If we take, say, moving towards inclusion, at Next Frontier Inclusion we ran workshop sessions entitled 'Name That Fear!'. We identified stakeholder groups and what they might be afraid of. Then we named them, because naming gives you more power over things e.g The Reputation Fear. We collaborated to Notice-Name-Neutralize, or, if we noticed positive patterns, to Notice-Name-Nurture. If it's about fear, then we need to be intentional and strategic in disarming fear and building capacity in less fearful, more hopeful directions.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis just introduced a bill, the Stop Woke Act, that would allow parents to sue schools for teaching what’s deemed critical race theory. In New Hampshire, a group called Moms for Liberty has offered a $500 bounty to anyone who reports a teacher for breaking the state’s anti-critical race theory law.

Chris Rufo, the right-wing intellectual entrepreneur behind the anti-critical race theory campaign, told me last month that the next phase of his offensive will be a push for school choice, including private school vouchers, charter schools and home-schooling. “The public schools are waging war against American children and American families,” he said, so families should have “a fundamental right to exit.”

“But I have seen progressive parents who are now questioning everything, literally everything. I was watching progressives have a conversation about charter schools that I had never seen before.”

Rodrigues, a parent of five, said that when schools were closed, her 9-year-old gained about 40 pounds and cried hysterically every morning before his Zoom classes. “I finally said, this situation, this isolation, is breaking my kid down,” she said. Eventually she put him and one of his siblings in a Catholic school that had returned to in-person learning, and “their sparkle came back within two weeks.”

Plenty of parents appreciate all their schools have done to try to weather this disaster, but others feel rage — at the emotional deterioration of their children, at the toll on their careers from forced home-schooling, at the fact that nothing seems close to getting back to normal, and at what sometimes feels like a lack of empathy for their plight.

One thing everyone agrees on: The pandemic has left American public education in crisis. We’re now well into the third school year that has been deformed by the virus. In large districts across the country, enrollment is down. Many students are far behind academically and floundering emotionally. Teachers are fried: According to a Rand study released in June, nearly one-fourth were considering quitting their jobs by the end of the last school year. Principals are struggling too; according to a recent survey from the National Association of Secondary School Principals, almost four of 10 are planning to leave the profession in the next three years.

Beyond the immediate well-being of families and teachers, the future of public education as we know it is at stake.

“You heard it in that room. People were really honest about kids’ depression.” She added, “Clearly, there are, not just pockets, but people all over the country that feel this way.”

“High school has been terrible for my older ones,” she said. “I’ve got an eighth grader now. Should we try it again? Or should I look for something else?”

“I see kids going from straight A’s to all F’s,” she said, adding that many of her students wanted to leave school altogether. This year, she said, had been better than last, but the mental health toll has been grueling; she said it seemed as if she was referring two students a week for treatment for depression, even though the school had only one therapist.

Many teachers agree that student-directed learning makes sense when it comes to their own learning but this rarely translates to their approach to teaching.

will be hearing from me

Because all progress depends on doubt.

While he despised what he termed ‘testology’ – ‘which is nothing but a ridiculous simplification of knowledge and a robbing of meaning from individual histories’ – and its partner ‘prophetic pedagogy’, which knows everything [that will happen], does not have one uncertainty, is absolutely imperturbable… [It] prophesies everything, to the point that it is capable of giving you recipes for little bits of actions, minute by minute, hour by hour, objective by objective, five minutes by five minutes.

under what conditions can innovation work

We need to stop measuring product and instead engage with process, and we do this by listening to and valuing students as human beings who deserve the chance to practice agency.

This, I fear, is where we are heading in public education with personalized education. It is all the rage in education today, the idea that kids sitting at computers doing “personalized” work on computer programs is the way of the future. I would not be surprised if, 10 years from now, well over 50 percent of classroom personnel will be part time workers supervising students sitting on computers working on “individualized” programs — because policymakers have taken a very narrow view of personalized learning. Too often in the past education policy-makers have taken narrow views of reform — all to the detriment of generations of young people — and there is no reason to think this would change now.

After the 2007-2008 financial crisis in the United States, a growing number of those with investment capital seeking profitable outlets are seeing education — and educational technology – as growth areas. Resistance by students, parents and educators to high-stakes standardized testing and the Common Core State Standards confronted them with a temporary setback, but now they are poised to make an end run around the Opt Out movement by concentrating on “personalized learning” which requires a huge investment in computerization of classrooms as well as software. Along with this remaking of schooling, the powers that be plan a data-based reinvention of teacher education that will require the closing, or reinvention of colleges of teacher education. If these plans go through, a majority of the nation’s teachers and teacher educators could lose their jobs in the next 10 years, replaced by people who will largely be temp workers making little more than minimum wage. This isn’t just pie-in-the-sky thinking. It is happening in higher education with the switch to adjunct labor. I fear it is about to sweep through our public schools with the force of a juggernaut.

but they don't offer a diversity of approaches for how a student experiences a topic, such as by engaging with it visually versus reading about it.

Yet, unlike many districts that have put personalized learning programs in place, Kettle Moraine decided not to invest heavily in digital devices to build a 1-to-1 computing environment. Instead, it relies on a bring-your-own-device program, and it has used Google systems for distributing assignments, scheduling, and communication between staff and students. In most cases, technology is used to support personalized learning, though it is not always the essential piece, district officials emphasized.

True personalized learning calls for a "rethinking and redesign" of schools, which could require them to overhaul classroom structures and schedules, curricula, and the instructional approaches of teachers, Mr. Calkins of EDUCAUSE argued. For instance, in an effective personalized learning model, teachers' roles are more like those of coaches or facilitators than "content providers," he said.

"Technology can help provide students with more choices on how they're going to learn a lesson," Ms. Patrick said. "[It] empowers teachers in personalizing learning" and "empowers students through their own exercise of choice."