Bill Daggett, Ed.D., Successful Practices Network Founder and Executive Chair, joins Mike Duncan, Ed.D., president and CEO at Battelle for Kids, for the second of our special Futurecast Conversations.
In this conversation, Mike Duncan and Bill Daggett discuss the future focus of education. They address the changing world and the need for schools to adapt to the needs of students and employers. They emphasize the importance of developing skills that cannot be replaced by AI and the need to shift from a content-driven curriculum to a skills-driven one.
They also talk about the challenges school districts face in implementing change and the role of community colleges in meeting the needs of business and industry. The conversation includes a discussion on measurement and accountability, as well as the potential for a national conversation on the future of education.
Here are three key takeaways from the conversation. Click here to watch the full video.
1. Education must adapt to teach students skills that AI cannot replace.
“AI can do what we’re trying to teach our kids to do. We have to teach our kids to do what AI can’t because no employer is going to pay you to do what tech technology can do faster and more efficiently than a human being. But that’s not where our standards, our curriculum, and our tests are primarily focused on.”
2. Education today is informed by both the weight of the past and the demands of the present.
“The weight of the past is we all know what school should be. It’s built around the industrial model and the Carnegie unit, and we designed our instructional programs around that. First period’s got nothing to do with second, and second has nothing to do with third. You kind of teach it, test it, lose it. That led to a workforce design problem because we designed the workforce around the instructional model, which led to a facilities problem. Most people don’t recognize we’re on the same footprint as prisons – everybody in their own little box.”
3. Schools need to shift from a content-driven curriculum to a skills-driven one.
“Our fixation as a nation since 2002 with No Child Left Behind and the acceleration and standards of testing is you get beyond the middle of elementary school through high school, those tests are content-driven. They’re not skill-driven. That required us to basically make content our objective. If you’re future-focused, content becomes the enabling objective. And these broader skills become the objective.”
More Futurecast Conversations
Tim Taylor, co-founder and president at America Succeeds, joined Mike Duncan for the first of our Futurecast Conversations.
