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Pause for a minute, and consider some of the innovations introduced in the last 30 years that impact the way you experience the world on a daily basis: the Internet, email, smart-phones, ATMs, flat-panel displays, GPS devices and social networks. A quick scan of your day so far will give lots of evidence that the world has significantly changed since your parents were your age. We all know the world is rapidly shifting, but we’re just beginning to understand what this all means for kids who are coming of age in the Digital Era.

Tom’s daughters, now 26 and 30, were among the first generation to benefit from computer learning games, cell phones and the ability to build a high school transcript that included online and college courses. Fifteen years later, educational options have expanded dramatically for most families, requiring daily decisions about the modular learning landscape.

When Bonnie began teaching high school in the early 2000s, students had mobile devices for texting and phone calls, but no “smart” capabilities. The class rule back then dictated that cell phones stayed out of sight. However, in more recent years, when Bonnie taught high school seniors, most of her students had Internet-connected devices and constant online access throughout the day. Many of her high school students used their phones for school work—taking notes, getting in touch with mentors, looking for directions to get to internships and working on college essays via Google Docs.

When Carri was a second grader in the 1980s, being “techsavvy” meant successfully loading the Oregon Trail floppy disk by herself, without interrupting the teacher. Now her “tech-savvy” second-grade daughter can create and deliver Google presentations with embedded videos, is learning to code and regularly emails her friends.

We live in an era of extraordinary learning opportunities.

Today’s students can look up why Gandhi led a hunger strike or how the early civil rights movement spurred the anti-war movement of the late 1960s—all from their devices. Students can connect virtually with mentors and experts to bring learning to life. Students can watch demonstration videos on Khan Academy and YouTube to learn how molecules split or how to divide polynomials. The ability to Internet search, the most important learning tool ever invented, is now being replaced by smart algorithms that push information our direction, as we need it. Students have begun to benefit from unique playlists of learning experiences driven by a recommendation engine.²

As educators and as parents, we have seen profound shifts in the way that human beings learn—those of us young and old. Formal and informal learning options have exploded. Students can now learn anywhere, and at anytime. Yet, the levels of underemployment and debt among young adults suggest that the old trajectory of “do well, go to college, get a job” is broken. The opportunity set has never been greater, and the challenges have never been more complex. Families face unprecedented amounts of information and education-related decisions. This often leaves parents navigating a complex maze of new learning opportunities, new standards, new assessments and new technology.

The Smart Parents project grew out of the recognition that parents need help making informed decisions, finding quality resources and providing the best supports for their children. The project, hatched around the office kitchen counter in the summer of 2014, began as a blog series by and about parents advocating for powerful learning. With the support of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, we cultivated more than 60 parent contributions about how to recognize, create and advocate for powerful, student-centered learning opportunities.

At Getting Smart, our Seattle-based learning design firm, we study innovations in learning. We spend a lot of our time creating and sharing resources for teachers, leaders, policymakers and education organizations. Time and time again, we observe that families get left out of the equation when it comes to determining the primary audience for education reports, papers and articles—even though they are among the hungriest for informed opinions that can help them. We aim to change that.

This book by parents and for parents intends to be a guide to powerful personalized learning. Don’t expect a general guidebook on parenting; you can find hundreds of those at the library. This book was designed to facilitate important educational decisions that parents face today. Numerous paths exist toward powerful, student-centered learning; this project focuses on innovations in teaching and learning that boost engagement, activate interests, extend access and personalize learning.

Given the drastic ways in which the world is rapidly changing, you may be curious—like us—about how these changes impact the ways that we teach our young people and the ways young people now learn. Parenting for powerful learning revolves around being informed, inspirational, intentional and involved. Have you been thinking about these questions:

Maybe you’re here to seek information and inspiration so that you can approach your child’s education differently. This book is for parents and guardians like you. We hope it will also prove useful for teachers, school and district leaders, and tutors and youth service providers, as well as any organization whose mission involves improving access and outcomes for students.

