10 Scholars Agree: Schools Should Prepare Kids to Share Power

Ten education leaders with wildly different views just sat down to answer one big question: what are public schools actually for? Their answers reveal a roadmap that could end decades of fighting about how to fix American education.

The debate started because the old ideas aren't working. School reform since the 1980s focused on competition, test scores, and treating education like a personal investment. But that approach can't solve today's challenges: kids disconnected from learning, democracy under strain, artificial intelligence reshaping work, and nobody sure what skills tomorrow's jobs will need.

So two major foundations asked scholars, school superintendents, and policy experts to think bigger. The group included former education officials, university professors, and people leading schools in real communities right now.

What happened next was unexpected. Despite coming from different backgrounds, they agreed on most of the big stuff.

First, they all said purpose comes before process. We can't fix how schools run until we agree on why we have them. Second, they want the same things for kids: flourishing, thriving, agency, belonging, and skills that work in both jobs and civic life. Not one person mentioned standardized test scores as the goal.

Third, they found a peace treaty hidden in plain sight. We mostly know what works in elementary school, so we should just do that consistently. The real redesign should happen in middle and high school, where kids need apprenticeships, community projects, debate skills, and preparation for actual careers.

The scholars also agreed that schools must do three things at once: help individual kids flourish, prepare them for good jobs, and teach them to share power in a democracy. That last part came up again and again. In a diverse country, schools are the place where young people learn to deliberate and make decisions with people they didn't choose to be around.

The Ripple Effect

This agreement matters because it comes at the right time. School redesign feels possible in ways it hasn't for years. Parents, teachers, and students all sense that something needs to change. Artificial intelligence is forcing everyone to rethink what learning means. And communities are hungry for institutions that bring people together instead of driving them apart.

The writers don't agree on everything. They debate what content to teach and how much flexibility schools should have. But they've drawn the outline of something better: elementary schools that execute proven methods with consistency, and secondary schools bold enough to connect learning to real life.

One scholar put it this way: public education should be more flexible at the edges and more democratic at its core. That means room for different approaches, but always with the goal of teaching young people to encounter others, discuss hard questions, and share power.

After 40 years of reform focused on individual achievement, American education might finally be ready for a different conversation about success.