Policies & Systems

Subscribe to Our Podcast

This podcast highlights developing trends in K-12 education, postsecondary and lifelong learning. Each week, Getting Smart team members interview students, leading authors, experts and practitioners in research, tech, entrepreneurship and leadership to bring listeners innovative and actionable strategies in education leadership.

View Series

Find us on:

apple spotify stitcher
Ed Policy

A Hint is Not a Diploma: Consequential Educational Decision Making in the Multimodal AI Era

Eric Tucker

As AI accelerates into every corner of schooling, education leaders face a question that is both urgent and deeply human: who holds the gavel? In this provocative new piece, Eric Tucker argues that the real risk is not AI itself but our failure to govern it proportionally, treating a graduation algorithm with the same scrutiny as a spelling hint. This consequence-tiered framework gives leaders, policymakers, and educators a practical architecture for protecting learners while keeping innovation alive.
Leadership

Coalition Before Consensus: How Trust and Shared Ownership Sustain Transformation

Rebecca Midles, Nate McClennen

System transformation rarely fails because of a bad strategy. It fails because the relationships needed to sustain it were never built. In this piece, Rebecca Midles and Nate McClennen draw on real district leaders to show what coalition-building actually looks like when the messy middle arrives. From a rural Michigan superintendent who started with the willing to a Kansas City microschool that put students in the design seat, this is a practical and deeply human look at what makes change last.