The three authors have a combined six decades of experience in education. Among us, there’s a former superintendent, a former high school teacher and a former elementary school teacher-turned-college professor. We are also parents. Our children range from infants to adults. We represent a wide range of parenthood; one of us is balancing the sleepless nights of infanthood, one is navigating elementary school-based decisions, and the other is transitioning from being a parent to also a grandparent.

Traditional education pushes students with similar birthdays through a common curriculum that focuses on memorizing facts and procedures. The most compliant and well-supported young people are able to pass college entrance exams, but formal education leaves many unprepared to thrive in the world they will inherit.

We live in a world that is increasingly complex. It’s connected but segmented into narrow channels. It’s hypercompetitive but emphasizes collaboration. It values unique and creative contributions. This suggests new priorities for what young people need to know and be able to do. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills summarizes key skills as four Cs: critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity.⁴

College-bound aspirations are great, but the character that young people develop proves most important to their success in life. Business leaders say work ethic is the number one thing they look for. Paul Tough, author of “How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character,” says, “We don’t teach the most important skills.” His list includes “persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence.”

Embracing a broader set of learning goals may seem daunting to parents and teachers, but what young people learn is not separate from who they become. It is the learning experiences created by—and support provided by—parents and teachers that shape young people’s knowledge, skills and dispositions.

As we discuss further in Chapter One, parents who convey and model the enjoyment of learning for learning’s sake (not just asking their children about grades received on a test) help to cultivate the mindsets, skills and dispositions that researchers have begun to understand in deeper ways as a key differentiator in success, as measured by college graduation rates and subsequent career satisfaction.

Students need to have content knowledge to be successful in college, and they also need a broader set of skills and conditions including: the ability to set short- and long-term goals; leadership experience; community involvement and internships; perseverance through challenges; a positive self-concept about learning as well as a realistic sense of academic and personal strengths and growth areas.⁶

Four Keys to Parenting For Powerful Learning. As educators, we appreciate the importance of common expectations rooted in research and our shared reality. As parents, we appreciate that every young person is unique. Our main job revolves around cultivating the remarkable gifts of each child and encouraging him or her to discover and explore individual passions and purpose. This is even more important than any external definition or measure of college readiness.

From our long-term, informal study of parenting for powerful learning, we have observed that Smart Parents are:

The parents’ perspectives, tips and tools mentioned throughout this book illustrate these four characteristics.

The book is organized into two parts. Part One describes the current opportunities and challenges encountered by parents and students. We focus on the individual uniqueness of each child, the exploding set of options for learning, and the role that technology plays in the process. We explore student-centered learning, the question of why it’s so important, and actions you can take to cultivate this at home, at school and everywhere else. Part Two offers a Smart Parent Toolkit full of resources to help you put these ideas into practice.

In each chapter, you’ll find icons that indicate features in the book. Because parents have created this book for parents, we feature an abundance of parent-centric stories. Each links back to the original, full blog post online. That means if you are reading this digitally, you can read more by simply clicking on the link. If you are reading this in print, you can find each blog on our GettingSmart.com and Huffington Post Smart Parents sites; we hope you read on to delve deeper! The stories have been so inspiring and have become some of our favorite parts of this book.

To help readers navigate the chapters and make the most of the information, there are chapter and sidebar icons (introduced on the next page) to help denote features of the book:

The authors wish to thank the many contributors who engaged with us over social media and through blog contributions, comments on our site, conversations and interviews over the last year. A list of the blog contributions of more than 60 parents is in Appendix B with links to the full blog posts. These stories formed the foundation and inspiration for this book.

The Nellie Mae Education Foundation made this project possible. We appreciate Nicholas Donohue’s leadership on student-centered learning.

We also wish to thank and acknowledge our own “smart parents” who taught and modeled the value of lifelong learning. To this day, our parents continue to encourage and inspire our work.

This was a full team effort by the Getting Smart crew. Mary Ryerse provided early inspiration and Caroline Vander Ark modeled the way. We had many ongoing conversations during the last year about the Getting Smart team members’ individual experiences as parents, sons and daughters. Smart Team, we sincerely could not have done it without you.

Thank you to Corinne Whiting for copy editing, Kelley Tanner for her design work, Liz Wimmer for her research support and proofreading and Penelope Eifrig for publishing support.

