I’ve spend a large part of my professional life as a writer and editor focused on American education. My sense at the start of my involvement with teaching and learning was that our nation had gotten some elements right when it comes to educating children, but it had also struggled on numerous fronts. What made me optimistic about the future of American education and the future of our democracy — not to mention the future of human civilization — were the numerous examples of success in education and the brilliant people I met who were, and many who still are, dedicated to helping schools and children thrive.
In short, as I saw it, the problems were clear and solutions available. All we had to do is focus on promoting best practices, supporting successful programs, encouraging our teachers, and backing the key change-makers who will help transform all of our schools into schools of excellence. And for a time, it seemed we were making strides — logical, essential, lasting strides. The future looked bright.
Here’s a short list of some key developments in education that fed my optimism:
We’ve learned the value of high-quality early childhood education and what it looks like. In turn, we’ve come to understand how early childhood education, when done right, not only prepares children well for their formal education to follow, but also enables children to develop a range of social-emotional skills that help them become happy, engaged children in their schools, families, and communities — and, thus, engaged citizens when they came of age.
We’ve learned how to develop curricula that help children develop a strong base of knowledge for school, work, and citizenship while enabling them to explore their particular interests at a higher and deeper level. In our urban areas, we’ve created entire schools with particular academic foci to support and advance academically talented students with increasing success.
We’ve learned about how to engage children well in the classroom, moving from the classic lecture or drill-and-repeat method to one that actively involves children in the process of learning and that adjusts to a range of learning styles. Teachers have learned how to be less the expert and more a model of inquiry, curiosity, and knowledge acquisition.
We’ve learned, thanks to the research of Howard Gardner and others, that there are a range of predominant learning styles and that we can and should tap into them as needed.
We’ve learned how to create interdisciplinary and experiential learning options that connect the various disciplines to each other and to real-world activities so children see how these skills matter in adult life. We’ve also created successful collaborations between schools and in-demand industries to train high school students for successful careers.
We’ve learned how to build and support what writer bell hooks calls a “beloved community” — that is, a community of children and adults in the daily practice of learning together, with the goal of leaving no one behind.
We know how to foster a growth mindset that encourages students to take risks and tackle increasingly challenging tasks.
We understand the role of gender in learning. For boys, we know that relationships with friends and adults are the foundation of educational success. For girls, we know that a combination of confidence, competence, and connectedness are central. We also understand that gender identity can vary widely along a spectrum and have developed ways to support individual students in their growth.
We know how to evaluate children in a way that encourages further learning, a positive sense of self, and a growth mindset. We’ve also learned the proper place and role of standardized testing.
We know how to support students when they struggle academically so they can get back on track and even accelerate their learning as needed.
We know how not to overburden children with homework while keeping their learning curve on a steady rise.
We know how to integrate social support systems to help children, especially those living in poverty and those with special needs.
We know how to integrate technology into the classroom — and how to choose technology that supports students well in their learning, while keeping problematic technology out of the classroom.
We know a great deal about nutrition and what children need to develop healthy minds and bodies so they can learn well. And we know the importance of feeding children well in schools — especially the millions living in poverty.
We know the value of physical activity for growing minds and bodies, and how to create sports and physical education programs that engage all students.
We know the value of the arts in both academic development of students and in their lives in general. We know how to integrate the arts into the broader academic program — and, more generally, how to encourage creativity.
We know a great deal about the human brain as it relates to learning, especially how to build and strengthen neural pathways. And we’re learning more all the time.
We understand the ideal class size for dynamic learning and for keeping teachers happily engaged.
We know what we need to do to attract and retain high-quality teachers.
We know the importance of hiring a racially diverse group of teachers to support racially diverse groups of children. We know how to help individual educators develop the kind of cultural competencies needed to teach all children well across race, culture, and gender.
We know how to develop effective academic leaders who can guide and support young teachers and encourage and coach colleagues.
We know how to offer effective teacher education in our colleges and universities. Our universities and college have also greatly improved their academic research on education while finding effective ways to share this knowledge with educators.
We know how to help schools continue to evolve through the iterative process of experimentation and innovation that leads to further breakthroughs in teaching and learning.
We know the importance of healthy school buildings and well-designed and accessible classrooms — and we can build them well.
We know all this and more. And it leads one to think, with all this hard-earned knowledge, that our schools should be in a great place now. But it’s clear that, collectively, they are not. Some of our schools are excellent, but too many fall short, usually because they don’t have the resources and support they need. I don’t put much stock in rankings, but it’s telling that our school system as a whole consistently ranks below those of many other developed nations.
