A New Frontier in Education

2020 will be seen, in hindsight, as a major shift in American education. A century-long trend towards standardization, consolidation, and top-down management is being upended by a spirit of individualization, pluralism, and entrepreneurship. This new frontier in education is stretching the boundaries of education and is made up of the following characteristics:

1. Self-Determined Parents who are searching for something different for their children -- and voting with their feet for an array of education options.

2. Entrepreneurial Educators who are launching new and unique schools — ranging from classical schools to self-directed learning — to meet growing demand from families.

3. Transformative Policies that are spreading across the country that give families the power – agency and funding – to choose the setting that works for them.

4. Disruptive Technology, including the much-discussed AI, that will transform our individual lives – regardless of the education system’s embrace of it.

Ultimately, the new frontier in education is driven by a mindset shift. The public is recoiling at the idea of a “one best way” to educate tens-of-millions of students, as early 20^th century reformers had dreamed. Instead, families and educators are increasingly taking matters into their own hands and opting for a variety of approaches – across all demographics and in all geographies.

What we see today in education is waves of people trying new forms of education: microschooling, co-ops, hybrid schools, classical schools, self-directed learning, AI-infused schools, etc. The promise of this new frontier is a dynamic education system that leverages the entrepreneurial spirit in educators to respond to the unique needs and desires of students and their families, to try new things, and improve and grow based on results. In doing so, they’ll shed themselves of the bureaucracy that has calcified around education for the past century.

This is how we will create progress in education: by following the lead of those on the ground who are building the future themselves. They are doing that, not by sitting around with consultants and coming up with expensive plans that never get implemented or complaining in teacher lounges or around the kitchen table only to continue with the status quo. Instead, self-determined families looking for a better way to educate children are partnering with educators to create local solutions that not only create choice, but also rebuild the institutions of education as a partnership between parents and educators.

I’m going to spend the next few weeks digging deeper into these trends. I hope you’ll follow along!