“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” Meaning that once you change your aspiration—when you set your sights on different results—the system you have is wrong, by definition. Because the system is designed, intentionally or not, to yield the results you got yesterday.”
― Dan Heath, Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working

The World They’re In Isn’t Ours

And our schools still think it is.

A couple weeks ago I had dinner with the boy and his girlfriend after a basketball game. Talk turned to how the world used to be.

I thought I understood how much the world had changed.

I didn’t.

It wasn’t until sitting across from these two young adults that I realized just how dramatically it had morphed.

I’m not sure we grasp the disconnect between our world and that of these kids coming of age.

When I say we, I’m talking about my generation — the adults who grew up inside this system, did reasonably well by it, and assumed it would work just as well for our kids.

Simple things — like being tied to the house for a phone call — felt centuries old.

The idea of having to seek out information, instead of just drinking from the fire hose, seemed quaint.

They looked at me the way I used to look at my grandfather when he talked about party lines and rabbit ears.

To them, the idea of waiting for information feels absurd.
To me, the idea of never escaping it feels exhausting.

It’s funny. We bemoan the spread of misinformation today, yet treat the lessons we were taught in school as gospel. Trust me, there was plenty of misinformation spread in the 80’s and 90’s — we just didn’t have the resources to fact check everything.

We trusted the textbook because it was bound and laminated.
We trusted the teacher because she stood at the front of the room.
We trusted the nightly news because it came on at 5:30 and wore a tie.

Now the kids trust nothing — and everything — all at once.

Opinions about gender roles are worlds away from what they were in my youth. I’d like to say things are more equitable, but I don’t know that I really believe that. Humans don’t do equity very well. We are all looking for an edge.

The rules have shifted. Navigating the waters often feels like visiting a foreign country for an old gent like myself.

But here’s what struck me most during that dinner:

Everything about their world has changed — except the structure of the schools preparing them for it.

New Curtains. Same Room.

What hasn’t changed is how we deliver public education.

I’ve argued in the past that innovation happens regularly. The more I watch, the less sure I become.

Sure, we’ve hung new curtains. Slapped on a new coat of paint. Moved the sofa to the other side of the room.

But have we really changed the room?

We cling to reading, writing, and arithmetic as if that alone guarantees success — while often forgetting that a core tenet of K-12 education should be teaching kids how to learn.

We hold up test scores as a litmus test of school success, forgetting that those results are rooted in a metric that comforts adults.

If only it was all so simple.

A long-term educator I respect said something this week that I’ve been turning over in my head. We were discussing a digital hall pass system. He liked its ability to regulate movement.

“We all know, that learning doesn’t take place in the hallway.”

True — to a point.

No prescribed learning takes place in the hallway.

But learning itself is perpetual.

You learn how to negotiate.
You learn how to read people.
You learn how to de-escalate.
You learn who you are.

None of that shows up on TCAP.

The Math You Don’t Teach

Back in my restaurant managing days, I was responsible for nightly checkout with servers. They’d count their bank. I’d count it again. Then it went into the safe.

Now? A button produces a detailed report.

Back then it was time-consuming — especially with 6–10 employees.

Ironically, the employees who had slung a little dope in high school were the most precise. Bills were faced and counted faster and more accurately than those who’d aced classroom math.

I’m not endorsing illegal commerce as pedagogy.

I’m pointing out that learning comes in different forms.

Those former entrepreneurs weren’t high test scorers.

But they were some of my most valuable employees.

They understood margins.
Accountability.
Consequences.
Customer service.

We don’t measure that.

We measure bubble sheets.

Compliance Is the Curriculum

A major part of public education is compliance.

You can’t have a functioning society if people do whatever they want. I’ve made peace with that. Age helps.

But when compliance overtakes student need, I take exception.

That’s where we are with our over-reliance on test scores.

Scores never proven to correlate with long-term success — yet continually used to justify adult decisions.

We even have a Presidential candidate touting his 960 SAT score as qualification for office.

If that guy is on track to be El Jefe, why am I busting my ass to score higher?

Sacrificed in this pursuit of potentially irrelevant numbers is the teacher/student relationship.

When students have relationships with teachers, they learn more. Miss less. Disrupt less.

Yet look at the avalanche of policies and show me the ones designed primarily to deepen relationships.

