Reflections from the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit.
This spring, thousands of educators, investors, and policymakers came together in San Diego for the annual ASU+GSV Summit. To call it a complicated moment for the future of education might be an understatement — federal funding cuts, AI-driven workforce disruption, and growing skepticism about the value of a college degree have left much of the field navigating real uncertainty. But the circumstances only served to make the conversations more interesting and generative. In the weeks since the conference ended, three themes have emerged as we reflected on formal sessions, hallway conversations, and follow-up discussions with our network.
Foundational skills can’t wait.
For all the discussion of how education should change, there is little consensus around what students should actually learn. The traditional core curriculum (at least on its own) has felt increasingly out of step with the knowledge and skills students need to succeed in life after high school or college. This has elicited multiple responses within the education sector. Some experts have called for an increased emphasis on durable skills like communication and collaboration that remain relevant and important regardless of what a student’s postsecondary life looks like. Others advocate for non-degree credentials designed to give students a broader and more functional base of relevant skills that employers can easily verify.
But this year, amid the discussion of new curriculum approaches and credentialing, education innovators kept returning to the importance of foundational skills: the essential, core competencies that are the building blocks for all future learning. Many students graduate high school with gaps in their foundational skills, including reading, writing, and basic math. Similar to durable skills, these fundamentals are crucial to success in life regardless of one’s career. But foundational skill gaps are not evenly distributed; they cluster along lines of race and class, reflecting and exacerbating broader structural inequalities that new curriculum frameworks and credentialing alone are unlikely to address.
The teaching profession should learn from itself.
One of the most dominant conversations about improving teaching has focused on changing what teachers do, shifting the “factory model” toward more flexible, experiential methods that nurture curiosity and build durable skills. These are important goals and many great teachers are already pursuing them. But the conversation has paid less attention to a more fundamental question: What does the teaching profession itself need in order to improve? At this year’s conference, a clearer answer began to emerge.
The real game-changer may be treating teaching for what it really is: a knowledge profession. Great teachers already prioritize methods that cultivate meaningful student engagement and agency in their education. But they operate within a profession that has too little infrastructure for practitioners to learn from each other. The practical knowledge teachers generate — what works, for which students, and under which conditions — often disappears when they change schools or retire. Investment in systems that help capture, share, and build on that knowledge could be far more impactful than any individual training program.
Philanthropic dollars go further together.
Federal education funding has diminished in both amount and reliability, and many philanthropic funders are re-examining their roles and responsibilities as ecosystem catalysts. One potential result: an even stronger commitment to funding local, community-led initiatives capable of driving rapid and meaningful change. Increasingly, however, philanthropies are also asking themselves and each other when and how they should collaborate. No single foundation covers the full spectrum of education funding needs; collaboration in both strategic planning and concrete investment decisions across organizations creates an opportunity to ensure that philanthropic dollars result in the greatest possible positive impact.
But in order to coordinate funding strategies, organizations with complex stakeholder ecosystems need the time, space, and support to strategically align internally and in partnership with each other. Facilitated convenings can accelerate these partnerships by building scenarios around unexpected opportunity areas, developing decision-making frameworks, and surfacing fresh insights that help guide coordinated investment and funding decisions. Open innovation programs offer another partnership model to advance a shared vision with outsized impact. By tapping into multiple networks and expanding the scope of authority, funders can identify new partners and novel ideas.
Photo by Brett Sayles.
