Are You Ready for What’s Next in Education?

I’m really excited about this talk today because I love some forward thinking. It’s really fun to take a look at what’s going on in education and synthesize it and share what could be helpful for the parents in our community and who we serve. This talk is really for parents of school-age children who want to see the bird’s eye view of what’s going on and learn a little bit more about what they can be thinking about.

Before I get into the details, I always like to center us on some thinking. Think about your child. If you have children, think about each of them. Get them in your head. Really consider where they are right now. Maybe they’re in school right this minute. I want you to think about your child as we go through this content and really anchor what we’re discussing around them.

The Linear Path Still Exists (But It’s Not the Only One)

It’s really clear that so much of our experience in education starts out as we all probably experienced. Your child’s developing skills in the early years around academics, social, emotional, and physical development at home and at school. They’re developing language, motor skills, maybe building, constructing, creating.

They get into elementary school and the depth and the breadth of these academic experiences become greater. They start to really collaborate more deeply with the adults in their lives, and the adults they have in their lives increase in number. You have teachers and coaches and different related service providers, different parents, different mentors. As you get into high school, the independence becomes greater, the expectations become greater for students, and they’re delving into more academic work that involves learning material, demonstrating that they did learn the material, and making sure that they get all of their assignments in while also studying, writing papers, and doing all the things that they do to develop their social, emotional, and physical selves.

By the time we’re at the end of high school, there’s even more learning that’s happening outside of the classroom. Students in later years of high school are learning to drive, learning to fill out forms, learning to get jobs. The learning extends, and they get to college, and the learning becomes hopefully an ingrained part of their process. So the linear experience of education is really still here. We still have early education, elementary, middle school, high school, college. But something is shifting, especially in 2026.

We maybe still have that linear pathway that’s there, but there are so many different options. It’s like off ramps, on ramps, pivots, accelerations, pauses, alternate routes. So many different pathways that you can take to get to the same endpoint. And it’s really interesting because you can look at this as an upside or a downside, depending on the moment that you’re in with your child. If I said to you, there are four different ways to get to the endpoint of this learning, that might be an upside for you. You might say, thank goodness there is, because we need a different one. Or you might say, I sort of wish there was less choice here. It would be kind of easier if we just had one pathway. So it really depends on the context of what you’re going through. But no question, there are so many different pathways that we can take right now.

This is causing our families to be in a state where they’re constantly evaluating and comparing, second guessing sometimes their choices, especially because we’re raising human beings. And sometimes the path from one option to the next isn’t super easy, or even the outcome might not be great. And then you go and say, well, I wish I would have taken a different pathway.

Why Are All These Education Pathways Emerging?

So you might be asking, why are all of these pathways existing right now in education? How come we have so many different options?

One of the changes that’s influencing us as a society is technology. For some students, this is not affecting them. Their programming is very typical, very unaffected by AI, but certainly everyone’s thinking about it, at least wondering about it. The programming in schools couldn’t be more different in terms of what they’re doing. I was just talking with someone about how some schools use AI to teach English, writing, and math skills, and they’re using that in an app format, and that’s the way the students are learning that content. Other schools are using AI as a bot to ask students questions and get them to critically think and even redefine their research projects or give them a curiosity, motivation to go and actually research something. Even within different programs, AI is being used differently.

Also, we are really demanding personalization. You go home and you flip on the TV and you used to—everybody used to watch the same thing on Thursday nights. Do you remember? The television show “ER” was on and everybody talked about it. But it’s not that way anymore. We’re personalizing literally every experience that we have. So when it comes to school, there’s an expectation that this learning experience is going to be personalized. Not to say that’s good or bad, but it’s a real thing. It’s a real expectation. And families expect schools to really think about what their child needs and what they’re going to do, what their learning gaps are, and how they’re going to help them.

There’s more options for flexibility in programming. So we have virtual options, micro schools. The amount of school choices that we have is so broad, which means we can be participating in different kinds of programming all the time based on what we need. And this is really, I think, allowing families to find the best fit for them because there are so many different options. And there’s more choice that we have, which I just mentioned. So we have public school, private school, we have charters, we have religious schools, micro schools, online learning, homeschooling, co-ops. It goes on and on.