Instead we get rigid pacing guides and frequent administrator visits from people who have never met the children they’re measuring.

Sacrificed at the altar of control is the capacity to form the needed genuine relationships. It’s not enough to provide a few worksheets and a day of training on relationship development. Yet, that’s the current trend.

Make it make sense.

Muskets in the Age of AI

These kids are graduating into a world of AI, instant communication, and radical transparency.

We’re preparing them with fax machines.

It’s like sending soldiers into modern combat with muskets and revolvers.

I’ve reinvented myself three or four times.

They may have to do it six or seven.

Are we teaching adaptability — or just obedience?

Maybe it’s time to design a new system.

Problem is, for those who benefit — and you know who you are — this one works perfectly.

Results that will get you elected to the next highest office.
Results that justify the six-figure salary.
Results that secure positions outside of the classroom.
Results that provide a system ripe with opportunity for personal enrichment.

The Legislative Blizzard

If you want proof that we struggle to grasp the disconnect between our world and theirs, you don’t have to look further than the Tennessee General Assembly this time of year.

Bills fly.

Each session brings fixes, mandates, carve-outs, and symbolic gestures layered on top of a system already heavy with rules.

We are endlessly adjusting the machinery.

Rarely do we ask whether the machine itself still makes sense.

Take the ongoing debate about athletic participation for private school students. On its face, it’s a narrow question: who gets to try out for which team under what conditions?

Both sides can marshal reasonable arguments.

But zoom out.

How many students does this truly affect?

If a family chooses a private school, academics and athletics are part of that decision. Life is full of trade-offs.

And yet we draft legislation to solve edge cases while leaving untouched the broader structural issues facing public education.

Instead of rethinking how schools prepare students for a world shaped by AI, automation, and global mobility, we debate narrow access questions.

We perfect the compliance systems.

We rarely interrogate the blueprint.

And none of these debates answer the question I was staring at across the dinner table.

Immigration, English Learners, and the Questions We Avoid

The same instinct surfaces in debates about immigration and schools.

Proposals to require schools to track immigration status raise fundamental questions about what schools are for.

“Do you want schools to focus on positive student academic outcomes, or do you want schools to be an instrument of immigration enforcement?” asked Knox County teacher Betsy Hobkirk.

MNPS serves roughly 21,000 English learners — about a quarter of the district.

District-wide, roughly 750 EL instructors. At an average salary of $50,000, that’s approximately $37.5 million before benefits, training, and materials.

That is a significant investment.

English acquisition takes years. Outcomes vary. Intentions vary. Communities vary.

And here’s a reality educators quietly acknowledge: not every student arrives equally motivated to master English. Some families view their time in the United States as temporary. Some students live in communities where daily life can function largely in their native language. Some adolescents, like adolescents everywhere, resist what feels imposed. That isn’t a moral failing — it’s a human one. But it complicates timelines, expectations, and funding models.

The question isn’t whether we should educate immigrant students. The question is whether we are doing it well.

Andrea Williams, opinion columnist for The Tennessean, recently wrote:

“It is perfectly reasonable to wonder whether MNPS is doing enough — or whether the district cares more about the funding attached to each enrolled immigrant student than those students’ futures.”

That is not a culture-war question.

It is a systems question.

Are we designing models that maximize fluency and long-term opportunity?

Are we measuring progress in ways that reflect actual readiness?

Or are we again building structures that reassure adults — politically and financially — while avoiding deeper redesign?

As enrollment shifts and English learners represent a growing share of the district, the stakes only grow.

If adaptability defines the modern economy, language acquisition policy isn’t peripheral.

It is central.

Are we aligning philosophy and practice?

Or funding and optics?

We come back to dinner.

Two teenagers across the table, navigating a world that did not exist when I was their age.

They are building systems in real time — online, collaborative, adaptive.

And meanwhile, we are still perfecting compliance systems in a world that rewards adaptability.

We measure success with instruments designed for a slower century.

We comfort ourselves with numbers that reassure adults while telling kids very little about how to survive the world they are inheriting.

The world changed.

They changed with it.

The only real question left is whether we are willing to.

This isn’t corporate media. There’s no team. No budget. No handlers.

It’s just me — trying to keep up, trying to keep you informed, and trying to say what others won’t.

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Categories: Education