Elliot Washor's TGIF 03.20.2026

Are you with me now? A. J. Ryder

“How did you go bankrupt?”

“Two ways: gradually, then suddenly.” — Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

 This week Andrea, Anthonette, Taylor and I attended the first meeting of the California Secondary School Redesign Conference in Anaheim. There were probably over 200 attendees, many of whom were also connected to an AI conference scheduled for the following days. Although I saw many people I hadn’t seen in a while, there was little time for meaningful conversation about the issues we each wanted to explore. To me, the conference felt over planned and under scoped for real collaboration on how to work together over the next two years. Even though these networks were involved in the planning something got missed or misinterpreted. These conference presentation formats are a big reason I don’t enjoy conferences: the planning often runs counter to the very approaches being advocated for students — co-planning and co-responding work. I did manage to schedule follow-up calls with several attendees and met some new groups while facilitating sessions on internships, but those connections felt more happenstance than intentional. A bright spot: our BPL team made time to meet after the conference and we covered a lot of ground on next steps. I’m grateful for that.

Early in the program Linda Darling-Hammond put up this slide showing that with all that has been tried here’s the results nationally.

Then later that day Michael Fullan opened his talk by quoting Hemingway’s line about how you go bankrupt: “Two ways, gradually then suddenly.” I think Fullan was trying to send us a hopeful message that we are now out of “gradually” mode and into “suddenly” mode but Hemenway’s aphorism landed differently for me, especially as someone engaged in efforts to transform public education and seeing Linda’s data slide. Consider the last 50 years of education reform: top-down mandates, bottom-up initiatives, curriculum and research-driven reforms, teacher-, leadership- and community-led efforts, and the adoption of business best practices and new technologies. We’ve chased slogans like “continuous improvement,” which explains the “gradually,” but I don’t see the corresponding “suddenly” coming out of this work. Something is broken. Perhaps we don’t allow ourselves to fail fast or fail far enough — which keeps us stuck in slow decline. Or maybe we’re looking in the wrong place for disruption: could declining enrollment be the “suddenly” that accelerates a system change? Gradually and suddenly mean many things — but without a major breakthrough the scary thought is that the public education system even as it get leaner by declining enrollment risks collapsing under its own weight. I hope we don’t lose this opportunity around school redesign. I’m all for mingling with, muddling through, the things that matter. Let’s see if we can’t let people just mingle to figure things out and create the ripples and waves that matter. What a concept!

On Friday, I had a great conversation with Craig Beswick from Learn 4 Life. Each time we talk, we get closer to launching BPL schools within their network, creating internship opportunities, and implementing the IBPLC. There’s a lot of potential for meaningful collaboration here.

Also, the book Pam Roy and I have been working on is now in its final editing stage at Beacon Press. A few of you on this TGIF have already read a draft and shared thoughtful feedback—thank you. This is a book that aims to be not just better but make a difference by being truly different.

Next week will involve quite a bit of travel, moving back and forth between the East and West Coasts. I’ll be in San Diego on Saturday, then Newark on Sunday, back home Monday night for an Equity Fellows gathering at my home, and off to DC Tuesday evening for the National Association for College Admission Counselling Conference. Andrea will present the progress we’ve made on the IBPLC, and I’ll be there for follow-up conversations. This is an important and influential conference for us. Then it’s back to San Diego on Thursday. Exciting times.

Happy Spring Equinox!

Be Well!