Named after the hundred-eyed watchman of Greek myth, Argus watches the education landscape: spotting new opportunities, pressure-testing the ventures we're building, and tracing every read back to the real-world signals behind it.
The evidence library: the raw signals the pipeline is watching across the education ecosystem. Every idea is built from these.
As AI accelerates into every corner of schooling, education leaders face a question that is both urgent and deeply human: who holds the gavel? In this provocative new piece, Eric Tucker argues that the real risk is not AI itself but our failure to govern it proportionally, treating a graduation algorithm with the same scrutiny as a spelling hint. This consequence-tiered framework gives leaders, policymakers, and educators a practical architecture for protecting learners while keeping innovation alive. The post A Hint is Not a Diploma: Consequential Educational Decision Making in the Multimodal AI Era appeared first on Getting Smart .
Field trips have always been more than a day away from desks. They are the moments students remember, the experiences that build empathy and ignite curiosity. A new Getting Smart post examines what the research says about virtual field trips and offers a classroom-ready framework that helps educators design experiences worthy of that same legacy. For leaders looking to expand access and deepen engagement without waiting for a bus, this is a practical and visionary read. The post Beyond the Classroom Walls: What Research Says About Virtual Field Trips appeared first on Getting Smart .
Education leaders must respond to six system shifts with clear vision, adaptive leadership, and future-ready competencies. The post What Should Leadership Look Like in the Age of Generation Alpha? Why Leadership Competencies Are More Important Than Ever appeared first on Getting Smart .
What does it look like when a city becomes a learning campus? The Providence After School Alliance spent two decades answering that question, aligning schools, city agencies, and community organizations so young people could access high-quality learning far beyond the school day. This Steward Story traces PASA's evolution from a bold response to a local crisis into a nationally recognized model for ecosystem building, credit-bearing out-of-school learning, and the kind of coordination that outlasts leadership transitions. For education leaders navigating fragmented systems, PASA's journey is both a blueprint and a call to action. The post Steward Stories: Spotlight on Providence After School Alliance appeared first on Getting Smart .
By: Deepti Reim The world of work is changing rapidly, requiring workers who can navigate evolving technologies, collaborate across disciplines, and adapt to increasingly complex operational systems. K-12 systems around the country are constantly trying to evolve alongside these changes, transforming Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs to better prepare students for life beyond the diploma. But while many programs attempt to simulate industry experiences inside a traditional classroom […] The post Maritime | 253: Project-Based Learning at Port Scale appeared first on Getting Smart .
What does it look like when three community believers spend 25 years refusing to give up on young people? Heart of Oregon Corps has built a tri-county workforce and learning ecosystem that connects youth facing the greatest barriers to paid work, credentials, and real careers. This Steward Stories spotlight examines the trust, time, and relentless community-braiding that make HOC a model for ecosystem intermediaries everywhere. Education leaders will find transferable lessons in partnership design, sustainable funding, and what it means to build pathways that dignify rather than sort. The post Steward Stories: How Heart of Oregon Corps Turns Service into Careers appeared first on Getting Smart .
What if every community member, from a landscape architect to a university researcher to a sitting senator, could become part of a student's education? CommunityShare has been quietly building that reality since 2015, connecting more than 85,000 students and their educators with community partners across 12 states through a model it calls a human library. This Steward Stories profile traces the vision, the timeline, and the hard-won lessons behind one of the most compelling ecosystem intermediaries in the country. Education leaders who are wrestling with relevance, learner agency, and community trust will find both inspiration and a practical framework here. The post Steward Stories: CommunityShare Proves That the Community Is the Curriculum appeared first on Getting Smart .
How a “context audit” with ChatGPT can help educators align AI tools with their teaching philosophy, pedagogy, and classroom goals. The post Defining Your Philosophy of Education for the AI Age appeared first on Getting Smart .
What does it actually take to steward a learning ecosystem, and how is that different from leading a system? Karen Pittman and Merita Irby spent a year inside four community intermediaries, including CommunityShare, the PAST Foundation, and Heart of Oregon Corps, and surfaced three prerequisites that change everything: trust, time, and idea translation. This post is essential reading for any leader working to connect education, youth development, and workforce systems into something greater than the sum of their parts. The post What Ecosystem Stewards Know That System Leaders Don’t — Yet appeared first on Getting Smart .
What does it look like when a school is genuinely designed around the lives learners are living, not the regulations they must comply with? In this new piece from Sarah Bishop-Root and Lindsy Ogawa, the Da Vinci Schools network in California shows how policy can be a tool for possibility and a source of fragility at the same time. Through the story of Da Vinci RISE and its students, this piece offers education leaders a grounded, human-centered lens for understanding the gap between what our best schools are trying to do and what our systems are designed to support. The post Exploring Policy From the Ground Up: Illuminations from the Da Vinci Network appeared first on Getting Smart .
How schools build durable skills through authentic work, reflection, relationships, and learner-centered design. The post The Conditions That Make Durable Skills Real: How Schools and Systems Build for Agency, Identity, and Vision appeared first on Getting Smart .
