It has never been a better time to be a motivated learner—and never been more risky not to be one. As artificial intelligence automates routine work, the future will reward human agency: the ability to navigate ambiguity, build purpose, and keep learning over a lifetime.

Yet today, too many students disengage—not because they lack potential, but because school feels abstract, disconnected, and ultimately irrelevant. 

This report argues for a fundamental redesign of high school—one in which at least 50% of formal learning is experience-based. It shows how experience-based learning builds motivation, why it is uniquely suited to an AI-shaped future, and what it will take to make experience a core part of school, not a peripheral add-on.

This report is for educators, policymakers, philanthropists, and entrepreneurs ready to redesign high school for the realities of AI, and to prepare young people not just to pass courses, but to navigate adulthood.

Thank you to the Walton Family Foundation for supporting this exploration and for encouraging us to ask big questions about where the world is headed and how we prepare young people to thrive.