas quickly to maximize opportunities and impact for students now.’ One solution in the state has been to modernize the transportation system, allowing for more access to programs for all Arizona youth. They are providing grants to people who are solving the problem of kids getting to out-of-school-time options, learning supports, and appropriate learning environments, using creative means.”
Young concludes her article by asking her readers to answer the following questions:
“What kinds of infrastructure will be required to support families and communities to embrace a fully thriving learner-centered ecosystem?”
“What do you see it will really take?”
“And, where do you see it already happening?”
Here are my answers to Young’s questions:
Regarding an infrastructure supporting families and communities, what we already know is that our current traditional system has failed and continues to fail at achieving this type of structural support. Supporting families and communities will require a new type of learning organization. I like to call it “The Learning Center.” “The Learning Center” is the place where young learners, their families, and their communities come together to form learning cohorts to work with well-trained learning coaches (similar to what Amy Anderson and Reschool Colorado is working on.) Young learners, their families and their communities, and their learning coaches all work together to create an individualized learning plan for every young learner. The personalized learning plan defines, plans, executes, and evaluates each goal contained within the plan. Reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development goals, along with individual passions, are the main learning goals inside the plan. Schools might be able to play a role in some of this work, but we need to stop seeing these places as the “end all, be all” when it comes to where learning occurs.
What will it really take to see these learning centers, learning coaches, and learning plans to be created and develop?
- Public funding moved from the traditional school system to this new learning system.
- Learner choice, including family choice, regarding where, when, how, and what learning happens
- Learning coach recruitment and training
- Learning cohort (with a cohort numbering around 20 young learners) recruitment and development
- Budget and support plan developed
- Learning cohort research and evaluation criteria developed
That’s it. To me, that’s what it will really take to see this new type of learning system to appear and grow at scale.
Where do I see it happening? The frustrating answer to this question is no where at scale.
And that has been one of my criticisms of groups like Education Reimagined. Finding groups like “A for Arizona,” “VLACS,” or “My Tech High” is all well and good. But what we need Education Reimagined, and other organizations like them, to spend more time doing is figuring out how public funding can be moved from the traditional schools to different spaces, how we build capacity to allow young learners and their families to practice real “learner choice,” how we build a world-class learning coach training center, and how we use recent relationship research to build strong learning cohorts between young learners and their adult learning leaders.
We know about the “boutique” stories when it comes to learner-centered ecosystems.
It’s now time to take it to a higher level and take on the tough issues standing in the way of giving a better learning system to our children.
I’ll be away for a while, enjoying some time in Minnesota and other places. I’ll be back September 6th.
Til then. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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