What does it look like when a foundation built by a field scientist becomes the connective tissue of an entire regional learning ecosystem? The PAST Foundation's story, told through 25 years of timeline milestones and student voices, offers education leaders a concrete model for weaving together schools, industry, community, and out-of-school time into something greater than any single program. From portable STEM labs to microschool pathways co-launched with universities and industry partners, PAST demonstrates how systemic change begins with a commitment to learning that is rooted in real work and real relationships. This is essential reading for leaders ready to move from coordination to transformation. The post Steward Stories: How the PAST Foundation Turned Real-World Problems Into a Learning Ecosystem appeared first on Getting Smart .
What does it look like when a foundation built by a field scientist becomes the connective tissue of an entire regional learning ecosystem? The PAST Foundation's story, told through 25 years of timeline milestones and student voices, offers education leaders a concrete model for weaving together schools, industry, community, and out-of-school time into something greater than any single program. From portable STEM labs to microschool pathways co-launched with universities and industry partners, PAST demonstrates how systemic change begins with a commitment to learning that is rooted in real work and real relationships. This is essential reading for leaders ready to move from coordination to transformation. The post How the PAST Foundation Turned Real-World Problems Into a Learning Ecosystem appeared first on Getting Smart .
What if the answer to student disengagement lived inside the curriculum itself? A new partnership between Edmentum and Roadtrip Nation embeds short, unscripted career exploration interviews directly into core high school courses, connecting algebra, biology, and English to real professionals and real possibilities. With data showing fewer absences, greater relevance, and students discovering careers they never knew existed, this model reframes a familiar question: school is not just preparation for graduation. It is preparation for possibility. Education leaders will want to see how this approach works, and what it signals about the future of instructional design. The post Core Plus Explore: How Embedded Career Relevance Improves Engagement in Foundational Courses appeared first on Getting Smart .
What if the most powerful tool in school improvement is a single, unhurried conversation? In this post, Jennifer Poon and Doannie Tran make the case for empathy interviews as the essential first step in genuine community co-creation, and explain why it matters deeply who conducts them. Drawing on their work with Burlington School District, they show how shifting the interviewer from consultant to community member transforms not just the data collected, but the relationships and shared ownership that follow. This is a must-read for any education leader serious about building strategies that reflect the full truth of their community. The post How Empathy Interviews Transform Stakeholder Engagement into Shared Ownership appeared first on Getting Smart .
In an era of rising resistance and restrictive legislation, asking educators to take risks without protecting them is not leadership, it is liability. Jennifer D. Klein, author of Taming the Turbulence in Educational Leadership, offers a clear-eyed framework for how school leaders can prepare their people with transformative professional learning, adapt systems to support innovation, and stand as a buffer when opposition arrives. This is the kind of piece that reminds education leaders why the soul of their work has always been human development, for adults as much as students. The post Prepare Your People, Protect Your People: Setting the Stage for Successful Change Management appeared first on Getting Smart .
When a leadership team meeting ends with everyone offering to help but no one agreeing to lead, something important has gone wrong beneath the surface. In this sharp, diagnostic piece, education leadership professor Andy Szeto names a pattern hiding in plain sight: voiceless collegiality, the organizational silence that masquerades as team harmony. Szeto identifies three distinct types of silence eroding school effectiveness and offers concrete shifts for leadership teams ready to trade comfort for clarity. The post Voiceless Collegiality: When Getting Along Gets in the Way of School Leadership appeared first on Getting Smart .
Community schools boost student success by connecting learning with mental health, family support, and local community resources. The post What If School Offered More? The Case for Community Schools appeared first on Getting Smart .
Keaton Wadzinski has been on both sides of the student voice equation — as a young person who was sometimes tokenized, sometimes genuinely empowered, and as an adult now designing the conditions for youth agency to flourish. In this deeply personal and strategically rich essay, he challenges education leaders to move beyond advisory committees and symbolic inclusion toward something far more honest and far more powerful. This is essential reading for any leader who believes young people deserve a real role in shaping the future of learning. The post Student Voice, All Grown Up appeared first on Getting Smart .
System transformation rarely fails because of a bad strategy. It fails because the relationships needed to sustain it were never built. In this piece, Rebecca Midles and Nate McClennen draw on real district leaders to show what coalition-building actually looks like when the messy middle arrives. From a rural Michigan superintendent who started with the willing to a Kansas City microschool that put students in the design seat, this is a practical and deeply human look at what makes change last. The post Coalition Before Consensus: How Trust and Shared Ownership Sustain Transformation appeared first on Getting Smart .
What happens when you build EdTech features by actually listening to students? Kyron Learning partnered with the AIMS Collaboratory and the Gates Foundation to study motivation and engagement among English language learners in middle school math, and the findings drove real product changes. This piece traces how closed captioning, highlighted transcripts, and clickable definitions emerged from classroom observation rather than assumption, offering a model for what participant-driven, learner-centered product development can look like at its best. The post How Student Feedback Shaped New Features for English Language Learners in Math appeared first on Getting Smart .
