Author: Bryan Smyth, Ph.D., ISM Senior Consultant and Director of Research
An interesting dichotomy exists in education.
“We are suffering from change fatigue.”
“Education is largely the same as it has been for the past century.”
Both statements are true. But how can that be?
Our industry is constantly in flux as we tweak policies, procedures, programs, technology applications, timetables, expectations, curricula, testing methods, and more. These are often called “minor” modifications, but they impact the daily rhythm of teachers and students in ways that feel major and exhausting.
At the same time, school still looks remarkably like it did a century ago: students in rows, a teacher at the front, and learning broken down into rigid subjects, schedules, and spaces. The tools may have evolved — from chalkboards to interactive screens, from worksheets to Google Docs — but the fundamental model has hardly shifted.
For nearly all students:
- They advance through school in age-based cohorts.
- Learning takes place in divided classrooms, with a teacher up front and student desks facing forward.
- Elementary students stay mostly with one teacher; middle and high school students rotate among content specialists.
- Middle and Upper School is characterized by the shift to multiple teachers, where each teacher is a specialist in a specific content area. The content is now considered beyond the capabilities of a “generalist” teacher. As such, students move from room to room.
- The academic day lasts roughly 7 to 7.5 hours, within a 180-day school year.
Students receive grades, often based on a single attempt at an assignment. - Credit is still earned by earning a passing grade at the conclusion of the Carnegie Unit (120 hours of seat time), rather than by achieving mastery. As such, time is the constant. Learning is the variable.
Social and cultural movements — desegregation, civil rights, DEI efforts — have influenced who enrolls in our schools, but not how we teach them. Meanwhile, technological revolutions (the internet, personal devices, video conferencing) sparked hopes of transformation that never fully materialized. While teachers post homework online and students compose essays on laptops instead of handwriting them, the core structure remains. Teachers deliver content. Students complete tasks. Assessments are given. Grades are earned.
Something New: The Mastery Approach
The mastery approach to education is one of the few ideas that has tried to fundamentally shift the system. It flips the traditional model by making learning the constant and time the variable. Students demonstrate understanding before moving on.
But true mastery implementation is rare. Instead, schools often bolt pieces of this approach onto the existing structure, without fundamentally changing the model. They may limit the number of times a student can retake a test or revise an assignment. Or they may restrict unit timelines without regard to an individual student’s learning pace. As a result, the key outcome of mastery — actually understanding a concept before moving on — is lost.
There are practical barriers that prevent schools from fully embracing this approach:
- Schools are still time-bound by semesters and age-based pacing.
- Teachers lack the time or resources to personalize content and assessments.
- Students sometimes exploit retake policies to boost grades rather than deepen understanding.
- Parents and colleges still expect traditional transcripts.
As a result, competency-based education remains more a concept than reality. Where it does exist, it often confuses more than it clarifies.
Coming out of the pandemic, student well-being finally became a topic of serious discussion. For a moment, it seemed schools might shift their practices in response to rising mental health needs. Some have tried — adjusting schedules, reducing homework, rethinking grading. But many others defaulted back to “rigor” and coverage, determined to close some imagined achievement gap created by COVID.
Not-So Hidden Costs
Meanwhile, teacher well-being is plummeting. Fewer college students are pursuing education as a career. Can you blame them? Teachers are working harder than ever — planning, grading, coaching, emailing, and absorbing every new initiative that’s handed down. They’re asked to do more with less and are burned out.
In private schools, pressure to hold down tuition often means minimal salary increases, even as workloads grow. More duties. More meetings. More expectations. And the cumulative weight of constant change — change that often makes little difference to students — is wearing teachers down.
Faculty culture has suffered. Once, teachers recharged over the summer and returned in the fall with new energy and excitement. Not anymore. Our recent research shows that by April, morale is lower than the year before, and it’s been that way for five years straight.
Tipping Point? Enter AI
And now we face the emergence of AI. I believe AI could be the catalyst that finally shifts the system in a meaningful way. It has potential to deliver on mastery learning, improve student outcomes, reduce school expenses, allow teachers to deliver on personalized education even while increasing the student-to-teacher ratio.
The result could be a better experience that costs the school less money per pupil and allows much-needed salary increases for teachers.
But instead of preparing, most schools are just “watching.” Very few have developed policies or frameworks for its use. That’s a mistake. AI has already changed how students complete school tasks, whether schools choose to acknowledge it or not. We must proactively integrate it into our practice or risk falling behind a reality that’s already here.
Don’t Blink.
So what’s the point?
Many of you have heard this before. But hearing is not the same as acting. Every time the industry approaches a crossroads where real change is possible — whether related to equity, pedagogy, well-being, or technology — we blink. Fear wins. We retreat to what’s familiar.
It’s time to stop retreating.
We need to meet the fear of change not with timidness, but with daring.
So, I dare you:
- Make your school a place that opens doors for all students.
- Challenge the structure we’ve inherited — one designed for another time, another student.
- Rethink learning, assessment, curriculum, and the very rhythm of the school day.
- Leverage AI to support — not replace — teachers and students.
- Restore the teaching profession by giving educators time, resources, respect, and compensation worthy of the work.
Let’s not tweak around the edges. Let’s be bold enough to rebuild the foundation.
About the Author
Bryan Smyth is Senior Consultant and Director of Research at ISM. His work focuses on academic leadership, governance, and finance. Bryan's central purpose is to help students flourish, and he believes the best way to facilitate growth in children (and adults) is to enhance school environments and cultures.
This summer, Bryan is teaching The Assistant Headship: Leading from Outside the Circle at ISM Summer Institute — July 14-16 in Philadelphia. Explore this and our other Summer Institute workshops here.
