2 Nov 2026
09: Is School The Wrong Fit?
We’re back! After a short hiatus, High School Wasn’t Built for Every Kid is returning with a new episode and more conversations designed to help parents understand what happens when traditional school simply isn’t the right fit. We’re excited to be back and to continue exploring practical, research-informed ways to help teenagers learn, grow, and thrive in environments that work for them.
What if “What’s wrong with my child?” is not the most useful question? A teenager may be bored or disengaged, experiencing a possible clinical concern, or paying a significant cost because the current school environment is a poor fit. Those situations can look similar from the outside, but they call for different next steps.
In this episode, Beth Callaghan and Anne Hand discuss emotionally based school avoidance, the difference between a passing rough patch and a repeated pattern, and how parents can look at attendance, trajectory, and whether difficulties are contained or spreading beyond school. They also discuss Christopher Kearney’s functional model of school-avoidance behavior and explain why the same outward behavior can have different underlying functions.
The conversation closes with a careful look at College Onramps as one possible educational fit for some students. The program is new and building its first cohort, so its design principles should not be confused with years of program-specific outcome data.
In This Episode
Emotionally based school avoidance — Why newer language can shift attention from blame or assumed choice toward the emotional needs and circumstances behind non-attendance.
Three questions for parents — How to distinguish ordinary disengagement, a possible clinical concern, and a meaningful mismatch with the current environment.
Attendance, trajectory, and breadth — Three practical patterns to observe when a student’s difficulties may be escalating or spreading beyond school.
Kearney’s functional model — Four possible functions of school-avoidance behavior and why the same behavior may require different questions and responses.
College Onramps as one possible fit — How autonomy, competence, relatedness, flexible pacing, mentoring, and community-based connection inform the program’s design, without claiming established outcomes.
About the Hosts
Beth Callaghan, Ph.D. is President & COO of College Onramps. She holds a PhD in English, taught at USC, and was a founding curriculum designer at Minerva University. She served as Dean of the School of Innovation Foundations at Taejae University in South Korea for three years and has spent a decade working in the science of learning. Her work focuses on curriculum, pedagogy, and the science of learning.
Anne Hand is Chief Quality Assurance Officer at College Onramps. She has over twenty years of experience in research, instructional design, education, and international development. She holds a degree from McGill University and an M.Ed. from Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Learn More
Visit College Onramps (https://collegeonramps.org/ (https://collegeonramps.org/)).
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