Choosing Abundance Despite an Instinct for Scarcity: New Experiences and New Models

Humans default to a scarcity mindset — think early days of the pandemic when tens of thousands of people hoarded all of the toilet paper for fear of supply running out. While not only a mindset (it’s also biological as our limbic system forces us to consider survival instead of opportunity), this outlook has the tendency to trap us, making us think less about possibility and abundance and more about status quo. As a society, we’re faced with incredibly complex interplays of supply and demand across all sectors and many of them have only gotten weirder over the last five years: 

• We have a housing shortage in most major cities, creating skyrocketing and inflated home values.
• The job market is changing due to changing priorities, changing approaches and emerging technology, all resulting in the illusion of scarcity.
• Most public school districts are dealing with declining enrollments and declining post-pandemic budgets.

The Catch-22 here is that while scarcity is the obvious way to interpret the above data, what we need now more than ever is an abundance mindset. Embracing a sense of possibility will help us move forward in a way that does the most good for the most people. This abundance notion isn’t new and has been written about at length by numerous authors. In Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter Diamandis, the founder of X-Prize, he makes the case that humans will soon have the capability to fulfill and surpass the fundamental needs of everyone on Earth. 

A number of thinkers, journalists, tastemakers, and policymakers have coalesced around the idea of an “abundance agenda” over the last few years.  This agenda centers on two core obstacles to progress: “a regulatory state that had become increasingly sclerotic, and decades of underinvestment in domestic industry,” according to Thomas Hochman from the FAI.

The abundance approach, well outlined in the new book Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, is a focus on policies that seeks to transform the economy and improve the lives of Americans by unleashing innovation, especially technological innovation, to deliver economic growth and productivity gains. It aims to build a society rich in opportunity, social mobility, and human flourishing, allowing more Americans to pursue their goals.

Key aspects of the abundance agenda include:

• Removing barriers to innovation in sectors like transportation, energy, artificial intelligence, and housing.
• Addressing critical issues such as housing, infrastructure, healthcare, and energy crises by focusing on supply-side solutions.
• Reforming governance systems to reduce obstacles, increase governmental authority and competence, and produce public value more efficiently.
• Focusing on increasing supply rather than solely emphasizing distribution, unleashing both the private sector and the government

While this is typically applied to the government, this framing can just as easily be applied to our education systems. We tend to think of schools and learning experiences through the lens of scarcity. Perhaps most glaringly, we see people begin to hoard opportunities regarding college admissions and career pathways with the class of 2025 being the largest class in history. We also see longer queues at lottery schools that have the flexibility and the mission to do things differently. 

Additionally, some schools are observing the friction and inefficiencies that arise from too much institutional oversight. In a recent conversation with Jeff Sandefer, founder of Acton Academy, he shared “It’s incredible what children can accomplish in the right environment—and how quickly adults, especially institutions, muck it up. Structure matters. So does disorder and the freedom to iterate. What doesn’t work is a factory-like approach to education – I guess because it’s imposed. Something about institutions scaling in an industrial sense kills human flourishing. Sort of like a kind of kryptonite for learning.  What works is emergent, organic—but that’s antithetical with the way the industry is organized and who it attracts.” Jeff is both pointing out the many bureaucratic obstacles that get in the way of abundance and also gesturing at emergent, organic, human flourishing, a system of abundant learning-centered experiences and models.

While all this is going on, emerging tech is making personalized learning more abundant than ever before. There has never been anything as abundant as having an expert in your pocket. At the same time, expanding ESA’s shift the conversation from school choice to education choice (I personally prefer learning/learning experience choice; thanks for the nudge, Carri Schneider). We’re looking over the edge of a new era, one where AI agents will be able to play a supporting role in adaptive learning, not taking jobs but rather redistributing how educators spend their time and making space for more human and relational work. At the same time,  new models of schooling, in both the public and private sectors, may be able to deliver on the promise of “learn everywhere”. Still, we’re spreading the gospel of not enough. 

While not only a supply-side challenge, it’s possible that looking at learning through the lens of abundance rather than scarcity not only invites everyone in but also is, at its core, what learning is all about. It happens everywhere, all the time, whether you want to or not. 

New Outlook: Shifting from Doomers to Bloomers

Making the shift to an abundance mindset is fundamentally linked with cultivating a sense of possibility.  A few years ago, we published Difference Making at the Heart of Learning: Students, Schools, and Communities Alive With Possibility, a book that advocates for abundance in value creation opportunities. With widespread access to expertise, teens can step from preparation into contribution by creating value in business and community contexts (via client projects, internships, and entrepreneurial experiences). 

Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and host of the Possible podcast, has begun using a new framework, which is typically focused on AI but can be extrapolated to all futures: 

• Doomers: Fear AI as an existential threat, potentially leading to human extinction or societal collapse. They advocate slowing or halting AI development.
• Gloomers: Foresee AI having a largely negative societal impact, particularly through job displacement and increased inequality. They push for regulations and mitigation strategies.
• Zoomers: Enthusiastically embrace AI as a transformative force with immense potential for good, focusing on its opportunities to solve problems and improve lives. This is also associated with the “move fast and break things” Silicon Valley mindset that, at its worst, is more pro-progress than pro-positive change. 
• Bloomers: Take a balanced approach, acknowledging AI’s risks but believing they can be managed. They advocate for responsible AI development aligned with human values and societal well-being. (Hoffman says he’s a Bloomer….creating a sense of what’s Possible)

Many see our current administration as shifting from Gloomer leadership to Zoomer leadership. While change and innovation accelerate, what will the impacts be on access and opportunity? Will we harness this momentum to create a more inclusive future, or will the divide continue to widen? As we innovate in the education sector, we need to take the stance of Bloomers. Moving forward with optimism and caution. Some of this work looks like the addition of human flourishing to an otherwise Zoomer Executive Order, and some of it means moving forward with a unified “Why” and an iterative “How”. 

