Part two of a four-part series of essays exploring how innovation, equity, and abundance can remake K–12 education for the 21st century.
For more than a hundred years, American public education has operated on a single blueprint: one system, one curriculum, one way of doing school. This centralized, standardized model, built in an industrial age that prized efficiency and control, became the default operating system of American education.
For a while (and for some), the system delivered: graduation rates rose, achievement gaps narrowed, and public confidence remained high. But those gains have stalled or reversed. Today, American students lag behind international peers on key metrics. Teacher dissatisfaction is surging. And families across the country, especially in low-income and rural communities, are searching for something different.
That search is leading them to new opportunities, increasingly facilitated by new funding models and by alternatives to traditional neighborhood schools. Since the pandemic, there has been a dramatic rise in states embracing Education Savings Accounts (ESA), and with the passage of the federal Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA), parental choice is expanding throughout the country. And over the past two decades, charter schools have cemented their place in the American education landscape, outperforming their traditional school counterparts and helping to transform even the most challenged districts like New Orleans, Los Angeles and Camden, NJ. These innovations don’t just support better access. They lay the groundwork for something far more transformative: a new educational operating system that shifts power away from legacy systems and toward families.
Read the rest of the essay on our Substack.