Thanks to our spouses for their love and support. Writing a book is a bit like having another child. It requires time, attention and a lot of nurturing. Thanks for putting up with us as we spent many nights researching, writing and editing this book.

Finally, we dedicate this book to our own children (and grandchildren), who challenge and inspire us to be Smart Parents every day.

Our education system was designed for an era that no longer exists. Our world is changing rapidly, and this has profound implications for how our young people learn. Formal and informal learning options abound. As opportunities and options explode, families face unprecedented amounts of decisions related to education.

As parents, we know now that a high school diploma is no longer an indicator of future success. Today’s students must leave high school prepared for success in post-secondary schooling or training. Our students must also be equipped with skills such as creativity, communication, critical thinking and collaboration—new basics, if you will, for a modern age.

My own daughters are very successful in the traditional system, but I share concerns with other parents about how they are being challenged to exercise their minds and grow the real, practical skills needed to succeed. One approach being promoted nationally to address these concerns involves renovating our education system to deliver student-centered approaches to learning, sometimes known more simply as personalized learning. These approaches, built on research and the science of learning, are aimed at elevating outcomes and broadening the fit of public education with a wider variety of learners and a wider variety of preferences, strengths and needs.

What is Student-Centered Learning? For starters, we envision an education system where learning transcends the traditional school calendar and setting. We envision a system where student progress is based on mastery of a skill or topic, rather than time spent in a classroom—one that is feasibly customized in practical, cost-effective ways that garner results strong enough to predict future success in life and work.

We know parents play a huge role in implementing the principles of student-centered learning—learning that is personalized, engaging, competency-based and can happen anytime, anywhere.

Student-centered learning engages students in their own success—and incorporates their interests and skills in the learning process. Rather than responding to educators who hand down information, students can engage with teachers and their peers in real-time—preparing them to succeed in college and future careers. Beyond college and career readiness, a real desire exists to prepare our young people to be lifelong learners. This means not only thinking about whether they can enter the 21^st-century economy, but also whether they love to learn, feel empathy toward others, and care for the planet.

What are Student-Centered Approaches? Student-centered approaches to learning highlight four key tenets (further described below), drawn from the mind/brain sciences, learning theory and research on youth development that prove essential to students’ full engagement in achieving Deeper Learning outcomes.

Learning is Personalized. Personalized learning recognizes that students engage in different ways and in different places. As parent Christine Byrd describes in Chapter Three in this book, “Volunteering in [my son’s] class, I was blown away by the range of skills these 5-year-olds brought. Some were reading books and writing in complete sentences before the first day, while others were still learning the alphabet. How could any teacher manage such disparity in her daily lessons, much less challenge the advanced kids while nurturing those who needed some extra help? Obviously this is where ‘self-paced’ and ‘individualized’ learning get their appeal.” Students benefit from individually paced, targeted learning tasks that start from the student’s current position, formatively assess existing skills and knowledge as well as address the student’s needs and interests.

Learning is Competency-Based. Students move ahead when they have demonstrated mastery of content, not when they’ve reached a certain birthday or completed the required hours in a classroom. When describing her daughter’s efforts to master math content, mother Sarah Vander Schaaff writes in Chapter Three about what you can do to ensure your child can move at his or her own pace.

Learning Happens Anytime, Anywhere. Learning takes place beyond the traditional school day—and even beyond the school year. The school’s walls are permeable; learning should not be restricted to the classroom. To enhance his son’s learning and activate pre-existing interests, in Chapter Five, Michael Harlow describes taking his son John to the aquarium, museums and the MakerSpace at his local library, plus taking advantage of online opportunities such as the NASA website and Minecraft.

Students Take Ownership over Their Learning. Student-centered learning engages students in their own success—and incorporates their interests and skills in the learning process. As mother Antonia Slagle writes in Chapter Two, “My son and I agree that one of the most powerful feelings in the world is the ‘I did this!’ feeling. That only comes from true ownership. He wrote a couple of short films. He started playing electronic music. He built websites. I have a laundry list of student internships and projects that most adults can’t believe a young person accomplished.” Antonia adds that as part of her son’s schooling experience, “Students also reflect regularly as part of the project process and have the time and space to learn from both the successes and the mistakes.”

