For better or worse, AI, and especially chatbots associated with Large Language Models, are already changing the daily rhythms of education here and around the world. Organizations, including the Center on Reinventing Public Education, are providing critical guidance to schools and policymakers about how educators can best take advantage of AI’s opportunities (such as personalized learning) while mitigating the risks (such as the collapse in student effort).
What’s received much less attention (more than zero but not enough) is how AI’s impact on the future of work, democracy, and human flourishing should translate into changes in the K-12 curriculum, and especially course requirements in high school. This idea isn’t exactly new; some of us can remember debates in the 1980s and 90s about what a transition to a Knowledge Economy meant for what students should know and be able to do. So, too, are these debates happening within the transition to the AI Economy.
I can’t claim to know exactly what an AI-era education should entail. The road ahead is foggy, and nobody—not even the AIs!—can decipher exactly what impact this powerful technology will have on our democracy or our lives in the decades to come. Even in normal times, experts are not very good at predicting which jobs will disappear, and the AI age will likely be no different.
What I want to propose instead is a process—a public engagement experience, led by state policymakers, to figure out, as best we can, what high school graduation requirements should be now and in the near term.
I’m focusing on high schools—and graduation requirements—for several reasons.
First, in line with the logic of standards-based reform, we should start with the end in mind: what students should know and be able to do at the end of their K-12 experience. Then, we should back-map from there down to Kindergarten.
Second, I doubt that we will find that elementary schools and middle schools need to change all that much. No matter what happens with AI, we are always going to want all children to learn how to get along with their classmates (character, civics); how to read, write, and do arithmetic (the three Rs); and how to explore the wonders of the world and all that came before them—which means a curriculum rich in history, science, literature, and the arts.
Third, it was clear well before the rise of AI that our high school graduation requirements are a mess. On the one hand, they are too lax, with pass-the-buck “credit recovery” programs and conflicting adult priorities making it easier than ever for barely-literate students to get diplomas. On the other hand, graduation requirements are too restrictive, especially for students pursuing Career and Technical Education, as they mandate students spend an overabundance of time on traditional college-prep courses (English, math, foreign languages, etc.). There’s also continuous course-mandate creep as state and local policymakers seem unable to help themselves from adding new requirements, from ever-expanding health courses to coding to financial literacy, and on and on. When is a CTE student supposed to have time to do an apprenticeship, or even spend significant time at the CTE center or technical college getting started on learning their trade?
And if we’re really worried about teenagers getting more sleep, why are we overstuffing their schedules?
Someone call Marie Kondo: It’s time to declutter.
Zero-based Budgeting
The idea of zero-based budgeting first came from private industry and was later picked up by reform-minded policymakers, including President Jimmy Carter. Rather than assume that next year’s budget should be much the same (but higher) as this year’s, the insight was to start fresh and go line by line to see if any items had outlived their usefulness.
I propose we take the same approach with required high school courses. The last time there was an overhaul was arguably the 1980s, after policymakers responded to A Nation at Risk by beefing up requirements in core academic subjects. That was okay for the time, but those requirements ought not be set in stone.
Every state should launch an effort, perhaps via a commission, to start over with its course mandates. The zero-based approach means starting from scratch. In other words, we assume that one real option is for the state not to mandate the completion of any courses for high school graduation. That seems radical, but in the wake of voters eliminating the MCAS as a graduation requirement, Massachusetts recently found itself in pretty much this position.
Commissions should then look at the evidence for requirements, course by course, to determine which qualify for inclusion in a new system. Importantly, these commissions shouldn’t be afraid to set different mandates for students planning to matriculate into traditional higher education versus those gunning for Career and Technical Education.
For each subject, commissions should examine:
- The evidence that a particular course is necessary for success in college and/or in bona fide careers
- The likelihood that a course’s body of knowledge and skills will still be relevant in the AI economy and an AI-infused democracy (as best they can determine)
- Whether students might gain key knowledge and skills through other routes, such as extra-curricular activities
Let’s consider what this might look like for a few familiar course requirements.
- Commissions might look skeptically at “coding for all” mandates, given AI’s ability to outperform humans at low-level coding tasks. But perhaps they will encourage students to take courses such as AP Computer Science if they are planning to apply to selective colleges in STEM.
- Commissions might question foreign language requirements, given the rapidly improving translation abilities of smartphones and connected earbuds, plus America’s lackluster record of effectively teaching foreign languages. This might be another recommended course for college-bound students (unless colleges start reconsidering the value of foreign language instruction, too).
- They might create alternatives for mandated courses by allowing students to substitute participation in, for example, sports for PE, orchestra for fine arts, or debate for civics.
- For core academic courses like math and English, they might determine that all students need to get through a solid foundation of skills (say, Algebra I and English II), but beyond that, only college-prep students need to continue with those subjects.
For these commissions to have real impact, their authorizing legislation should make it clear that lawmakers will vote their proposals up or down without revisions—as with military base-closing commissions.
Just as zero-based budgeting indicates that policymakers value taxpayer money, a zero-based approach to high school course requirements would indicate that policymakers value high school students’ time and future success. I see zero reasons not to give it a try.