What’s the problem? It has come clear to me that the kind of changes we need to make to help children thrive — the kind we already know how to deliver — are being thwarted through a mix of cultural indifference, political structures and power, and corporate desires to profit from schoolchildren. Embedded in these barriers are well-funded campaigns of misinformation that effectively undermine so many positive developments in schools or prevent necessary changes from taking place.
As a result:
Our educational system remains inequitable. It continues to favor the wealthy by significant factors. Education funding for low-income communities is woefully inadequate. The push for “school choice” programs and for-profit charter schools has shifted essential public money away from our mainstream public schools and continues to hamper positive change in public education. And for reasons we should have dispelled long ago, we continue to think that children born into poverty don’t really deserve quality schools.
Our education system continues to adhere to structures that marginalize too many students of color. Even in many well-funded schools where one would think that racial differences in outcomes would disappear, we’re falling short through a combination of willful ignorance of students’ racialized experience and/or the politically motivative campaigns that pretend racial inequity is not an issue or that to talk about race at all is to cause harm to white students. This problematic thinking tries to reduce schooling to a kind of educational hunger games in which any group’s gain is another group’s loss.
Classrooms in schools that don’t serve the wealthy are too often overcrowded and teachers are underpaid and under-supported. As a result, we end up with disengaged students and overwhelmed young teachers, many of whom leave the profession soon after starting. In these situations, the atmosphere for learning atrophies and instead of providing the needed materials, training, and funding, we blame the teachers and the children.
Too many of our school buildings are unsafe and unhealthy. There’s an abundance of stories about broken toilets, lack of toilet paper and soap, the presence of mold and mildew, dead rodents, broken windows, leaky ceilings, chain-locked doors, etc. While we know what it takes to fix them, we embrace the delusion that saving a few dollars and keeping children in hazardous conditions is a smart way to serve our democracy.
Many children come to school hungry. Schools and districts do what they can, but food programs and family support services are inadequate in schools.
While the research on the value of preschool is clear, in too many states we continue to act as if it is not important enough to fully fund.
Emboldened politicians increasingly meddle with curricula to support their own political agenda and power, using as much misinformation and fear tactics as they can muster to encourage voters to see educators as either threats to “family values” or as simply incapable of making wise choices about content and practices. In a number of states, the legislature is trying to rewrite history into an invented story that serves its political ends.
Over the past thirty years, we’ve increasingly outsourced the education of our children (or elements thereof) to private, for-profit businesses, pretending that business efficiency will improve matters and save money — all without creating harm.
I have to admit that I didn’t see this coming early in my career. I really did think we’d be in a better place by now. Logic and moral reasoning strongly suggest that we should be in a better place.
It’s discouraging, for sure. But I see no reason to give up on finding ways to implement the knowledge we already have to create excellent schools in all communities. In fact, the work is more essential and compelling now. If nothing else is clear, we need an adult population in America that is collectively wiser and more interconnected than our current generations of adults. And the only way we’ll get there is through high-quality schools led by engaged, well-trained and educated adults.
To parse out the growing gap between what we know works in schools and how schools actually function is to dive deeply into local, state, and national policies and politics and to understand the history of public education in America and how it mirrors both the strengths and shortcomings of our democratic systems. In short, this is one of those conversations that could go on forever. So for the sake of this piece, I mostly want to make these essential points:
We know what’s right and wrong with our schools collectively.
We have the knowledge and blueprint for high-quality public schools. We have numerous excellent models of high-quality schools.
We know these schools are essential to a thriving democracy.
We need to find a way to support the development of such schools in all communities and support politicians who make public education for democratic success a priority.
A recent and, to my mind, wonderful essay by novelist Marilynne Robinson, “Agreeing to Our Harm” (New York Review of Books, 2024) explores the challenges of improving essential elements of American society where things have clearly gone astray. She starts with a focus on the enormous problem of gun violence and its clear mismatch with our supposedly Christian ideals and values, then moves to the complexities that have led our nation into a series of misguided wars that, in turn, has led to the enormous and tragic loss of life. This sets the stage for the essential problem of our divided politics today, especially the MAGA agenda that exploits the frustrations and resentment of poor white Americans without a viable plan for relieving their grievances. What Robinson offers is the reminder that our democracy has addressed major challenges in the past and has done so successfully. She believes we currently undervalue “the habits of respect that make debate possible.” Because America has an outsized influence on the fate of the planet, she encourages us to be clear about the reality we face and face it together with the patience and deliberation and “the old courtesies that have made democracy possible.”
Her essay made me think again about the problems in schools and led me to a recent book on education — School Communities of Strength, by Peter W. Cookson, Jr. (Harvard Education Press, 2024) — that can help us once again be clear about the reality of schools, their role in our democracy, and what we need to do — and certainly can do — to improve American education, and, by doing so, improve American democracy.
