America is Updating Teaching Standards Without a Clear Picture of the Future Educator

By: Dr. Tyler Thigpen

Across the U.S., professional standards commissions and state agencies are revising what educators should know and be able to do. That’s encouraging. It signals seriousness about quality, learners, and the long-term health of the profession.

But there is a gap hiding in plain sight: We are trying to modernize educator preparation without a shared, field-tested picture of what the future educator actually looks like in practice. Without exemplars, standards work becomes guesswork—a negotiation among legacy requirements, political pressure, and compliance constraints rather than a design process grounded in how learning is changing.

The role we’ve long called “teacher” is being redefined—pushed by AI and pulled by learner-centered models. In many settings, an educator’s highest-value work is shifting away from routine delivery and toward a more demanding craft: cultivating learner agency, designing high-feedback environments, building trust, coaching reflection, and making learning legible through authentic evidence.

Yet most educator-preparation programs were not designed for this role.

Even strong programs are often organized around an older grammar of schooling: a primary identity as instructor-of-record, a classroom as the main unit of design, a narrower conception of assessment, and a more limited view of where learning happens and who counts as an educator. Meanwhile, states are asking candidates to navigate an expanding thicket of requirements—many inherited from a different era—while also expecting them to become adaptive, relational experts who can thrive in fast-changing environments.

The same gap exists outside traditional systems. Microschools, co-ops, hybrid schools, learning pods, apprenticeship-based models, and self-directed environments are growing because many families want more agency, customization, stronger relationships, and more meaningful learning. But those environments also need a North Star: a shared language for quality, a
picture of strong practice, and credible ways to train adults into the craft. In short, the field is changing faster than our preparation infrastructure, and we do not yet have widely trusted exemplars to guide the transition.

That is why six organizations came together to produce The Future of the Educator: A Collaborative Inquiry—Education Reimagined, Big Picture Learning, Learner-Centered Collaborative, the Institute for Self-Directed Learning, Mosaic, and The Socratic Experience. Its format pairs each foundational essay with peer critiques and an author rejoinder so readers can
see the conversation, not just the conclusions.

We came together to offer the field an experience-based picture of what educators are becoming—and to do it without pretending we all see the world the same way. We share deep alignment on the big ideas: relationships matter; agency is developed, not assumed; learning should be meaningful and rigorous; adults need formation and coaching, not
just training modules; and AI should amplify learning without replacing the human work at the center.

But we also disagree in important ways, especially about how change happens and where it should begin. Some of us are building new environments outside conventional systems, where iteration is faster and constraints are fewer. Others are focused on making learner-centered practice accessible at scale through public systems and broader ecosystems. Some believe the existing grammar of schooling can hold this shift with redesign and guardrails; others believe parallel pathways and new institutional forms will be necessary. Those differences are not liabilities. They are what make this inquiry useful. The field does not need a manifesto that flattens complexity. It needs credible perspectives leaders can learn from, test against their context, and translate into coherent decisions.

Three moves the field can make now:

Emerging Educators

Treat this as career guidance, not theory.

If you are early in your journey—undergraduate, graduate, alternative certification, residency, or the first years of practice—this is not an abstract debate. It is a preview of the craft you may be asked to practice, whether your role is called teacher, guide, facilitator, advisor, mentor, or something else. Read it to clarify what kind of educator you want to become, what environments you want to work in, and what skills you need to build now: coaching and feedback, culture-building, learning design, assessment literacy beyond grades, AI fluency with judgment, and the relational discipline required to grow agency in young people.

Intermediaries and Training Organizations

Use it to sharpen strategy. If you lead a nonprofit, intermediary, professional-learning provider, fellowship, or innovation network, do not skim this for confirmation. Read it to understand the real differences and what they mean for your own theory of change. Then decide whether to double down with clarity on the approach you believe will work or pivot toward one you have not yet fully considered.

Colleges of Education and State commissions

Treat this as a design input—and go see it. If you are updating standards or redesigning preparation, you need more than policy language. You need exemplars, and you need visits. Bring faculty teams, commission members, and state staff to places where these roles are already being practiced. Observe. Interview. Map competencies to practice. Then simplify what must be simplified, modernize what must be modernized, and protect what must be protected so the next generation of educators can thrive rather than merely comply.

Here is the hopeful truth: In an era of AI and accelerating change, the future educator is not
diminished. The future educator is elevated. The profession is moving toward deeper expertise: designing conditions for learning, not just delivering content; coaching agency, not just managing behavior; making learning credible through authentic evidence; building trust with families and communities; and exercising discernment about what to automate, what to amplify, and what must remain profoundly human.

We can let this transition happen haphazardly, leaving new educators to piece together a new profession on their own. Or we can build the exemplars, language, and pathways that make the craft teachable.

That is what this inquiry is for: a North Star, offered with conviction, experience, humility, and a commitment to constructive dialogue across lines of difference, so the field can move forward with greater clarity, credibility, and courage.

Dr. Tyler Thigpen is Academic Director at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, head of The Forest School: An Acton Academy and The Forest School Online, and CEO of the Institute for Self Directed Learning in Trilith south of Atlanta.