In 2023 the Hoover Institution at Stanford University convened a group of innovation leaders to take stock of K–12 public education in the United States. The Education Futures Council quickly focused on designing a new approach for America’s traditional public school system.Schools operated and overseen by local school boards―often called “traditional” or “district” schools―enroll75 percent of all students in the United States and will continue to be a prominent part of the education landscape no matter what other schooling choices exist.
The Council was unanimous in the view that dramatic action is no longer a matter of public urgency; it is a matter of public emergency. High-performing public schools are one of the cornerstones of a safe and healthy democracy.Providing a consistently high quality of education to all students, in all communities, entails a unique public trust,and the success or failure of that endeavor has a direct and determinative effect on the future prosperity and security of our country. Unless we urgently undertake a thorough revamp of the most utilized school option, our children will bear directly the harms of our complacency.
The Council immediately confronted a perplexing contradiction. We are abundantly blessed with dedicated teachers and other school personnel, the best education research apparatus in the world, and strong support from families and communities. At the same time, academic outcomes in district schools vary widely but on average achieve underwhelming results, despite decades of funding increases and attempts at reform. According to virtually every available metric, the overall quality of Americans chools has either declined or remained stagnant since the 1970s. On a per-pupil basis, we now spend40 percent more than the average spent by member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operationand Development (OECD). At the same time, we are ranked thirty-fourth in math globally on the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)evaluations.
