Time to be Ready

What if we aren’t ready to offer enough “learner-based” education to the young learners and their families once they are demanding it? What if our only answer is to send those interested in a “learner-based” experience back to their same old traditional neighborhood school?

These are questions Demi Edwards, CEO and Co-Founder of Education Reimagined, recently took on in an essay titled “Demand for Learner-Centered Education is Rising. Let’s Be Ready.” Below are excerpts from Edwards’s writing:

“Across sectors, we hear overlapping aspirations. There are calls for career-connected learning that balances hands-on, industry-integrated experience with holistic child development. There’s growing agreement that our response to the rapid evolution of AI must center relationships, discernment, and humanity, while preparing young people to be thoughtful users of new technologies. We’re seeing a shift where relevance, adaptation, and real-world contribution – which may have taken a backseat in prior conversations – are becoming core design concepts across K-12 spaces.”

“The entry points may differ, but these are not calls for divergent approaches to education change. They are signals pointing toward a shared orientation. In Education Reimagined’s language, they reflect a call for a learner-centered paradigm – one that sets aside long-held assumptions about where, when, and how learning must occur, and instead takes a new stance grounded in agency, belonging, and community.”

“This convergence is cause for celebration, full stop. It suggests a growing recognition that a more humane, community-connected and flexible approach to education is necessary.”

“Yet, it also raises an urgent question: Is the field ready to meet this moment?”

“There is a real risk that demand for learner-centered education begins to outpace the field’s readiness to support it, particularly when it comes to the conditions to make it equitably available, spreadable, and sustainable.”

“The opportunity to address this demand could result in a proliferation of learning environments that wear the label of ‘learner-centered education’ but not the practice, diluting the integrity of its implementation and raising questions about its impact. Fragmentation and inequitable access may come to characterize the field, as those with resources to invest outside the system outpace the public system’s ability to keep up. And, state and local policy may remain something to navigate or outsmart, rather than serving as an enabling, coherent context in which to realize possibility.”

“Creating space for coherence and coordination is key. But, this isn’t about keeping a tight leach on the learner-centered field or judging one another’s efforts. It’s about investing in what it will take to build a modern public education system ready to support each child’s growth and wellbeing.”

“So, let’s not ignore the supply/demand equation of learner-centered education. The potential gap between accelerating demand and insufficient field-level implementation and infrastructure is where the work must now focus.”

“What is needed are tangible examples of learner-centered practice operating with integrity across diverse contexts; clear and credible forms of evidence; policy conditions that enable, rather than inhibit, ecosystem-based approaches; and aligned systems, structures, and partnerships that make this work sustainable and equitable over time.”

One more item to add to the “what is needed” list –

Money.

If we don’t see a substantial transfer of public tax dollars from our traditional K-12 system to learner-based organizations, then cries from young learners and their families to access agency, belonging, and community will fall on deaf ears. Because our public education system isn’t going to give up their money easily.

There is hope on the horizon based on nearly half of America’s states, mostly Republican-led, adopting education savings accounts that place money in the hands of K-12 parents to decide how that money will be spent in support of their children’s learning.

But too many states have limited education savings accounts to transfer money from public schools to private schools. Education savings account use needs to be expanded – to supporting organizations committed to more learner-based education than most private schools. Money needs to be used to support homeschoolers, learning pods, and microschools.

If states put money in the hands of young learners and their families, no matter their income level, who are unhappy with their current K-12 experience, watch out. Our public education system has already lost over a million students over the past few years – students and families that have chosen a different educational pathway than their neighborhood school. How many students will our public education system lose over the next decade?

Really, the only defense a bad public school has these days is that they control the money. But maybe that’s about to change.

Til tomorrow. SVB