For my eighth-grader, this would mean building on her strong interests around math, but making learning opportunities more practical and real world-oriented—presenting her with real-life problems to solve, based on (but not limited to) theoretical constructs. Math is a language we can use to describe the world as much as literature, but not if it is delivered without demonstrating how to apply it practically or by making transparent how “thinking through math” enriches analytic skills necessary for many related tasks. For my 19-year-old, this could have meant balancing her 4.75 GPA-attaining habits with her love for theater so as to make the latter more central, not simply subjugating it to an elective option so separate from “regular school.”

More importantly, for my children’s friends for whom traditional school is much harder–young people as good, as important, and as interested in succeeding as my own children—this could mean providing more varied and appropriate chances to apply grit, to dig deep, to work hard, and to exercise skills necessary to later succeed in the real world and achieve at high levels. For many reasons, my girls were always going to succeed despite the current approaches. For many others, the deck needs to be restacked—not to make things easier or more fun, but to make them more fair and to align how we educate with what is known about students’ learning needs, rather than organizing education as a one-size-fits-all endurance test with the “gold ring” reward equaling too few available seats in college programs.

We need to make this move as a society; the future of our communities, our children, our grandchildren and their neighbors depends on it. The time has passed for a 19^th-century system that selects the winner. We need a 21^st-century system that truly prepares learners.

One question people regularly ask me is: Given that your own children are successful in the current system, would you support their participation in a student-centered learning environment? The answer is an unqualified “yes”! I answer this way in part because I spend my working life trying to understand these approaches; I have reconciled that, while there would be costs involved, they would be worth it in the long run.

The costs include giving up class rank. My 19-year-old ranked number five out of 500 in her high school class. I liked that recognition. So did she. My 14-year-old is headed toward the same single-digit position; what parents wouldn’t want the same for their daughter? But this kind of comparative accomplishment suggests that some students are better than others; however, many with lower “rankings” might also actually be ready to step forward to greater educational challenges or a more secure measure in which to reveal competency and a readiness to move forward.

Some emerging research bolsters this conclusion, suggesting that valedictorians don’t necessarily fare well in college and the workplace—in part because, despite being game winners, they often have trouble thinking outside the box. This explains why colleges want “well-rounded” applicants; administrators understand that the breadth of experience, skills and knowledge cannot simply be tied to test outcomes.

My “expert” perspective is impacted by my daughter’s pleas: “What’s taking you so long? Fix the schools.” My kids don’t like the idea that, in a student-centered future, education might become more rigorous or that there might be a whole group of kids who get A’s because they have mastered the material. But they do like the idea that they can “think” and be their full selves during school, as well as before and after it.

Beginning last fall, the NMEF team partnered with Getting Smart to cultivate more than 60 parent stories and to learn from experts in the field about how to recognize, create and advocate for powerful, student-centered learning opportunities. We tell parents’ stories and bring together key lessons to create a resource that will help guide important educational decisions parents face today.

We believe parents play the most important role in helping to create conditions in which student-centered learning can thrive—at home, at school and everywhere in between.

We hope you find the parent stories that follow compelling and inspiring and that you will become a strong advocate for such learning. We need parents involved with schools, teachers and students—those who recognize and advocate for student-centered learning.

	The “parent perspective” icon marks a short story at the beginning of each chapter and blog-length parent stories at the end of each chapter.
	The “school spotlight” icon denotes schools that exemplify student-centered learning in action.
	The “toolkit” icon indicates a particular resource, actionable tip or strategy. Even more tools, tips and strategies can be found in Part Two of this book—the Smart Parent Toolkit.
	The “informed” icon denotes a story or tool that provides more information for parents.
	The “involved” icon marks a tool, tip or strategy for parents to promote student-centered learning.
	The “intentional” icon illustrates ways parents can focus attention on student-centered learning.
	The “inspirational” icon illustrates pathways for parents that will encourage them to both model and inspire their children in learning.