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I often disagree with Chad Alderman’s ideas on school policy issues, but I do find he’s always thoughtful.

His latest post, How to Become an “Education Governor” in 2026, gets that same reaction from me.

But it did get me thinking.

He shared seven-plus ideas.

I’d like to share just one.

It builds on the Catholic perspective of Subsidiarity , which I’ve often written about here.

It basically means that the people closest to problems – most affected by them – often have excellent ideas on how to solve them.

So, instead of offering a blog post with a bunch of specific policy suggestions, why not focus on pushing governors, state legislators, and district superintendents, to listen.

Why not start off with having teachers, students, parents/guardians, classified staff and school administrators respond to these questions in something like a Google Form:

1. In your experience, what are the best and most effective practices happening at your school? Why do you think they’re the best and most effective practices?  What could happen to make them even better? What would be obstacles to making that happen and what are your ideas about how to overcome them?
2. In your experience, what are the worst and least effective practices happening at your school? Why do you think they’re the worst and least effective practices?  What could happen to change them for the better?  What would be obstacles to making that happen and what are your ideas about how to overcome them?
3. What are your ideas for practices that should be happening at your school now but are not?  Why do you think they should happen and how would they be beneficial?  What would be obstacles to making that happen and what are your ideas about how to overcome them?

Obviously, the questions themselves could be changed, but the idea of eliciting the thoughts of the people most affected by schools should not.

Teachers could have students answer these questions as an assignment, they could write out their own answers during a canceled faculty meeting, school administrators could do the same, and the form could be sent to parents/guardians and answered at PTA meetings.

Next, all the answers could be fed into Artificial Intelligence and have it do something useful for a change – identify patterns, compile summaries, etc.  Reports could be compiled for individual schools, districts and the entire state.

People with similar ideas/interests could be identified, propositioned to be discussion leaders. Then, there could be class discussions about the results, conversations at union meetings, PTA gatherings, state legislative hearings, etc.  Local and statewide action plans could be identified.

Then, and only then, governors and other leaders could use this listening process to inform a specific education agenda.

What do you think?