If the future of preK-12 education is going to be better than the past, then we need to rethink our fundamental assumptions about what we want from our schools and what we expect those schools to look like. Educators should embrace three core commitments in particular: 1) to treat students as learners whose agency is respected, whose diversity is…

The combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial reckoning in the United States make 2021 a potent moment to reimagine American education. This article introduces an ongoing Kappan series in which scholars look ahead to imagine what K-12 education will look like in 25 years. Na'ilah Nasir, Megan Bang, and Hirokazu Yoshikawa discuss some of…

For the last 40 years, business leaders, philanthropists, and a host of nonprofit advocacy groups have pushed for higher standards, academic rigor, standardized testing, and newer models of educating children. But, today, some of these reformers are feeling disillusioned and believe that the investments intended to transform education and provide…

Advances in biodesign, in which principles of engineering and technology are applied to the life sciences, are moving out of laboratories and into daily life. However, they have not made their way into K-12 classrooms. Today's students need to become familiar with biotechnologies so that they can make informed decisions about how they will be…

Teachers, a population already vulnerable to high stress, experienced increased demands and threats to their coping resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic likely will continue to exact a toll on the mental health of the teaching workforce. A silver lining from COVID-19 could come from teacher stress research conducted during the…

With the signing of the bipartisan Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act, Congress and the president managed to reauthorize the Carl T. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (known as "Perkins"), after an earlier attempt in the Obama administration fizzled. Maria Ferguson describes the growing support…

The call for education to dramatically transform itself to meet the needs of the 21st century learner has required educational leaders at all levels to become conscious of the approaches that help guide and direct large-scale changes. Unfortunately, the role of the principal is so rooted in managerial tasks that leading transformational change…

A lot of children are suffering--from bullet wounds, car crashes, gashes in legs, and great tears in the social fabric. There are wounds to heal, hopes to foster, and scar tissue to form. Public school teachers and leaders, wherever we are, this is our work. And we can do a good job of it, if the school community is strong, and if we always work…

In the future, teachers will become "teacherpreneurs," that is, teachers who develop their pedagogical talent, "sell" their expertise, and find innovative solutions to challenges facing their students. Unions will become professional guilds, and teachers will use new technologies to meet all their students' needs.

In the movement toward an integrated P-16 system of education, educators need to address a number of questions about talent development. Why is talent development important for society in general? What must be in place in a P-16 system in order to nurture the development of talent in a school and throughout a school system? And what must be in…

The 44th annual PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools showed some sharp divisions among the public's attitude toward the public schools, but also some hopeful signs of broad agreement in some areas. Satisfaction with President Barack Obama declined in the last year, but remains ahead of two years ago and the public…

The idea that the American education system is at risk is not a new one. This notion was brought to the top of the public agenda 25 years ago with the publication of "A Nation at Risk," and is still actively being addressed through legal reforms, mandates, and laws. In this article, the authors narrow the focus of "A Nation at Risk" to consider a…

Presents three scenarios--a somewhat pessimistic, a somewhat optimistic, and a most likely--describing what education might be like in the year 2000. (Author/IRT)

The author travels 400 years into a future boasting honored teachers and cherished children, but lacking butterflies (extinct because of 20th century pesticide residues). The big advance, besides miniaturized solar collectors, is people's inability to tell lies. Perceptions are trusted, and emotions are accurately read. Also, children are taught…

The author was invited to speak at a poetry slam conducted by Urban Poets, a group of teenage poets who perform their own works with the most passionate intensity. She had trouble deciding what to say to the young generation whose world differed so much from hers. She turned to Walt Whitman and a poem he wrote, "To the Young Poets," telling them…