An invitation to ideas
These are not normal times. The work to build new solutions in education cannot be normal either. We’ve joined together because we recognize the extraordinary possibilities in the moments ahead to build something better, especially for the kids who’ve gotten the least. And because, when change moves fast, those students are too often the ones left behind. We know that working in the ways we have in the past won’t get us to a fundamentally different place. We’re here to take a stand about what change must look like — and to ask you to be part of that conversation.
With the comments on this post as a place to start, we want to know: How would you build on this? Of course, we want your reactions, your agreements and disagreements too. But mostly, we want your ideas for how to take this further. Because this moment requires all of us, working together, to bring our expertise and perspectives to make sure that K-12 education delivers on its promise to all students.
— Frances Messano, CEO, NewSchools Venture Fund, in partnership with Tequilla Brownie, CEO, TNTP; Chong-Hao Fu, CEO, Leading Educators; Aylon Samouha, CEO, Transcend
Why change is urgent
Young people are facing a world that has fundamentally changed. Yet the schools that educate the vast majority of them have not. It’s a reality that all of us should recognize, and none of us should accept. In a time of increasing fracture, as AI promises, or threatens, to remake learning and work, education shoulders a disproportionate responsibility for what comes next. The actions of our generation will determine whether the next will have agency, stability, and room to thrive.
Technological and policy changes have made it easier to build new solutions, and easier for families to seek them. The boundaries of workplace, community, home, and school have blurred. Forward-looking systems leaders are hungry for solutions that build on what we’ve learned matters, from coherence to the science of reading. This complicated moment threatens values and organizations we hold dear. But it also offers a singular opportunity to build what comes next — not a marginally improved version of yesterday’s schools, but a new landscape of learning.
Our visions of the future aren’t identical, but we share a core set of beliefs: that this moment demands a clear, shared north star for what young people need and what education must deliver; that solving today’s challenges will require a shift from a “lone hero” model to deeper, more intentional collaboration; and that this new way of working must be matched by a new approach to funding — one that meets this moment with urgency and supports innovators working side by side, not in competition.
For all the challenges and threats of the current moment, it’s exciting to see doors open wider to innovation. All of us do what we do because we’re hungry for educational approaches that deliver on the promise of a thriving future for every child. But new approaches alone aren’t enough — we have to be clear about what they’re building toward. That will require a shared commitment to a clear North Star and a set of principles that will guide our work, so we can deliver something meaningfully better for young people.
A North Star for Education
Every student thriving: Education must not sort or standardize; it must foster students’ development into young people with purpose, agency, and the judgment to shape what comes next.
Education exists to help every young person become a capable, ethical, and engaged human being — able to navigate uncertainty, shape their own future, and contribute meaningfully to their communities. Our young people one day will solve problems we’ve never imagined. It’s our job to equip them for that future, not through a chaos of fragmented experiences, but through a coherent journey where both students and educators have a clear vision of the end goal. That journey must be tailored to who each student is — while enabling all to succeed.
To do that, education itself must evolve. Our systems were designed for a different era — one defined by stability, standardization, and predictability. The next era demands adaptability, agency, and purpose. We must prepare young people not just to face change, but to lead it.
We envision a future where:
- Each young person develops the knowledge, skills, agency, compassion, and judgment to chart their own path, sustain well-being, and contribute to shared prosperity.
- Learning experiences are rooted in real-world purpose, helping young people see who they are and how they matter.
- Schools, families, and communities work together coherently to cultivate belonging, trust, and agency — seeing each young person as a whole person and a future contributor, not just a student.
- Education strengthens democracy, nurturing the capacity to work across differences, discern truth, and act for the common good.
Education fulfills its purpose when it invests in individuals and equips them to build strong communities and contribute to a healthy democracy — a human endeavor that leans toward hope, coherence, and possibility.
Guiding Principles
To achieve our North Star, several guiding principles must anchor our work. These principles are not independent values, they are interconnected. Belonging makes agency possible. Agency makes learning real. Real learning demands whole educators. And all of it requires communities that share responsibility for what comes next.
