How do we move from tweaking education to transforming it?

It starts with asking the right questions.

How do you know if you are tweaking around the edges or taking the first small steps towards transformation?

To answer this profound question, we need to first explore what it means to “tweak around the edges” of education. Choosing to tweak infers that we believe the teaching and learning our parents experienced (and their parents before them) can appropriately serve today’s children, as long as we improve it with either small or big adjustments — many of which take incredibly hard work to create and implement.

Tweaking means we are confined to solutions that hold constant all or most of the conventional systems like standardized courses and curricula, age-based cohorts, the division of learning into subjects, and one-size-fits-all approaches. Without knowing it, we assume that those standardized systems are still the most effective (or the only doable) strategies for educating our children and preparing them to lead fulfilling lives.

If we accept those systems as given, then the tinkering we do will only change how education looks on the surface (e.g. integrating new technologies into the classroom or allowing students to alter their pace) without realizing any meaningful gains when we look at the outcomes we are striving for.

It might marginally impact the outcomes we have traditionally measured (e.g. test scores, attendance); however, it won’t get close to making the impacts we are hearing society call for more and more such as employees who are creative problem solvers, strong communicators, and ready and able to quickly learn new skills and jobs we haven’t even imagined yet. Moreover, most of our students will continue feeling like disengaged, passive participants in an outdated educational experience better suited for the industrial age.

Since Education Reimagined’s launch in September 2015, we have been committed to the idea that no amount of tweaking of the standardized, one-size-fits-all system will ever celebrate the unique and wondrous potential in every child. We must transform the system.

We must invent systems, practices, and structures that are rooted in a new view of young people, learning, and the purpose of education. To continue tweaking the current system is to unwittingly assume 20th-century views that young people have finite potential, they should be ranked and sorted, and can be fit into pre-prescribed boxes based on their class, race, and test scores.

We need a system that sees each young person’s unique and wondrous potential, understanding that deep learning starts with young people’s interests, curiosities and passions, and that the purpose of education is to unleash the full potential of every child.

Transformation, first and foremost, takes place within a person (not a building). It actually is a mindset shift that offers a new worldview. It becomes a new way to…well, be. And, that changes everything.

Seeing transformation as a mindset shift is enormously important. It shows leaders at district-based schools who are often under the most constrained circumstances that they too can transform. They don’t need to demolish their buildings, fire their staff, and stop serving their communities until they are ready to launch a robust learner-centered model.

Rather, they need to ask themselves, “How can we create the space for educators, school leaders, parents, and young people who want to invent learner-centered education pathways?”

Whether there is desire to combine one set of 6th, 7th, and 8th grade classrooms into one multi-age group or to transform a whole school, district leaders can start to free up the educators and administrators to invent learner-centered models for the families that want them. These inventors can do the hard work of casting the first models, enabling others to see the results and adapt their models, rather than having to invent them from scratch.

Within the context of education, transformation changes everything about how we see education — its purpose, how learning happens, and how we view the potential of the children we serve. And, the anomalies seen in the current system — like young learners who “fall through the cracks” — are no longer seen as anomalies but, rather, as inevitable and inexcusable results from how our current system is designed.

Ultimately, we must call for transformation in order to actually support every single child to learn and thrive. Because no iteration — be it the first or one hundredth — of any school-centered accountability, assessment, credentialing of learning, or bell schedule system will allow us to truly realize a learner-centered vision.

This brings up an important question: How do we distinguish learner-centered education from the school-centered system we are most familiar with?

Within a learner-centered system, every learner is at the center of their learning journey. The system itself provides a structure of support around their individual interests, challenges, aspirations, and life circumstances; and acknowledges the need to adapt and alter to serve each child uniquely.

The system celebrates learning as a lifelong pursuit that begins in our earliest years and does not simply end once we enter our careers. Learning happens everywhere and is embedded within the community, driven by a supportive network of adults. And, learners own their educational trajectories, engaging in relevant, contextualized learning experiences shaped directly by their interests, passions, dreams, skills, and needs.

Learning looks different for each and every individual; that is the beauty of this new system — and it is already unfolding in pockets across the country.

One high school in Iowa (Iowa BIG) empowers its students to build their own curricula, using the conventional school day to collaborate with community and business leaders to solve community challenges whether they are environmental, tech, or workforce related.

A small recording studio in St. Paul, MN slowly turned into a learner-centered environment (HSRA) where young people — who were often given up on by the conventional system — find strength and confidence within their life story and use it to connect with the real world. When learners are ready, they are able to launch themselves into opportunities that connect their passion for music and other emerging interests with community needs.

And, in Bethel, Connecticut, families are willing to make a 2.5-hour roundtrip journey just so their children can learn inside a 30,000 square foot barn where they can design personalized, relevant, and contextualized learning pathways. This might include working with CRISPR technology or co-designing a marketing booth for the CAMX trade/recycling show in Houston.

At Education Reimagined, we are committed to making options like these available to every single young person in the country by 2030. We know we can’t do this alone. This will require the collaboration of diverse education stakeholders from across the country. It will take a movement.

Explore learner-centered environments that are transforming education right now in communities near you and tell us in the comments if there are learner-centered options you know about that haven’t yet made the map.

Kelly Young is the President of Education Reimagined — a national non-profit committed to making learner-centered education available to every child in the US, regardless of background or circumstance.

Explore more learner-centered stories and ideas that are shaping the future of education in Voyager.