There’s also access to content and expertise beyond the classroom. Everyone is learning content on YouTube, from people across the world. We have access to things that we never had access to. And I’m not going to get into whether that’s good or bad either, but the outcomes certainly show that students in high school now have access to content and expertise that they can develop and build skill around well before they get to college or well before they maybe would have in prior decades.

There’s a shift in how skills are valued. And so employers are really now looking at things that aren’t just degrees anymore. They’re looking at technical skills, they’re looking at critical thinking, collaboration, creativity. And this is a real shift in the way that education has worked in the past. It used to be so much around get the degree, get the credential, get the diploma. And while those things are certainly valued, they’re not the only things that are valued anymore.

And then there’s also this growing skepticism around ROI on college. Is it worth the money that we’re putting into it? And so families are making different decisions based on those kinds of things. Traditional college might not be the right path. Maybe a gap year is right, or a trade school is right, or an entrepreneurial path is right. And so all of these things are really influencing and affecting how many pathways there are and the emergence of them.

What New Education Options Mean for Your Family

As parents, we want outcomes that are fulfilling for our child. And when I say outcome, I mean like after high school.

What is this person doing?

• Are they happy?
• Are they challenged?
• Are they satisfied?
• Are they growing?
• Are they contributing?
• Are they setting goals?

And we can probably assume that part of them being prepared for adulthood happens in educational experiences.</p>

But we sort of have no idea what will be relevant by the time our children are entering the working world.

So we don’t know what they’re going to be doing, what they’re going to be using, what’s going to change, what our world is going to look like. This is a very normal way for a human to feel—like you’re not really sure about what’s going to happen next. But here’s how parents are operating. They’re not focusing on the outcome, but they are focusing on whether the educational journey that their child is on is working for their child.

So if you think about it like the present tense versus the future tense. The present tense is: is my child having a decent enough experience that is going to be building them in some way to be more prepared for the next thing? Are they developing skills? Are they happy enough? Are they in an environment where they can fail and not feel completely debilitated? Are they in an environment that’s really accepting of them and there’s a growth mindset? Are they with people who care about them? It’s really looking at whether the experience that they have as they’re going through this pathway is working for them. That’s really how we can assess whether or not we’re in the right spot.

And I know it’s so hard. I’m doing this myself. I have teenagers. One’s going to college next year. One’s a sophomore in high school. One’s in fifth grade. I’m doing this all the time and trying to assess, are we in the right spot? Is this working? And so when I teach parents about this, I always teach them to be like observers first and information gatherers first, and then become a person who can step back and say, what do we have here? What are we seeing? And how do we do this?

And I have this really great chart that I always share. Let me describe it to you. On one side, the y-axis, is your child’s competence. How competent are they in the thing that they’re doing?

And then on the x-axis is challenge. And what you need for your child to really have the experience that they need is they need high competence and high challenge. And the feeling that you get there is engagement and flow. Your child feels like they’re doing it and they’re being challenged at the same time.

If you have low competence and high challenge, you end up in anxiety and overwhelm. If you have high competence and low challenge, you end up in boredom and apathy. And if you have low competence and low challenge, you’re sort of in disinterest or maybe lack of motivation. And so what I teach parents is this is kind of how you can assess what’s happening for your child. Because you can think about your child in anything—music lessons, school, after school activities, math class. You can think about their competence. How competent are they? And the challenge. How challenged are they?

And then you can start to ask yourself, what can I do on either side of this to make this work better for them? So if you have a child who’s highly competent but it’s low challenge, they’re bored and apathetic. You might need to increase the challenge. How do I do that? I advocate for my child. I talk to the teacher. I request different work. I make requests. So you can start to see how you can be an observer and an information gatherer and then actually advocate and do something differently. Conversely, you might have a kid who’s highly challenged and low competence, and you need to increase their competence—extra supports, tutor, a little bit of extra help here. And that’s going to change the trajectory for them so they feel differently. I love this because it gives you a really nice framework to make decisions.

Building Your Support System to Navigate Education

The other thing I want to share is this concept of building a bench of supports around your child.

You need more than one or two people who understand your child and who can help you solve and troubleshoot when things aren’t going in the right direction.

And I have this concept, I think of it as your bench. I love it because it’s a great visual for me. On this bench, you’re going to have a roster of people who are going to help you. They’re really experts, and they’re going to provide input, and they’re going to help you make good decisions. They’re going to help you reflect on what’s happening and give you ideas for the next steps.

