As we wade into 2018, I thought I'd give my not-so-famed prognostication skills a spin. Here's my best guess at eight education stories we just may be reading in the year ahead.
1. Conference small talk leads to a massive but short-lived pivot in education advocacy. At the NewSchools Venture Fund Summit, Chan-Zuckerberg education honcho Jim Shelton is overheard quietly telling his Gates Foundation counterpart that Mark Zuckerberg has developed a taste for “stranger things” and is hungry for more. Gates chief Bob Hughes notes that Bill Gates is intrigued by “stranger things too.” Within hours, dozens of education advocacy groups, think tanks, university departments, and media outlets adopt new “verticals” dedicated to “strange” strategies and interventions. After being inundated in grant applications related to “psychic phenomena, UFOs, and the achievement gap,” Hughes and Shelton eventually clarify that they were just chatting about the Duffer Brothers Netflix show Stranger Things. One frustrated grantee grumbles to the Washington Post, “I wish we'd known that before we spent a quarter million on a reorg, a new website, and a new Vice President of Stranger Things Development.”
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