Guest Columnist:  Jeff Cobb

Did you know that 65 percent of the U.S. workforce of 2020 – a date to which so much planning about the future tends to be pegged – is already outside the reach of our elementary and secondary education schools?

Did you also know that for the slice of that 65 percent lucky enough to earn a college degree, the shelf life of that degree is only about five years?

There is a lot of passionate debate these days – and rightly so – about improving our K-12 and higher education systems, but even as these debates rage, the …

Since the beginning of the Transformation Decade in 2010, I have been saying that education at all levels will undergo transformation by 2020.  The book I wrote with Jeff Cobb, “Shift Ed: A Call to Action for Transforming K-12”, published in early 2011, called for nothing less than transformation.  Reform is an outdated word and is now not enough to make the necessary changes in American education.

Last week I wrote a guest column for CNN.com titled “Predictions for the Next Decade of Education”.  It provoked a number of responses to my inbox and many on-line as …

As many of you who subscribe to my Shift Age Newsletter know, I co-authored a book with Jeff Cobb on transforming education. Shift Ed: A Call to Action for Transforming K-12 Education was published in April by Corwin Press.

Now, three months later, I am happy to report that the response from the education community has been strong and extremely positive. Two conferences that had me as the keynote speaker purchased copies of the book for all attendees, and the feedback from these educators has been so positive that I am humbled. In addition, several school superintendents have purchased …

This new decade, 2010-2020, will be known as the Transformation Decade. The definitions of transformation are several: the act or process of transforming, the state of being transformed, change in form, appearance, nature, or character.

Don’t those definitions feel like what has been already going on in your life and the world?  Many of us have already been living in this state.  Many of us have only recently felt the impending alterations, disruptions and reorganizations that have begun.  Everything seems to be in a transforming state of shift.

We are entering the first full decade of the Shift Age, even though it …