NGA Chair Colorado Governor Jared Polis’ Let’s Get Ready initiative is guided by the recognition that the U.S. education system is well overdue for a redesign to keep pace with changes in technology and the job market. Governors hear from employers all the time that they struggle to find workers with the skills to match open jobs.
How do Governors address that mismatch, to confirm schools are preparing students for real life and our economy for real success?
It’s time to rethink how we measure success.
Test scores are important. Graduation rates are important.
But what else should we be measuring? What data will tell us that students are career ready, or college ready? How can we harness technology to identify and implement solutions?
Emily Oster and Kara Swisher joined Governor Polis at NGA’s 2025 Winter Meeting to explore those questions. As a professor of economics at Brown University, best-selling author of books like Expecting Better, and CEO of ParentData, Oster is on a mission to provide better data to help parents navigate everything from pregnancy to pre-school and beyond. Kara Swisher – a leading authority on all things tech, podcast pioneer, and Editor-At-Large for New York Magazine – has an expert view on the impact of technology on learning and on the potential, and drawbacks, of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the job market of today and tomorrow.
“It’s really important to think about what’s going to happen with AI and the deleterious effects of technology,” said Kara Swisher. “Ninety-nine percent of intelligence is going to be digital or AI-generated in the future, and 1 percent is going to be human intelligence. We have to think about what does that mean for jobs? I have four children, and I think about this a lot. Three things are critically important: Promoting creativity, because AI cannot make creativity. Second is team-building – teaching kids how to team build, work together and collaborate. Last is critical thinking. There’s no need for memorization anymore. But how do you learn about history, English or humanities and then pull them together in a cogent way?”
Finding the balance between so-called hard and soft skills – and finding the right way to measure them – is key, Governor Polis noted. “There are ways to measure teamwork and critical thinking, [and] we’re [also] talking about aviation tech or HVAC repair,” he commented. “How do you balance both of those? Another challenge is when you start measuring for too many things, you get static – just as if you’re not measuring for enough.”
“When we start talking about measuring more and more and more things, it gets messy,” Emily Oster responded. “We run into the issue that teachers or school districts are in a position where they’re trying to do a million different things. It’s like a multitasking challenge in economics; how we can incentivize in the directions we want, and that are productive, rather than just telling people ‘do everything?’”
The panelists also discussed the potential for technology to support individualized learning. “The fundamental challenge teachers always face is that out of 25 students, five have mastered the subject they’re teaching before they even start, five are way behind, and you have maybe 10 that you’re teaching to, [but for some], it’s going a little too fast or a little too slow,” Governor Polis noted.
Oster and Swisher both advocated that technology can be more an advantage for teachers than students.
“We know from the data that kids learn a lot better from a person than they do from a computer or an app,” Oster stated. “The most successful versions of this I have seen is people [using technology to] divide the class. In a group of 30 kids, we know that kids learn much better in a group of 10 than in a group of 30 because you can differentiate. Rather than teaching 30 kids for 90 minutes, you can do 30 minutes for each group of 10. And the other two groups are going to do apps that are literacy promoting and so on. It’s a scaffolding that lets [teachers] really develop detailed instruction in a targeted way. Think of it as an ‘and,’ not an ‘instead of.’”
Swisher agreed that technology can help teachers develop specialized lesson plans. But beyond that, teachers should make sure they learn how to use ChatGPT. “I urge you to use the ChatGPTs and everything else to see what’s happening,” Swisher advised educators. “It’s sort of like the early internet when I said ‘use the browser so you understand the technology; use it and understand how powerful it can be.’ Even though there are some hallucinations, it’s getting better. For teachers, I think it will be an invaluable tool.”
Ensuring students learn the skills they need for career success is not just about innovating in schools, Governor Polis commented. It requires a cultural shift.
“Beyond the numbers, there’s something called culture,” he stated. “Culture for many parents is ‘hey my kids are going to go to college.’ Or they might think that vocational training might not be as good a way for kids to get a good job. When we as Governors see data, we say ‘Wow, [vocational training] actually may be a really good economic decision.’ You can make $100,000 a year instead of $40,000 year out of college, and there’s no college debt. How does that cultural shift occur – with parents, with decision makers – to value what the economy values?”
NGA Vice Chair Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt concurred: “I really am interested in those multiple pathways: internships, apprenticeships. In my State of the State address, I challenged our businesses and our educators to get together to create 250 apprenticeship programs across the state. I’m interested in learning more about how do we get AI integrated in society [and shift so that] people aren’t just automatically shoving kids toward the traditional four-year university.”
American Samoa Governor Pula’ali’i Nikolao Iuli Tuiteleleapaga Pula, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, Delaware Governor Matt Meyer, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, Utah Governor Spencer Cox and Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers also contributed to the discussion, exploring topics like cell phones in schools, promoting student mental health and well-being, combatting misinformation, and overcoming political divisions that impact education.
Learn more about the Let’s Get Ready initiative and other bipartisan convenings on NGA’s website.
