Last month, as I attended the EdSurge Fusion 2018 conference, I immersed myself in the idea of education transformation. Sitting in that hotel ballroom, I was surrounded by the most cutting-edge educators—those district leaders, principals, and teachers who are leading the way to provide students with genuine twenty-first-century learning experiences.

If you regularly interact with adolescents, whether as a parent, educator, or community member, you’ve likely noticed that there are factors that set teens apart from children of other ages. But did you know that adolescence is the second most active time of neurodevelopment in a human’s life? By better understanding what’s going on developmentally with adolescent students, educators can create learning environments that capitalize on the unique opportunities that adolescence offers.

When our good friend Andreas Schleicher stops by, it’s hard to resist asking him to lend his international perspective to some of the big questions facing education in the United States today. So, after our July 12 webinar on his new book, World Class: How to Build a 21st-Century School System, Andreas and I talked about politics, policy, and some of the challenges—and opportunities—facing the U.S.  education system.

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This week we released a report that is the start of a major initiative for the Alliance for Excellent Education (All4Ed) to ensure that critical education decisions are driven by science. Working with colleagues, I authored Synapses, Students, and Synergies: Applying the Science of Adolescent Learning to Policy and Practice to point out the major opportunities that exist in the next few years and also urge new ways to work together to maximize impact.

How does an individual’s decision to drop out of high school affect the rest of us? And, conversely, how does a student graduating from high school benefit all of us?

Those were the questions the Alliance for Excellent Education (All4Ed) sought to answer when it began working on an economic model that would demonstrate the economic impact of a 90 percent high school graduation rate.

When I ran for governor in 2000, my Republican opponent and I had much to disagree on. But when it came to the federally-supported Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), we only sparred over who would implement coverage more aggressively, not over the merits. Almost all policymakers recognize the importance of this bipartisan legislation enacted in 1997 in reducing the percentage of uninsured children from almost 14 percent to less than 5 percent.

Can two conferences held thirty-five miles apart indicate that a personalized learning movement is growing, especially if they take place in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley? And is there a common message when talking to wide-ranging audiences of teachers, ed-tech entrepreneurs, cutting-edge educators, and district leaders who must confront constant challenges of running a district while envisioning the future of learning?

Last week was one of the most rejuvenating weeks I have experienced in a long time; it began in Detroit, Michigan, and finished in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Despite great differences between the two in cultures and contexts, I saw a steady and strong commitment to improving equity in education despite significant hardships that educators and advocates face.

Imagine waking up to the news that millions of students disappeared overnight. Think of the incalculable cost to the nation of these young people not continuing their education. The patents never filed. The medicines never discovered. The companies never started. The disposable incomes never spent to create more jobs. All the lost human potential, brainpower, and economic contributions that these millions of future wage earners could provide during a time when the nation needs the talents and skills of all its people.

How could this happen, you ask? Already I am hearing reports from principals about the PTA attendance of immigrant families dropping sharply and of parents sending their children to school on alternate days to avoid everyone being picked up in a sweep.

Many have asked about the future of Future Ready Schools®, which was launched by President Obama in 2014 as a partnership between the U.S. Department of Education and the Alliance for Excellent Education (the Alliance) to help school district leaders improve teaching and student learning outcomes through the effective use of technology. The short answer is that the future of Future Ready Schools is extremely bright.