Too many districts launch the next big initiative before their systems are ready to sustain it. In this new piece, Getting Smart contributors Nate McClennen and Rebecca Midles introduce the 5 C's of R&D Readiness and 8 Archetypes of System Transformation, a practical framework for honestly diagnosing where your school or district stands before committing to wide-scale change. Whether your system is a Vanguard or a Frozen System, this tool helps leaders move from reactive initiative-chasing to intentional, coherent redesign. The post Beyond the Shiny Object: How to Assess Your System’s True Innovation Readiness appeared first on Getting Smart .
What does sustainable school improvement actually look like in a large, high-need district? In this piece, researchers and practitioners from East Baton Rouge Parish Schools share how a three-year research-practice partnership, built on shared values, rigorous evidence, and relational trust, moved the needle on math learning for more than 38,000 students. It is a model worth studying for any district leader tired of one-and-done professional development and ready to build something that lasts. The post Great Partnerships Are Like Gumbo, Not Fast Food appeared first on Getting Smart .
What happens when a school system delegates student achievement to an AI system with a single directive: raise test scores? In this provocative new piece, David Ross draws on AI alignment theory, Goodhart's Law, and a decade of stagnant NAEP data to map the subordinate goals an optimization engine might quietly pursue, from narrowing the curriculum to managing teachers as variables. It is essential reading for any leader navigating the intersection of political pressure and emerging technology. The post When AI Chases Test Scores, What Gets Left Behind? appeared first on Getting Smart .
The final installment in Norwalk's Portrait of a Graduate series asks the most important question of all: what do students say when you ask them to describe the Portrait? This post makes a compelling case that student co-design is not a nice-to-have but a core implementation lever, and it offers concrete strategies, from design sprints to feedback cycles to student-led reflection, for keeping student voice at the center of the work. For education leaders navigating the gap between vision and practice, this is an essential read. The post Coming Full Circle: The Portrait Lives Through Students appeared first on Getting Smart .
By: Charles Fadel, Center for Curriculum Redesign Adapted from “Cognitive Security Architecture for Student Learning Data” Schools have been capturing student data for decades, and eventually will also use new applications such as Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) that can adapt to each student’s pace, performance, and learning needs. But the key question becomes what kinds […] The post Some Student Data Should Never Become Digital appeared first on Getting Smart .
Aldine ISD’s HEAL Center expands healthcare pathways through community voice, industry partnership, and real-world learning. The post How One District Answered 13,000 Voices appeared first on Getting Smart .
College admissions requirements keep K-12 tied to grades and Carnegie units, slowing competency-based and skills-first learning. The post The Tyranny of College Admissions: Why It’s So Challenging to Have Real Change in K-12 Education appeared first on Getting Smart .
Why honest naming matters in education redesign: distinguish R&D from implementation so leaders scale learning, not assumptions. The post When Scale Gets Ahead of Learning appeared first on Getting Smart .
What if the most transformative idea in education right now has nothing to do with how big your school is? In this piece, George Philhower, superintendent at Eastern Hancock Schools and co-founder of the Indiana Microschool Collaborative, makes the case that the microschool mindset is a philosophy any school can adopt. From grading practices to flexible pathways to joy as a design principle, this is a grounded, visionary read for every leader asking what school could look like if we built it around learners instead of legacy systems. The post The Microschool Mindset: Why Small Thinking Is the Biggest Shift in Education appeared first on Getting Smart .
When a student completes a writing test in a locked browser, we learn what they can do alone. But the world asks something harder: can they use AI without being used by it? In this sharp and timely essay, Eric Tucker argues that assessment for writing, speaking, and listening has not kept pace with how communication actually works, and maps a practical path forward. Education leaders navigating AI policy, curriculum design, and high-stakes testing will find both a diagnostic and a blueprint here. The post Schools Are Testing the Past: How Assessment Must Evolve for Writing, Speaking, and Listening in the AI Age appeared first on Getting Smart .
For decades, math assessments have measured the residue of thinking rather than thinking itself. In this sharp, research-grounded piece, Eric Tucker argues that multimodal AI can finally make the Standards for Mathematical Practice visible, capturing spoken arguments, strategic shifts, and productive struggle in real time. For district leaders and curriculum directors rethinking assessment infrastructure, this is essential reading on what it means to measure what actually matters. The post We’ve Been Judging Symphony Rehearsals by the Last Note: Why Multimodal AI Can Finally Measure Mathematical Practice appeared first on Getting Smart .
When Jon Ketler, founder of the Tacoma School of the Arts, passed away recently, Getting Smart contributor Chris Unger sat down to capture what made him extraordinary. This tribute is more than a remembrance. It is a masterclass in what visionary school design actually looks like when one person decides to stop waiting for permission and start building. Education leaders who have ever wondered whether a single individual can change a system will find both proof and inspiration here. The post He Showed Me What One Person Could Do: A Tribute to Jon Ketler appeared first on Getting Smart .
Why boredom, quiet, and reflection matter for teen identity, agency, and imagination in a world shaped by constant screens. The post Running Your Own Race: Why Agency Begins in the Interior Life appeared first on Getting Smart .