Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Happy New Year! This is a year when likely and unlikely allies must join forces to ensure millions more students have access to real-world learning experiences, engaging teaching and the essential skills they need to thrive.
I am hopeful this can happen for a few reasons. First, there is growing, cross-sector consensus that student engagement is an essential variable for student success. Journalist Jenny Anderson and researcher Rebecca Winthrop elevate the primacy of engagement beautifully in their new book, The Disengaged Teen. Not only do they explore signs of its alarming absence among young people (just 29 percent of high school seniors say they love going to school), but they also provide clear recommendations for parents and educators on what to do about it. I had the great pleasure of speaking with Rebecca and Jenny during their Brookings Institute book launch last week, and I invite you to learn more about their strategies for harnessing student engagement in our recent Carnegie Q&A with the authors.
I am also hopeful about the momentum afoot to transform the American high school. In December, Carnegie co-hosted Exchange 24 with the XQ Institute. The event brought together students, educators, artists, scholars, philanthropists, federal policymakers and state leaders to consider a bold path forward for high schools across the nation. There were many extraordinary contributions, including Frank Luntz on using words that resonate with parents and voters, Margaret Spellings on the case for finding common ground, Amit Sevak on the future of assessment, state leaders Sydnee Dickson (Utah), Anjélica Infante-Green (RI), Kirsten Baesler (North Dakota) and Stephen Dackin (OH) on what states can do to catalyze change, and Geoffrey Canada, who compelled us all to action. Exchange24 was a powerful reminder that transforming high school demands collaboration across sectors, roles, geographies, parties, and perspectives – and opportunity abounds.
On the home front, I am hopeful about the work Carnegie and close partners have coming to fruition in 2025:
- With the American Council on Education, we will release the reimagined Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education to better represent our very multi-faceted postsecondary sector, and spur it to become a more vital engine of economic mobility.
- With educators across the nation, we will establish the Future of High School Network to catalyze schools in incredibly diverse communities to become more engaging, experiential, rigorous and joyful.
- With student, parent, educator, and academic stakeholders, we will share a national R&D agenda and activate an R&D consortium to build knowledge and tools to accelerate high school transformation.
- With ETS and state and district partners in Indiana, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Nevada, we will pilot very new kinds of assessments that measure the development of skills we know predict success.
Thank you for being on this journey with us.
In partnership,
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