It’s time to remind ourselves that what we want for education is this simple: All students learn. We’re not saying that the problems in education today are simple to fix – they aren’t – or that there is, in fact, some magic wand we can wave – there isn’t. But unless we think about learning and teaching differently, unless we change the conversations about education reform to focus on learning – truly helping all students learn and thrive – our efforts to make things better will miss the mark.
Changing the conversation from “how can we improve education?” to “how can we ensure learning for all students?” means framing the problem differently. And it means applying some revolutionary thinking to how we’re doing education now.