How Schools Lost, and Found, Their Value Proposition

Schools Are Finally Realizing Their Greatest Asset Isn't Technology

When I was a young teacher, I interviewed for an English teaching position at what was perhaps the most expensive private school in Minneapolis. During the interview, they took me on a tour and were very proud that all of their students received MacBooks. I was taken by an English classroom where students were circled into a class discussion, every one of them with a computer out and open on the desk in front of them. That was 2007. The value proposition for schools at that time was that schools could provide and instruct using technology.

Photo by Blake Wisz on Unsplash

I didn’t get the job, and I have never been back to that school, but my guess is that if I returned, the English class would look different. In fact, judging from their website, the value proposition they are promoting has nothing to do with technology. Each picture on the website scroll, has groups of smiling children interacting with each other or playing sports or dancing or standing at a whiteboard with their highly engaged teacher. Not one person has a phone visible. In fact the only technology that is is one single laptop that is surrounded by a group of students, and none of them are looking at the screen. This is what this expensive private school thinks parents are looking for these days.

Private schools, especially very expensive ones, are attuned to what parents are looking for. The need to fill enrollment does not always lead them to the right decisions, but it does lead them to think about what value they can provide to parents that might be worth their tuition.

In 2007, schools, such as the elite private school I toured, believed its value proposition was in providing technology and using it in class. This was a common belief in some education circles. In a previous post, I followed the rise and fall of the voices calling for cell phones to be used in class. It is hard to remember now, but some of the biggest and most respected voices in education were promoting the idea that classrooms should be digitally connected, and that learning was accomplished best through a screen.

In 2026, schools are making a different decision. The value proposition schools provide today is exactly what expensive private schools are promoting on their websites—opportunities to close their MacBooks, put their phones down and spend time with each other. Even schools that would consider themselves technology forward, such as the Alpha School, where they boast a 2-hour AI-guided school day, fill the rest of the day with other activities that are decidedly low-tech, such as public speaking and outdoor education.

Schools have always provided this value, of course, but during the last decade, they became much worse at it while they followed the lead of EduTwitter: Use cell phones in class! iPads for kindergartners! If we don’t teach students how to use Google, they will be adrift in life!

Nevertheless, schools, particularly public schools, remain one of the only places where all parts of a community come together and spend quality time together. Places of worship are often segregated by race, class, and differences in tradition. Workplaces are stratified by education and function, but in public schools all children in a community, regardless of who their parents are, come together and learn how to work in a group.

It is far from perfect. For sure, some of the same prejudices and privileges that occur elsewhere in the community come to school, too, but schools confront these problems more often and more skillfully than anyplace else in the community.

Likewise, when it comes to technology, schools get students to unplug from their digital lives. At school they join teams, read books, and break a sweat. They make speeches and practice civil debate and also sit in total silence. That is a value proposition that no online program can offer.

Where schools went wrong over the last two decades was to believe that their value came from providing digital technology to children. Their value was always the closeness to each other. The crowded cafeterias are a feature, not a bug. Now that schools are relearning their role, we see them putting phones in locked pouches and handing out paperback books. These are steps in the right direction, but I will add another—more of the kind of fun that can only come from being in a group. Band and basketball meet this description, but so does a classroom alive with discussion and the cafeteria on taco Tuesday.

Schools are common but extraordinary. No place else in a community has the diversity of a school. No place else brings people together with common purpose on the scale of a school. There is no place where people in a community break bread so often or with so many neighbors.