New Models 

Moving forward with an iterative “How” results in an abundance of learning options and models. “The schools of the future that our society needs won’t come from transforming our existing schools. They’ll have to come through launching new versions of schooling from new value networks,” explained Thomas Arnett, Christensen Institute. 

In the most recent CREDO study, charter networks (and new school development) were cited as one of the few sustained signs of progress at scale. As a result, a quarter of the 31,000 new schools opened in the last 30 years were charters (about 500 opening each year) and one in three students in the U.S. attended a new public school created during the last three decades. Although this growth is a sign of progress, inefficient and ineffective authorization practices are a barrier for developing enough schools that are inclusive and adaptable enough to reach their full potential.

Another version of new school development, homeschooling, specifically microschools in homes and community spaces, got a boost from the rise of virtual learning in the first decade of the century and from microschools and cooperative models that exploded during the pandemic (e.g. Prenda, KaiPod, Outschool) aided by the expansion of ESA funding in 17 states. Homeschools include a couple of varieties:  

• Informal cooperative agreements of multiple virtual charter school parents (one multistate operator said 40% of students benefited from cooperative arrangements in 2022), 
• Informal cooperative agreements of homeschool parents receiving ESA funds, and 
• Private microschools where all or most of the tuition is ESA-funded (like those featured here).

These microschools are also leaning into AI at varying rates and are demonstrating principles of abundance through the impressive work they can do for $7-14k/kid. Dr. Yong Zhao shares that “[ AI] does not aim to help all students achieve the same outcomes. It is not to allow students to move along the same path to the same goal. Instead, it is to help each student to become uniquely great in their own way…Since every child has strengths and deficiencies, we should shift our mindset of education toward developing the strengths of each child instead of fixing their deficiencies.”

In a recent conversation with Michael Horn, Ron Matus, the Director of Research and Special Projects at Step Up For Students, shared.

“[F]or, I don’t know, at least a decade now, maybe 15 years now, it has been a graduation requirement that kids take at least one virtual school class. And so hundreds of thousands of families have had a little taste of à la carte learning because they’ve had to, like, take a single class from a different provider. So everybody’s experienced that. I think what we’re seeing now is families can still go to Florida Virtual School to access à la carte classes, but we’re also seeing […] districts now offering unbundling of their own, apart from virtual classes. There are six districts, I think that’s correct […] that I know of who are now official providers in the system who can get paid with ESA funds. They’re doing that so families can access one or two or three classes, whatever they want to supplement the rest of the programming they’re putting together for their kids. There are at least a half dozen other districts who are in the pipeline. So there are districts that are seeing the times have changed. Some families don’t want our whole package deal. They just want some of the pieces.”

Districts with an abundance mindset will be better able to serve students with a diverse set of experiences and meet both learners and families where they are. 

New Experiences, Signals and Outcomes

Unbundled learning represents a paradigm shift in how we view education, emphasizing the ability for students to learn anywhere, with all learning experiences counting toward their educational journey. States like Arizona and Colorado have pioneered initiatives that provide students with access to real-world learning opportunities and demonstrate how learning ecosystems can be expanded. Denver Learning Ecosystems, supported by ReSchool Colorado, is a growing resource for unbundled learning opportunities in the Denver area. 

In these models, students are empowered to curate their educational pathways, selecting from a variety of experiences that align with their interests and goals. Programs like OpenEd exemplify this by enabling students to manage their education funding, directing it toward unbundled learning experiences that are outcome-driven. This flexibility is mirrored in New Hampshire’s “Learn Everywhere” model and VLACS, which promotes credit for out-of-school experiences, thereby valuing all forms of learning.

Making all learning count requires moving away from the traditional Carnegie unit, and accelerating the need for a robust credentialing system. This is where digital credentialing and Learner Employment Records (LERs) come into play, serving as new signal communication tools to capture the diverse array of skills and knowledge students acquire outside traditional classroom settings. We’re seeing organizations around the globe pilot and begin codifying these essential infrastructures. Credentialing serves as a form of recognition for unbundled learning experiences, ensuring that skills acquired through non-traditional means—such as internships, extracurriculars or online courses—are validated and recognized as credible pathways to graduation.

The implementation of competency-based accountability frameworks, which emphasize mastery over time spent in class, is crucial. These frameworks ensure that education systems hold themselves accountable for student success, aligning learning outcomes with real-world applications and skills demanded by employers. 

New Horizons

These shifts to unbundled learning and credentialing represent a move toward an abundance mindset in education. To move forward with this mindset means to invite more people into community, collaboration and innovation. Our recent publication on a new architecture for education and our series on  The Third Horizon of learning are both fundamentally a study in abundance. Our best possible learning futures encourage learning in all of its forms. We built the Getting Smart Innovation Framework to help communities roadmap towards this new learning horizon. By recognizing and validating diverse learning experiences, we can create a more inclusive and adaptable education system that prepares students for the complexities of the modern world and for thriving in an era of abundance. 

*the quote from Ron Matus has been slightly edited for readability.