How your school can stop marching in circles

In nature, there's this bizarre phenomenon with ants.

Ants are genetically programmed to follow the ant in front of them. It's how they survive — long ant trains marching toward food or back to their nest.

But sometimes, the lead ants get confused.

They start to drift. They circle back. And suddenly they're following ants who are following ants who are following ants...

Round and round they go.

Marching endlessly in circles until they all die.

Scientists call it a "death spiral."

Not good, and that's exactly what's happening in education right now.

• We're following outdated accountability measures.

• Prepping kids for tests that machines can ace in milliseconds.

• Obsessing over college placements while employers say college grads are unemployable.

Everyone knows something's broken.

But we keep marching. Following the ant in front of us.

Ted Dintersmith saw this firsthand when his son was in middle school.

His kid wanted to take art. Submitted his top three choices.

Got none of them. Placed in pottery instead.

First year: "I think I can get a good grade if I just do something normal and add some weirdness to it."

Second year: Pottery. Again.

This time, Ted's son had a proposal. He wanted to build a bridge over the stream near their house—exploring the aesthetics of beautiful bridges and what makes them structurally sound.

The school's response?

"We couldn't make an exception here because if we made an exception for one student, we'd have to make an exception for others."

A kid proposes something interesting and wants to go deep with it...

And that's something they can't accommodate. Something they discourage.

This wasn't a failing school with burned-out teachers.

This was a school most parents thought was great. With committed, dedicated educators.

But when you're held accountable to high-stakes exams, when you obsess over college placements, you end up in a death spiral.

Doing the same thing. Getting the same results. Marching in circles.

But here's what Ted taught me on this week’s episode of the RuckusCast:

Any ant can be the lead ant.

You don't have to follow the ant in front of you who's following the ant in front of them.

You can break off. You can go somewhere different.

You can be a Ruckus Maker and Do School Different.

If you're ready to hear what that actually looks like in practice...

Then listen to my conversation with Ted Dintersmith, where we dig into:

• Why the "catastrophic" COVID learning loss scores were actually BS.

• The Innovation Center model that has kids begging to stay in school.

• How one struggling kid went from living in a car to landing a full-time firefighting job.

• And why student agency, real-world skills, and meaningful impact matter MORE than test scores.

This one will show you how to be the lead ant.

Keep Making a Ruckus,

Danny

P.S. Ted's new book Aftermath and his documentary Multiple Choice are both incredible resources. We cover both in the episode.