How Parent Expectations May Drive Education Innovation

Just five years ago, in the thick of pandemic upheaval, families were simply trying to keep pace with a world of social distancing, masks, and disrupted routines. The desire to return to "normal" was top of mind, but something else happened in those months of home-based learning—parents received an unprecedented window into their children’s learning environments.

Those unexpected glimpses into daily instruction, academic expectations, and classroom culture quietly reshaped what many families believed school should look like. For decades, education had functioned as a sacred cow—it largely worked for our generation, and iterative change and inclusion of technology seemed appropriate for most.  Yet seeing learning up close from the kitchen table changed that. Parents became more attuned to what engaged their children, what fell flat, and what might need to evolve. Those experiences are driving a shift in expectations: families are more willing to challenge long-standing norms, more open to innovative models, and more vocal about wanting schools that reflect the personalized, flexible, and transparent learning they came to value at home. What began as a crisis-driven necessity has quietly become a catalyst for reimagining how—and where—students learn.

In concrete terms, this means a fundamental shift towards learning through instantly accessible "bite-sized knowledge” versus traditional schooling. Think YouTube, ChatGPT, tailored web research - just about any kind of learning available in quickly digestible, on-demand chunks.

This sea-change is taking place not so much through a retreat from schools themselves, but via parents’ push to create and embrace very different kinds of schools. Parent-led initiatives have created an explosion in micro-schools. We’ve also seen continued growth in charter schools, which have added more than 80,000 students nationwide since the pandemic, even as district public schools lost nearly 1.8 million students. And despite economic uncertainty, private school enrollment has continued to grow.

Add in homeschool communities, which have evolved from the fringe to firmly mainstream, and it’s clear that we’re living through a revolution in parental expectations.

What happened?

If we look back at the 1990s and early 2000s - let’s call it the helicopter-parent era - mothers and fathers craved involvement in their kids’ education, but they often lacked instructional insights or contrasting models, so we observed them focusing narrowly on protecting their kids from failure and maximizing individual advantage in areas like college admissions. Parents’ relationship with schools tended to be instrumental and even adversarial, but were not driving systemic change.

Across income levels, geographies, and school types, parents saw the limitations of schools that are designed by, and for, the adults in the system - not for the learning needs of children. Those design flaws include standardized pacing, regardless of student mastery or interest, and subject siloes that don’t reflect how problems are solved in the real world. It was time, many parents now saw, to redesign schools around learners.

This parental shift, from helicopter-like hovering to a willingness to actively partner with schools, has created real market pressure for viable alternatives to the educational status quo. Those changing expectations dovetail with new research-backed approaches centered around three pillars of transformation: STEAM curriculum that integrates science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics; project-based learning that builds durable skills by moving from knowledge acquisition to knowledge application; and student-centricity, including personalization and flexible approaches that accommodate different types of learners.

Education leaders must now face head-on the future implications of new expectations and new kinds of schools. Already, forward-thinking institutions are implementing some or all of these three transformation pillars: STEAM curriculum, project-based learning, and student-centricity. And some are measuring student outcomes rigorously, not just in terms of test scores but by looking at skills development and post-graduate success. 

Looking ahead, many more schools will need to think carefully about what capabilities they want their graduates to possess as they build durable skills for unknowable futures. Those will surely include AI fluency and digital citizenship, cross-cultural competence in a global economy, adaptivity, and navigating ambiguity.

Scaling these ambitious student outcomes will require significant design change, beginning with replicable components (from instructional materials to professional development), continuing with flexibility to ensure core elements can be customized for local context), and encompassing a shared outcomes framework to ensure educators are aiming for the same goals.

Yes, systems change is difficult. It requires coordination across multiple stakeholders, often with different incentives. It challenges deeply embedded practices and beliefs. It can take years to show results. It threatens existing power structures and career paths.  It’s also the most important kind of change in education. Changing parent expectations, sustained and growing, are finally creating the momentum to attempt it. With this catalyst, we have the opportunity to implement at scale reforms that we know will work for students. And the future of education depends on choices we make now.