Seeding a New Shared Story of School: Cultivating insights across sectors and across communities to reframe schooling for the future

Dear friends and colleagues,

A brief update — and an invitation to engage.

After stepping away from my longtime role leading the The Aspen Institute Education & Society Program in January, I’ve been working independently for a little over six months. I want to share what I’ve been up to, what I’m learning, and why I think we need a new story about the role of public education in America.

What I’m Working On

• Consulting with a foundation to reinvigorate the democratic mission of public education.
• Partnering with Jennifer Cheatham at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to launch an initiative reorienting superintendent preparation and support around the civic and political leadership skills needed in polarized times.
• Co-editing a book with Jen and Christina Grant , forthcoming from Harvard Education Press in 2026, on this same theme.
• Organizing roundtables with experts in democracy, the future of work, and mental health/well-being to identify principles that can orient a renewed vision of education.

Why This Work Feels Urgent

Stepping away from day-to-day management has given me space to reflect. And what I am thinking about more than anything is the profound misalignment between what schools deliver and what young people and society need.

From my learning journeys last year—including week-long listening sessions in Oklahoma and Utah—one theme came through with striking clarity: school feels artificial and disconnected from life beyond its walls.

• As a middle schooler in Southern Utah put it: “School is mostly about getting better at more school.” Young people told me that clubs, sports, and jobs helped them grow; school felt like a “check-the-box” exercise.
• A PTA mom in suburban Tulsa echoed this frustration: “The worksheets my kids bring home won’t prepare them for the work I’m doing now — and my work will be obsolete by the time they’re looking for jobs.”

The concerns aren’t just anecdotal: broad data reveal young people dealing with epidemic levels of anxiety and depression, employers decrying a widening skills mismatch, and trust in democracy that is badly eroded. This moment is partly the legacy of education reform’s narrow, technocratic vision, which confounded means with ends and reduced the purpose of education to test scores. Strong reading and math skills matter a lot—but they are not the ultimate destination of education. Over time, test scores shifted from one important proxy to the very purpose of school, leaving students less engaged, less happy, and less civically prepared—and ultimately undermined achievement itself.

As the era of Artificial Intelligence promises profound changes in every dimension of life, Americans are uncertain and divided on the role schools play in bringing forward a better future.

All this leaves me with questions I don’t yet have answers to:

• In the current environment, what goals, agendas, and coalitions can garner broad public support for public education? How do we tap into deeply held, shared values to re-catalyze broad support for strengthening and sustaining public education?
• How do we recalibrate to respect the structural and cultural roots of local agency and pluralism in American education, without abandoning expertise and empirical evidence on best practices or commitments to protecting the rights of marginalized groups?
• How do we name and push back on polarizing discourse coming from both left and right without falling into the trap of moral equivalence?

In this turbulent period of chaos and destruction, it is imperative to seed a new vision of education that channels deeply held values about work, the common good, and preparation for life. Americans want to come together across lines of difference, not for the sake of bridging, but to solve important problems that require collaboration, according to More in Common . Public education ought to be the archetypical context for such deliberations, but how do we make it so? These questions and this work are my way of orienting toward America’s 250th birthday.

Toward a New Vision

We need a new narrative about public education’s role in preparing young people for life: for work, for citizenship, for health and well-being.

That’s why I am co-convening expert roundtables this fall and asking a simple but profound question: “What needs to be true for America and Americans to thrive over the next 30 years and beyond?”

Each sector—democracy, the future of work, mental health—holds part of the answer. From these conversations, I expect to:

1. Co-author briefs capturing areas of consensus within each domain.
2. Distill cross-cutting principles.
3. Create resources for communities that can be used to assess current practice and design educational experiences that align with what young people and communities want and need.

The everyday experience of school must advance human flourishing, social cohesion, and shared prosperity—not through discrete programs or add-ons, but deliberately, by design.

Where Change Takes Root: The Work Ahead Is Local

Too often, schools are seen as functionaries of federal or state policy, rather than as true community institutions. The most constructive work in this next phase will be local, community by community.

I see my role as akin to Johnny Appleseed for new thinking about what public education can and should be for the coming generations. In this vast and great country, whatever good work is needed is already underway somewhere. I plan to learn across contexts and share insights, ideas, and innovations so what works in one place can be adapted in another. I am not starting a new organization or advocating for one specific plan or approach.

I am most fulfilled in the work when I am helping others see opportunity for connection and coherence, connecting the dots across work that is being done in parallel and could be pursued with greater connection and coordination for positive impact. I have done this for a long time across education initiatives, and I hope to bring this spirit to cross-sector collaboration and ecosystem approaches to improve learning.    

Living With the Tension

This work is speculative and fraught. Some days I wonder whether it’s foolhardy to place a long bet on American renewal—or whether I should be manning a battle station to resist authoritarianism and protect the rule of law.

For now, I’m living into my purpose by digging into the deep well of shared humanity and aspiration that animates Americans. I intend to play a small part in reactivating the role public education plays in our pursuit of a more perfect union.

Invitation

I will update this community in the coming months as the work unfolds.

If you have ideas, advice, concerns, or introductions—or if you’re wrestling with these same questions and simply want to talk—I’d welcome hearing from you.

Always looking forward,

Ross