Cookson’s book comes with the subtitle, “Strategies for educating children living in deep poverty.” Without question, he has engaged in “the habits of respect that make debate possible.” He also offers a detailed blueprint for fixing our high-poverty schools so that they collectively serve our neediest and most vulnerable children well. I certainly encourage all educators working in high-poverty schools to read the book and find ways to adapt, evolve, or rethink their programs so they support all students well. If you are an educator and you are not thrilled with your school, why wouldn’t you read it? But I also encourage all of us — whether we work in the field of education or not — to read the book and think about (1) how we can help support the kind of school change outlined here and (2) consider how such change not only serves individual children but also serves our nation so that (3) we can strengthen and improve our overall democratic systems that enable all citizens the opportunity to thrive and live fulfilling lives within a culture that is respectful of individual choices and community needs.
Cookson teaches at Georgetown University, which means he works almost within shouting distance of the White House and Capitol Hill. For all politicians who believe we can and should have the best schools in the work, and who see the link between quality education and quality of life in a democracy, I encourage them to invite Cookson over for a conversation, engage in the habit of respectful debate and see if it sparks ideas about the kind of policies that will improve lives.
Cookson reminds us that children living in deep poverty “have all the same needs, desires, fears, and abilities as other children. They don’t need special schools or classrooms; they need twenty-first century schools and classrooms designed to be communities of care, compassion, inquiry, and discovery.”
In truth, all of our schools need to be schools of care, compassion, inquiry, and discovery. The problem is that we set up so many roadblocks to the creation of such schools — especially for children living in poverty.
Cookson isn’t the only educator, writer, and researcher who offers excellent guidance on this front. I would also encourage folks to read everything and anything by Linda-Darling Hammond, Ted Sizer, Jonathan Kozol, Maxine Greene, Howard Gardner, Pedro Noguera, Lisa Delpit, bell hooks, Richard Rothstein, Diane Ravitch, and Beverly Daniel Tatum. If you’re looking for more writers, I’d be happy to produce a list. The point is, we have great books steeped in research and experience that hold the blueprint to amazing schools. The structures of these schools can — and should — be duplicated. The sooner we collectively engage in this work the sooner our frayed democracy can start to heal and grow.
What I hope we’ll come to understand is that the science of learning and development applies both to our schools and our society. Fix our schools and we’ll stop hungering for politicians who fuel our grievances. Fix our schools and we’ll start to see difference as a democratic strength not as a problem. Fix our schools and we’ll better understand how to build and balance personal freedom and community needs. Fix our schools and we’ll figure out how to enable economic development and environmental health. Fix our schools and we can improve not just our GDP but also our GNP — our Gross National Happiness.
What has been frustrating to me over the past thirty years is that I’ve witnessed what great schools can do. I’ve seen their impact on the lives of children. I have read over and over again how the development of well-functioning, twenty-first century schools that focus on the whole child are possible everywhere. And I have visited many of these schools. We can find these changes in our high-end private schools. We can find them in religious schools and in not-for-profit charter schools. We can certainly find them in our public schools — in both low-income and high-income communities. And yet, here we are stuck in a pattern that encourages us to believe our schools with wildly mixed outcomes are good enough as they are.
I know there are numerous ideas for how to fix our current national woes and repair our social fabric. As for me, I think we should center our schools in the conversation. We keep undervaluing our public school system and the wisdom of our lead educational researchers at our peril. If we remake our schools into world-class learning communities, the rest will follow.
In his 2012 book, High School, Race, and America’s Future, Lawrence Blum writes:
Public discussions about the value of education increasingly focus on the individual student’s academic skills, and how they contribute to his or her college or job readiness and upward mobility. An even narrower focus is student test scores, which are increasingly treated as the standard of educational accomplishment. But traditionally education, especially public education, has been recognized to serve other important purposes. It has aimed to enhance students’ personal growth (including intellectual growth beyond its instrumental value for economic success), to contribute to their moral development, to improve their social relations, and to develop their capabilities as future citizens. Schooling contributes to the social good in helping to produce moral persons and responsible, informed citizens.
Much of the public conversation on education has over-focused on matters of personal gain. I blame much of this shift in thinking on self-enriching political posturing and on corporate intrusion into public education in search of ways to privatize our schools and profit on the backs of children (a form of child labor in my book). The “education industry” will argue that it is only responding to market forces. Whether this is true or whether it has created and manipulated market forces, the reality is that we’re losing grip on a social institution of the highest importance. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are entirely dependent on our schools to educate each new generation to take on the enormous challenge of running our democracy.
If we recenter our thinking on helping our schools fulfill this task — infuse it into every school mission and into every decision we make about teaching and learning — I believe we can find our way through to have the kind of schools that we know we need to become the kind of nation we say we are.