Responding to future forces with appropriate policy strategies will be an important part of creating the future of learning. These briefs can be used to help develop policy that is more relevant to, and aligned with, the future depicted in the 2020 Forecast.

The first brief focuses on Ohio state-level policymakers and their recommendations for preparing for transforming urban education for the future. Subsequent briefs look more generally at the future of learning, including building policy platforms for resilience, developing skills and capacities in amplified policymaking, and crafting policy for emerging educational futures.

Crafting Policy for Emerging Educational Futures

The Altered Bodies driver of change highlights the dichotomous nature of our world, in which advancements in bio-engineering offer the promise of tremendous enhancements to our cognitive and physical performance at the same time as our biological, ecological, and built environments are increasingly showing signs of stress and deterioration. The Maker Economy driver of change describes an economic shift from large-scale industry and production to bottom-up design and manufacturing.

This brief examines the policy implications of these two drivers of change, both of which point toward a new future in which teaching and learning could look very different from the way they do today. Together, these two drivers of change highlight opportunities and challenges in creating and managing learning for the future. Opportunities include retooled learning, enhanced cognition, and sustainable schools. Challenges include increasing levels of bio-distress, ethical dilemmas raised by new ways of modifying our bodies and brains, and equity and fairness in accessing the new technologies and processes that will shape the maker economy. This brief raises questions about how we can ensure that policy is appropriately responsive to such new conditions so that we are taking advantage of opportunities where appropriate as well as managing challenges.

Amplified Policymaking

Together, the Pattern Recognition and Amplified Organization drivers of change point toward a series of cultural shifts and illuminate how we are developing new ways of organizing, constructing, and managing knowledge. They describe a world in which we will increasingly collaborate, improvise, and work together to assemble meaning from vast arrays of data, while also creating new learning experiences combining physical and digital realities.

In the brief, we explore the new skills required to handle the ubiquity and transparency of data, along with the implications for using those skills to extend individual and organizational capacity. By amplifying their skills, engaging in collaborative policy development, and creating the conditions for innovation, policymakers can become “superheroes” in creating a future of learning that benefits all students.

Building Policy Platforms for Resilience

A New Civic Discourse and Platforms for Resilience drivers of change point to trends in the areas of participatory media and virtual communities that are empowering individual citizens to organize around common interests and that pressure institutions to change in fundamental ways. New community models, communication methods, and spheres of influence are arising in a global society. With community no longer defined geographically, individuals are affiliating around common needs and claiming rights to learning that were previously the purview of the education elite. At the same time, the increase of institutional disruptions and system shocks throughout society is requiring leaders to respond differently than in the past. Leaders must learn how to meet these challenges with even more flexibility, greater collaboration, and increased transparency than they employed in the past.

In this brief, we call on policymakers to respond to changes and other shocks and disruptions to our geopolitical, economic, environmental, and social systems with new strategies. Specifically, we recommend that policymakers build policy Platforms for Resilience, characterized by flexibility, collaboration, and transparency, to support the inevitable transitions in systems of learning on the horizon.

Transforming Urban Education: Implications for State Policymakers

What if, in 2020...a new generation of leaders ends the war in Iraq and turns its attention to pressing domestic issues, eventually resulting in a healthier economy and renewed investments in the urban core?

What if, in 2020...having tried and failed at the beginning of the 21st century to improve urban education with prescriptive, high-stakes accountability measures, policymakers turn to alternative solutions once considered anathema within the public arena?

What if, in 2020...the widespread availability of free Wi-Fi and other innovative technologies, reinforced by federal and state policies, encourage grassroots solutions, fueling local ingenuity and productivity?

Could any of these possible scenarios become reality in our nation’s urban centers in 2020? Are there indications of these future worlds already evident today? And, depending upon how events unfold in real time, how should urban education leaders respond?

A group of stakeholders from eight Ohio urban districts tackled these questions. They began by exploring trends of the future likely to impact education and created four plausible but divergent scenarios for education in the year 2020. After analyzing the implications of the scenarios for the future of urban education in Ohio, they developed recommendations for actions that the districts could take today in order to position themselves for success in any possible future.

In this brief, we explain the context and process for this work and discuss the implications for state-level policymakers interested in supporting such a transformation of urban education as envisioned by this group in Ohio. We suggest possible approaches policymakers could take to implement these recommendations and prepare not only to survive, but also to thrive in the challenging and uncertain times ahead.