What Parts of The Idea Foundry Model Belong in Public Education — and Which Parts Must Be Reimagined?

From Inspiration to Inquiry

After writing about The Idea Foundry, I found myself less interested in whether environments like it are “good” or “bad” for education, and more curious about something quieter and more fundamental: when did we begin thinking about schooling in terms of models at all?

That question matters because it changes the nature of the conversation. Once we talk about schooling as a model, we implicitly invite comparison, optimization, replication—and, eventually, reform. But before arguing for or against any particular approach, it’s worth pausing to ask how this language entered our discourse in the first place.

This essay is not a proposal and not a critique. It is an attempt to observe carefully—to establish context, method, and posture before drawing conclusions.

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How This Data Was Generated

To explore when the language of “schooling models” entered public discourse, I used Google Books Ngram Viewer, which tracks the frequency of words and phrases in published texts over time.

The search was run using the following parameters:

1. Corpus: American English
2. Time range: 1960–2022
3. Search terms:
   • “public education model”
   • “public school model”
   • “schooling model”
4. Smoothing: default setting
5. Case sensitivity: as entered (case-insensitive)

Ngram data does not explain why language changes—only when it does.

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A Shift in Language Before a Shift in Outcomes

What emerges from the data is not an argument, but a pattern.

Over the past sixty years, American discourse has shifted from talking about education primarily as a public good to talking about schooling as a system—something that can be modeled, optimized, and compared. That shift appears well before many of the outcomes we now debate: test scores, accountability regimes, graduation rates, or political polarization around schools.

In other words, the language changed first.

This matters because language shapes attention. It defines what we notice, what we measure, and what we believe is possible to redesign. Long before we argued about solutions, we quietly changed the frame.

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The Idea Foundry as Catalyst, Not Blueprint

For a long time, I’ve believed that school models need to change. I also hold strong opinions about how they might change. But those opinions are just that—opinions—and they don’t belong at the front end of this discussion.

What shifted my thinking was a visit to The Idea Foundry in Columbus, Ohio. Seeing it as a physical, brick-and-mortar structure moved the idea of alternative learning environments from something abstract into something undeniably real. It wasn’t a theory or a framework—it was a working space, occupied and alive.

What struck me most was the building itself. The Foundry occupies a former industrial center—once designed for an earlier era of production. The walls, the layout, the bones of the building remain. What has changed is what happens inside. The work now is more digital, more technical, more collaborative. The structure endured; the purpose evolved.

That physical transformation has become a useful metaphor for this series.

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Observation Before Evaluation

Rather than beginning with critique or prescription, my aim here is to investigate what is currently being discussed under the umbrella of “schooling models.” This initial piece is not an argument and not an endorsement. It is an attempt to observe carefully and describe what is happening—without commentary, without judgment, and without attaching conclusions too early.

There will be space later to ask what belongs, what transfers cleanly, and what must be reimagined. For now, the task is simpler and harder at the same time: to see clearly what is already taking shape.

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Looking Ahead

For now, it’s enough to notice that the language has already shifted—and to take that shift seriously.