- Comprehensive learning
Education must nurture the full human being, uniting academic mastery with emotional, ethical, and relational development. Students should practice the enduring human capacities most needed in a rapidly changing world: critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, discernment, and empathy. - Agency and Adaptability
Young people must have real power in shaping their learning and develop the judgment to navigate rapid technological and societal change. Systems should offer personalized, competency-based, community-connected pathways that cultivate adaptability, ethical discernment, and continuous learning. AI, used right, can create more time for students to explore their passions and professions. - Belonging and trust
Learning begins with relationships rooted in respect and safety. Rebuilding trust — in classrooms, communities, and the broader public — depends on centering connection, dignity, and shared purpose in every layer of the system. - Valuing educators and communities
The future of learning depends on creating healthy and rewarding pathways for professionals who will teach, lead, and guide. Especially as education is recognized as a lifelong effort, it’s important to imagine roles for a wider set of community participants in an ongoing experience of learning, through teaching, coaching, mentoring, workplace experience, and more.
Guardrails and community agreements
These values are a strong foundation, but pressing questions remain: If the old promise was that hard work in school would lead to a solid career, what is the new promise? As learning options multiply, what keeps the bar high for access, quality, and truth? And in a society where people increasingly choose information that confirms their worldview, how do we ensure that education helps us share a common understanding of facts, history, and civic responsibility?
As learning takes place in a growing range of settings, communities will rightly seek the freedom to shape education around their values, histories, and aspirations. But pluralism without shared guardrails risks deepening inequity, eroding trust, and lowering the bar for quality — especially for young people whose families have the fewest choices.
We do not believe the answer is a return to top-down mandates, nor a landscape of isolated experiments competing for attention and resources. Both approaches have failed to deliver durable, equitable change.
Instead, this moment calls for a third way: one that combines local leadership with shared responsibility. Communities must be supported to design learning environments that reflect their goals, and the broader ecosystem — including funders, policymakers, and intermediaries — must invest in the infrastructure that makes those efforts rigorous, equitable, and cumulative. This includes shared definitions of quality, common ways of learning from evidence, and funding models that build lasting capacity rather than short-term wins.
Building what comes next will not happen through one-time grants or single interventions, but through sustained processes that help communities clarify their aims, test new approaches, learn from and generate evidence, and adapt over time.
A new collaboration
We believe that education is a good that must serve all, and that therefore, it’s essential to create a commons — a set of solutions that serve everyone. The freely accessible Human Genome Project has powered a generation of scientific progress. From neuroscience research to public data sets like the National Assessment of Educational Progress to open educational resources to NASA’s open data and imagery to the WHO’s disease and vaccination databases to the internet itself, innovators have found ways, inside and outside of education, to create common goods that support waves of future innovation. It’s time for education’s Human Genome moment.
To achieve that ambitious vision, the way we work has to change. We believe that a common good is not created by individual actors in competition with each other for funding and recognition. That “lone hero” model has been a key feature of the landscape for education reform and innovation for more than two decades. It’s a model that has accelerated the growth of a few ideas and squeezed out many others. This is a time when we must build comprehensive solutions that meet today’s problems and opportunities together. The moment for a more collaborative approach is overdue.
Each of us, as innovation leaders, has lived this reality: that leaders, ideas, proposals, and organizations not only need to prove themselves, they need to outdo the competition. That’s a reasonable way to find the fastest runner or swimmer, but it has huge costs when the objective is to build solutions for young people. Can we not find ways to combine the best ideas from multiple committed innovators? Can we not brainstorm and help each other toward a common goal? We believe we can — it’s part of the reason we’re coming together as a group to say this.
But realizing that vision requires funders to act differently too.
In a time of historic need and change, many funders of education innovation have retreated and become cautious. They’re missing the moment when their courage — and investment — are needed most. It’s time for a surge, not a retreat, and for a new model that supports a more collaborative way of working. The hero model in education reform exists in part because that’s what has worked to win funding. A new model of work requires a new model of financial support — one that embraces and encourages the idea of innovators working side by side, not jostling for limited funding.
Join this conversation
A shared vision of thriving matters. It can help ground our efforts to build future learning environments. It also helps to raise all of our sights away from what’s next and toward what’s possible. This is not a call to rebuild what is broken. It is a call to build what has never fully existed.
There are so many educators and leaders who are already actively working toward this vision. By sharing this vision for the future, we want to invite other voices into this conversation. We want to know what others who do, or support, or care about innovation think of these ideas. What is the work that gives you hope? Do you believe a more collaborative future is possible? Are there important values that our statement misses or gets wrong? How would you build on this?
What we’ve set forth is a starting point, not the destination. Our hope is that you’ll start by sharing your thoughts and ideas in the comments on this — and by considering what it would look like to work differently, together, in this moment.
Thank you.
