Opinion: Aviation Knows How to Learn From Failure. Too Bad Education Does Not

On Jan. 28, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education released 2024 NAEP results, showing that 41% of fourth graders read below Basic. That’s 95,000 more than in 2022, bringing the total to 1.6 million who struggle to make simple inferences from the text as they read. For elementary students from low-income families in 10 states, the news was especially bad: They were reading 1.5 grade levels lower than similar students a decade ago.

The following day, an Army helicopter collided with an airliner in the skies over Washington, D.C., killing 67 people — the first mass fatality aviation accident in the U.S. in nearly 16 years. The rarity of such disasters reflects aviation’s remarkable safety record: Flying at 30,000 feet is safer than driving or walking.  

What separates these two disasters is how differently aviation and education learn from failure. Here are three ideas education leaders can take from aviation.  

First, it’s important to create forums for deeply analyzing what went wrong. After every accident, the National Transportation Safety Board conducts prolonged investigations, extracting lessons that prevent future disasters. The NTSB begins by recognizing that complex failures have multiple causes, investigating aircraft design, crew procedures, air traffic control, routes and flight conditions. 

Six months after the D.C. crash, the NTSB issued an interim report that stimulated immediate changes in technology use, landing routes and rules for how aircraft separation is maintained. Last month, on the anniversary of the crash, a final report detailed the accident chain, explaining what went wrong.  

Contrast this with Delaware, one of the 10 states that saw a steep drop in early reading scores. A new strategic plan from Gov. Matt Meyer and the state Department of Education lays out four priorities. The plan reasonably starts with “access to grade-level instruction” — but what’s missing is any public diagnosis about current obstacles fornstudents reading below grade level, or why the failure occurred for so many kids in the first place. 

States and districts don’t need an entity as structured as the NTSB, but they would benefit from spending several months analyzing data and developing cases of student reading success and failure at each grade. Disseminating those cases would be a powerful learning tool for real improvement. 

Second, aviation benefits from a culture of psychological safety. Airline crews don’t have a rigid hierarchy; instead, junior pilots are trained to speak up during critical moments. Tools like pre-flight checklists create predictable ways to voice concerns without seeming insubordinate. A safety reporting system allows pilots to report concerns anonymously, without fear of punishment. 

Most school leaders struggle with this concept. Superintendents too often blame individual teachers for problems that stem from systemic issues. Novice teachers report they feel less secure than veteran colleagues, in part because they find it difficult to ask for help and admit when they’re struggling.

Building cultures of safety in schools means regarding mistakes as part of innovation. NYC Reads, the ambitious reform using research-backed curricula in all elementary schools, showed slim results the first two years. The process demanded that teachers unlearn practices they thought had been good for kids and asked them to teach grade-level books for all students — a heavy lift.

Finally, last spring, scores jumped citywide. Two community school district superintendents, Cristine Vaughn and Roberto Padilla said they gave their teachers room to learn during this time. “We tried to set the expectations that this is new for everybody and we’re not going to expect perfection right out of the gate,” Vaughn told me in a research interview. Said Padilla, “Blame would hurt our progress and momentum. We don’t whip through a school evaluating principals and teachers for what they’re still learning.”

Finally, school leaders need to think in systems. Root-cause analysis is an essential part of every airline accident investigation, digging beneath immediate and obvious causes. The NTSB maps any human error back to organizational and systemic precursors. 

The book Learning to Improve describes schools as complex environments where many parts need to interact well with one another, but breakdowns can easily occur. It cites a decades-old effort to add instructional coaches in Los Angeles schools. Hundreds were hired in a few weeks, but no one mapped out the logic of how coaches would change teaching and learning within the larger system. Results in the schools with coaches were disappointing.

The 95,000 additional students now reading below Basic on NAEP would fill 500 Boeing 737s. What happened to them last year wasn’t fatal, but they’ve experienced the educational equivalent of a sudden drop in cabin pressure. 

The question isn’t whether school systems can learn from failure — aviation proves they can. The question is whether superintendents, principals and teachers have the courage to look honestly at what went wrong, create conditions where everyone can speak up and trace problems to their systemic roots. The next wave of students is waiting for educators to decide.