“Of all the civil rights for which the world has struggled and fought for 5,000 years, the right to learn is undoubtedly the most fundamental. … The freedom to learn … has been bought by bitter sacrifice. And whatever we may think of the curtailment of other civil rights, we should fight to the last ditch to keep open the right to learn, the right to have examined in our schools not only what we believe but what we do not believe; not only what our leaders say, but what the leaders of other groups and nations, and the leaders of other centuries have said. We must insist upon this to give our children the fairness of a start which will equip them with such an array of facts and such an attitude toward truth that they can have a real chance to judge what the world is, and what its greater minds have thought it might be.”
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Freedom to Learn (1949)1
In 1949, W. E. B. Du Bois said, “Of all the civil rights for which the world has struggled and fought for 5,000 years, the right to learn is undoubtedly the most fundamental.” He went on to describe a vision of equitable, democratic schools focused on deeper learning for all students. Although our commitment to develop a more perfect union aspires to enact a right to learn for all children, our society has constructed a system that is still largely based on a standardized, impersonal factory model adopted a century ago. This model incorporates deeply embedded inequalities that dare many of our children to learn.
While many educators have sought to transform this system—and some have succeeded in redesigning individual schools for greater equity and success2—the fundamental features of the factory model live on in both our policies and many of our practices. At this moment in history, when students, families, and educators are trying to recover from a public health crisis, an economic crisis, and a crisis of civil rights and democracy, it is imperative to reinvent our education system so that it can support successful learning that prepares each and every child for a rapidly changing world—one in which young people will need to work with knowledge that has not yet been discovered, using technologies that have yet to be invented, solving major problems we have not yet been able to solve.
At a time when our nation is increasingly polarized and when there are strong efforts to dismantle progress made to support diversity, inclusion, and equity, it is also important to reaffirm our commitment to education for equity and democracy that supports our collective future. This will require an explicit attempt to redesign our schools and systems to support each and every child for equitable and empowering education—not just for “covering the curriculum” or “getting through the book.”
Schools that have been successfully redesigned in prior eras of reform—many of them during the 1990s and early 2000s—offer a powerful evidence-based blueprint to create schools that are more humane, enriching, and productive than our current models. The raw material to reimagine schooling is happening across the country and is showcased throughout this report.
We Dare Young People to Learn
Too many of our young people still experience the factory model evident in most of our high schools, which were designed to put young people on a conveyor belt and move them from one overloaded teacher to the next, in 45-minute increments, to be stamped with separate, disconnected lessons 7 or 8 times a day, with a hallway locker as their only stable point of contact. We dare them to learn in schools where they have little opportunity to become well known over a sustained period of time by adults who can consider them as whole people or as developing intellects. We dare young people to learn when their needs for resources or personal advice require standing in line or waiting weeks to see a counselor with a caseload of 500 or more students. We dare too many of our young people to make it through huge warehouse institutions focused substantially on the control of behavior rather than the development of community. While these factory-model designs may have worked for the purposes they were asked to serve 100 years ago, they do not meet most of our young people’s needs today.
There is a growing realization that many of our schools are not designed to educate the next generation to face the challenges of our time. In the face of a global pandemic, it has become clear that most schools must be better able to personalize learning and create caring spaces for students to address the effects of trauma, meet their needs, and support their learning. And schools must do more than weather a crisis; we need our young people prepared with the knowledge and skills to face even greater challenges in the years to come.
We Know More About How to Support Learning and Development
There is also a growing consensus that we know what works for educating students. In recent years, our understanding of the science of learning and development has deepened considerably.3 We know that, with the right supports, every young person can succeed in school and in life. Human brains are incredibly malleable and responsive to experiences. Young people grow and thrive in environments designed to support individualized development; where they have strong, supportive relationships; and where their social, emotional, physical, and cognitive needs are met.
The Science of Learning and Development Alliance identifies five guiding principles of such schools: (1) positive developmental relationships; (2) environments filled with safety and belonging; (3) rich learning experiences and knowledge development; (4) explicit development of skills, habits, and mindsets; and (5) integrated support systems. (See Figure 1.)
Figure 1. Guiding Principles for Equitable Whole Child Design
Source: Learning Policy Institute & Turnaround for Children (now Center for Whole-Child Education). (2021). Design principles for schools: Putting the science of learning and development into action.
There are classrooms and schools across the nation that create these conditions for young people and did so even throughout the pandemic.4 Evidence shows that their students fared much better than those in less personalized and less supportive settings. However, the system we work in today was invented a century ago for another time and another mission—the processing of large numbers of students for rote skills, with the expectation that many would drop out and join the lines of factory workers who were once needed. It was never designed to support all students to develop high levels of performance or to meet their broader needs. Caring and dedicated teachers, administrators, and parents work hard every day within this system to stretch it to meet students’ needs and to educate them for more ambitious thinking and performance skills—and yet their efforts are often stymied by outmoded institutional structures.
Many teachers, principals, and district leaders, along with students and parents, understand that schools must change in fundamental ways if they are to accomplish the goal we now have for them: teaching our diverse student population for higher-order thinking and deep understanding. Yet the inertia of existing systems is powerful. The good news is that models exist: A number of schools that have been extraordinarily effective and have helped other schools to replicate their success have important lessons to offer, based on the elements they hold in common.
This publication outlines 10 of those lessons that constitute evidence-based features of effective redesigned high schools that help create the kind of education many of us want for all of our children: safe environments where exciting and rigorous academic work occurs and where all groups of students succeed academically, graduate at high levels, and go on to college and productive work. (See Figure 2 .) The 10 features of successfully redesigned schools include:
- Positive developmental relationships
- Safe, inclusive school climate
- Culturally responsive and sustaining teaching
- Deeper learning curriculum
- Student-centered pedagogy
- Authentic assessment
- Well-prepared and well-supported teachers
- Authentic family engagement
- Community connections and integrated student supports
- Shared decision-making and leadership
Each of the 10 core chapters in this volume is accompanied by multiple examples of schools that are putting these features into practice and creating powerful learning opportunities for their students. The design features include school structures that promote meaningful, sustained relationships among teachers and students; curriculum and instructional practices that help all students achieve at high levels; approaches that ensure teachers are experts at their craft; and strategies for involving families in schools and making decisions democratically.
While successful schools include all these elements, they enact each feature in distinctive ways. There are many initiatives underway to transform secondary schools so that students have opportunities for meaningful learning, personalized supports, and connections to their futures: Linked Learning and other college and career pathway models that offer experiential learning; Early College and other dual enrollment opportunities; community schools that organize supports and connect learning to community concerns; and strategies that support social and emotional development through restorative practices, service learning, and civic engagement. Schools need to create means for enacting their goals that respond to their local contexts and work for the students, parents, and faculty members of their communities.
To sustain these initiatives, structures and systems must also change. We take up these issues in the final chapter and appendixes of this publication, in which we discuss the staffing and scheduling models that can enable school redesign, as well as the district and state policies that are needed to support schools that develop each student’s abilities in more powerful ways.
The process of transforming schools is hard work. There is no progress without struggle. As we undertake this struggle together, we should remember the words that Langston Hughes used to describe our collective quest to build a better world: “Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on.”5
Figure 2. 10 Features of Successfully Redesigned Schools