Forces of Change

The teacher workforce will continue to shrink, with more people leaving than entering the profession. State departments of education and school districts will continue implementing various strategies to bolster numbers.[footnote=2]For example, they might grant temporary teacher licenses, reduce the time needed to earn a certification or offer financial incentives for becoming a teacher.[footnote=3]Furthermore, teacher preparation programs will continue to lag in adapting their pre-service training and ongoing professional development offerings to fit a complex and changing educational landscape that will require new kinds of pedagogical approaches, assessment literacies and student-teacher relationships.[footnote=4][footnote=5]The extent to which teachers have and deserve full professional status will continue to be debated.

Continued interest in addressing learners’ needs and engaging them will drive the increasing adoption of student-centered learning models, including personalized learning, competency-based learning and project-based learning.[footnote=6] This shift will create an opening to include more culturally relevant knowledge, community-based curricula and liberatory practices in K-12 education. It will also help counter rigid assessment practices and systems that narrow the curriculum along white-centered values and standards.[footnote=7][footnote=8]

Learning science is increasingly examining learners’ broader contexts and histories to understand their impact on cognition and their implications for the classroom.[footnote=9] In particular, learning scientists are increasingly exploring how adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as experiencing and/or witnessing abuse, neglect, violence, addiction, incarceration or abandonment, create trauma and impact the brain’s learning processes, especially working memory and long-term memory.[footnote=10] Insights from the field of learning science will contribute to the development of additional trauma-informed pedagogies and classroom practices.[footnote=11]

Communities will continue to explore new configurations for organizing education. Learning ecosystems will become a more common organizational model for the support of whole-child learning. They will be made up of cross-sector partnerships among families, caregivers, schools and community members.[footnote=12] An increase in formal and informal networks will help create and sustain change, connecting practitioners to share knowledge and expertise and provide supports.[footnote=13] Continued attempts to unbundle education from the traditional school environment will expand the choices available to students.[footnote=14] Many of these options aim to provide local communities with more agency in relation to education. Together, they promise to expand and reshape the roles and partnership opportunities among sectors, organizations, and individual actors, including caregivers and educators.

Postsecondary education and training options will diversify as the cost of college continues to increase,[footnote=15] postsecondary institutions explore new organizational structures, online degree options grow and alternative credentialing opportunities expand. Enrollment in two- and four-year institutions will continue to decline, prompting more mergers, acquisitions and closures.[footnote=16] At the same time, online and in-person programs for certifying job-related knowledge and skills, such as project management, data analysis, software development and paraprofessional health skills, will proliferate, becoming increasingly accepted by employers.[footnote=17] High schools’ career-technical education pathways will become more robust, with community organizations and employers partnering to introduce students to career options and help them develop relevant job skills.[footnote=18] The growing variety of options for transitioning from high school to postsecondary education and training, and eventually to a career, will require more individual student awareness and agency.

Increasing use of automation will reconfigure jobs, changing the workforce landscape, nearly eliminating routine work and support jobs.[footnote=19] Reconfigured jobs will include more gig and contingent work in place of full-time, long-tenure employment.[footnote=20] While efforts to spur employment are in the works (for example technology and innovation hubs for 31 communities across the country), they may not be accessible to all without appropriate education, training, and skill development.[footnote=22] Employment in such zones will require enhanced skills in data analysis, STEM fields, complex decision-making, the use of digital technologies and the application of software tools. These are the areas with the greatest disparities in student representation, in school and in the workforce. [footnote=23] Without access to training and education to meet these emerging skill requirements, efforts to boost employment in the emerging economy may not reach everyone.

Culture wars will continue to play out in education, shaping the experiences of learners and communities. Since 2021, state lawmakers have introduced approximately 400 bills giving parents, governments and citizens the ability to challenge and monitor what schools teach about race and gender.[footnote=24] Similarly, Pen America has recorded 4,000 instances of banned books in the first half of the 2023-2024 school year.[footnote=25] Parental rights movements will spread and intensify, with liberals and conservatives vying for control. The result will be increasing attempts to mold education along ideological lines. Decisions related to education innovation and reform will remain contentious and will risk being disconnected from classroom needs.

Criticism of the achievement gap narrative will gain support from those pushing back on the post-pandemic learning loss narrative.[footnote=26] Both narratives define achievement through reductive, summative measures that do not tell us much about what a learner can do well. In these narratives, achievement is defined narrowly, with a learner’s educational identity being overly influenced by standardized test scores and grade point averages, rather than being understood as influenced by the world around them. Growing challenges thinking about achievement in this way will open the door to more vibrant counter-narratives of achievement and success for all students.

Communities in underserved areas tend to be located in areas that are relatively susceptible to the impacts of extreme weather, such as flooding, fires, and energy and power blackouts. [footnote=27] The COVID-19 pandemic also highlighted the economic disparity in “essential worker” jobs. The disproportionate exposure to those in retail, health, and other service positions exposed to the viruses that will continue emerge as the impacts of climate change spread. [footnote=28] The next decade will bring increasing risks and damage from extreme weather and emergent diseases, putting underserved populations at disproportionate risk. [footnote=29] They will be more likely than other groups to experience trauma from these events, along with school disruptions and community challenges.