An American Imperative: A New Vision of Public Schools

Systemic redesign must happen within an intentional, relationships-based culture that is:

• Whole Learner Focused: The entire system must attend to the social, emotional, cognitive, mental health and trauma-based needs of ALL learners.
• No Learner Marginalized: ALL children, families and staff must be embraced, valued equally and served with equity—regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, socioeconomic circumstance or disability.
• Future Driven: Schools must routinely anticipate forthcoming changes in the career landscape to inform all decisions today.

Learning must entirely reorient around the learner.

In order to meet ALL learners’ social, emotional and cognitive needs, instruction and learning must happen on a growth model continuum, where data analytics, planning, learning and evidence of learning operate in a feedback loop to personalize learning.

Panels of school, association, state and federal leaders must convene to determine how to unlock resources to meet ALL children’s Whole Learner needs in the following categories:

• Learning Accelerators: Broadband must be deemed a public utility so that ALL learners have access to the technologies necessary to access and accelerate learning.
• Aligned Community Resources: To meet Whole Learner needs, educators, learners and learners’ families must have access to a robust, multi-tiered system of supports.
• High-Quality Early Learning for ALL Children: ALL children must engage in high-impact early learning to prepare them to function as co-authors of learning in their K-12 journey.
• Diverse Educator Pipeline: Educators and staff must represent the learners, families and communities they serve so that true culturally-responsive learning is possible.