It might be a school psychologist, a tutor, a friend who really has a great understanding of middle school, or maybe someone who’s an expert in the high school application process, or a testing expert, or an educational consultant, or a therapist, or an educational therapist. All these different people have really great ideas and can be contributing members to your child’s team.

But you as the parent or caregiver get to decide who is on your bench.

And you get to decide not just who sits on the bench, but also who’s on the field. You might pull people on and off the field based on the needs. Maybe one season you bring on an executive functioning coach because you’re like, oh my gosh, my child’s going into high school and they’re not ready for this. This is what we need. And then you call someone, they come, they’re on the field, they give support. Child is now doing much better. They’ve learned some things. They don’t need that support anymore. They can come off the field and sit on the bench.

And you need to do this because, let’s face it, we cannot, in one lifetime, be an expert in every single thing that our child might need help with or that we might need help with as a parent.

One time I remember there was a really great idea that came in for one of the teachers, and we just couldn’t get it to work in our house. I had like three young kids at the time. I was starting this business. It just required too much of me to get in place, and I wasn’t able to execute on it. And I felt really badly about that at the time. But now, if I could teach myself something, I would say, not every solution, not every good solution is going to work for you at the time. And so you also have permission to kick things off the bench if they’re just not working for you.</p>

How Evolved Education is Preparing Students for What’s Next

If you’re here today as a parent, then hopefully we’ve earned a spot on your bench.

And I say that with a lot of pride and also responsibility. We are very honored to grow with our families. We have this lovely construct of having the opportunity to care for students from nursery all the way through college.

There are all of these great pathways in education. There are so many different options. And there is a real change happening in education and what our kids are going to be doing for the end result of their education in their adult lives.

When we thought about 2026 coming in, we said, we need to kind of update what we’re promising people that we’re doing here to be a little clearer, but also to articulate really what we are doing and what we have been doing.

We understand how a student learns, we build the skills to succeed, and we make confident decisions so every student is fully prepared for what comes next.

Everything that we’re doing, the services, the things that we’re doing with families—we promise that we’re going to help evolve the understanding of the student. If we’re doing that, then we’re successful. We promise we’re going to look into who your child is with you, and we’re going to help your child at a certain point understand themselves. The best thing ever is that I have a kid going off to college who knows how he learns and he knows what he needs to get things done. To me, that’s amazing. I took a long time to get there, so I think that’s really special. And we can leave every service with that.

We can also build skills to succeed.

We can make sure that anything lagging is getting bolstered. And we can do that in a lot of different ways. We can help parents with skills, we can help kids with skills, and we can teach. And then we can help people make confident decisions amongst all of those pathways—how do you know where to go? We are going to work with you and help you make those decisions for your child and really facilitate that bench and get everyone to weigh in. It’s not our way or the highway. It’s really an investigative approach. Given all of this information that we’re going to be studying, let’s see what works for you and let’s see what the pathway can be.

It’s really about bringing school and home together around the child and taking care of what’s in the middle there, the total educational process. For different kids, it looks different. But learning and education doesn’t just happen at school. It happens at home and it happens at school. This is the work that we’re doing and we’re trying to put things together so that the child has the opportunity to learn well. And we don’t mean learn without obstacle or friction or angst or failure. There are different things that go along with all of this. We just mean that we’re really doing the work to make sure that the child is in the right place, the best place they can be, given whatever those options are.

We’re dedicated to the range, so we want to be in this linear process. We’re going from nursery school to college still—that’s still here—but there are lots of different opportunities in terms of where you’re going. We can do school placement, tutoring, learning plans, test preparation, special education, executive functioning, college support. If you have a question, you’re not even sure if we do what you need, you can always just call us and figure it out.

There are a lot of really cool ways you can also just gain resources and knowledge. Hopefully this talk was the start of a really nice learning journey for you, where you just started to think about things just a little bit differently. That’s what we like to do. We like to kind of say, hey, let’s think about it this way over here. Let’s maybe think about your child a little bit more holistically, or what would happen if we change this up? Maybe that would be better.

Come on in and listen in to our podcast, Be Evolved. We have a lot of articles that we write and different events that we put on, and we’re always happy to talk with your schools and organizations. We’re looking to be impactful and to help families in 2026 to really be ready for what’s next.

If you feel like we could be helpful, just reach out.