While visiting family in Florida this winter break, I bumped into two former students from my last year in the classroom. They’re seniors now, ready to graduate, but they’re families moved. Now they’re attending more traditional schools than the one where I taught them—PSI High. We reminisced about our shared PSI experience and I asked them how things were going.
They said their current classes feel like checklists rather than opportunities for exploration or growth. While they thought their teachers were great, they described a series of hollow daily tasks: reading chapters on autopilot, answering meaningless questions, and submitting assignments with little-to-no feedback. They said they missed the autonomy and culture of inquiry we’d established in my 9th and 10th-grade English courses. Intertwined with these frustrations, I heard a yearning to rediscover the love of learning they experienced as 9th graders.
Unfortunately, what my former students described isn’t unusual. We see the signs everywhere: rising absenteeism, slipping academic performance, and a profound sense of apathy in classrooms. Students who once pored over books, reveling in their discoveries, have become spectators in their own educations—bored, overwhelmed, or just plain checked out.
😑 The Disengagement Crisis
This apathy isn’t just anecdotal; a growing body of research points to a full-blown “disengagement crisis”—also the topic of a forthcoming book by award-winning journalist Jenny Anderson and Brookings Institution scholar Rebecca Winthrop titled “The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better.”
Their work draws on large-scale surveys and interviews, laying out a landscape where just 26 percent of 10th graders claim they love school—a steep drop from the 74 percent who say the same in third grade. Even more alarming, 49 percent of Gen Z in a recent Gallup/Walton Family Foundation survey report feeling unprepared for their futures, indicating that schools may be falling short in equipping them with the problem-solving, resilience, or initiative they’ll need.
We should all be asking the same question: What happened? Why do students describe an eroding sense of ownership over their education—and, more importantly, how can schools combat it?
🌟 Youth Voice & Choice
At XQ, we don’t see high schools as the tail end of K-12 education. Instead, we believe they are pivotal spaces for unleashing a young person’s sense of possibility and agency—so much so that it’s one of our Design Principles for school-wide success: Youth Voice and Choice.
Anderson and Winthrop, too, emphasize that when students feel they can shape the direction of their learning, they gain essential life skills: setting targets, identifying strategies, monitoring progress, and course-correcting when inevitable challenges arise. These aptitudes translate directly to college readiness, workforce performance, and a strong sense of agency in adulthood. As the authors note, even small doses of agency—like letting students choose which angle of a topic to explore—can radically transform how teens engage with the material and each other.
We’ve long championed youth voice and choice as a key element for transforming the traditional high school experience. By adopting this design principle, educators and school leaders empower students to be agents of their own learning journeys. They celebrate students’ personal growth and consistently provide opportunities for them to set goals and reflect on how they learn best.
What this looks like in practice varies, but here are three foundational strategies all educators can use:
- Reflective Check-Ins: Instead of teachers saying, “Your project is due Tuesday,” educators can ask, “What’s your plan for finishing this project, and what resources do you need?” This slight pivot empowers teens to shape their timelines and fosters a sense of accountability.
- Inquiry-Based Lessons: Teachers can shift from controlling language (“You must read this chapter by Friday”) to more collaborative approaches (“Let’s explore this text. Which part of it do you find most surprising or relevant?”). A more collaborative approach allows students to step into the driver’s seat, guided by a clear rationale.
- Shared Vision of Success: When entire school communities embed these practices, students feel they have a real stake in shaping what success looks like—whether mastering a skill or reaching a broader personal goal.
These aren’t radical or time-consuming shifts in teaching. They can be woven into regular instruction with minimal disruption. As Anderson and Winthrop’s research shows, even small doses of student agency can significantly affect motivation and achievement.
🚀 Responsive Education
We can no longer treat teenage disengagement as a passing phase. The data—and countless firsthand accounts from the past decade—show that high school students are hungry for a deeper connection to their education. That’s precisely where “responsive education” comes in.
Responsive education, like personalized learning, centers on meeting individual student needs.
But it takes a broader approach by integrating sound, established teaching practices to address both academics and students' social and emotional growth.
Rather than simply customizing and fine-tuning lessons, this model maintains rigorous standards while giving students meaningful ways to shape their learning. By recognizing young people as active thinkers capable of defining and pursuing clear goals with guidance, responsive education counters disengagement. Learners have a compelling reason to participate: they see value in their work and have a direct stake in shaping what success looks like.
We’ve seen the impact when learning is a genuine partnership between educators and students. At Grand Rapids Public Museum High School (GRPMS), educators introduced “Flex Friday,” a day devoted to letting students and teachers design and enroll in courses or activities aligned with students’ interests and learning goals. The concept was an instant hit. Students look forward to these Fridays to avoid missing out on earning opportunities that enable them to explore a wide range of subjects, sign up for extracurricular clubs typically reserved for after-school hours, and benefit from targeted catch-up or high-impact tutoring sessions in core subjects. GRPMS fosters genuine autonomy and agency among students.
By shifting away from checklists and mindless compliance, we can transform high schools into spaces of curiosity, discovery, and lasting engagement—where a spark lit in 9th grade can guide and energize students for a lifetime.
Learn more about the XQ Design Principles and how to bring more student agency and autonomy to your high school community.
