About a year ago, Michael Horn was Tom Vander Ark’s guest on a Getting Smart podcast. Horn is the co-founder of and a distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, a non-profit think tank and an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Horn had just written a new book titled From Reopen to Reinvent: (Re)creating School for Every Child.
In that book, Horn arrives at three conclusions:
- Our public school system doesn’t work for most kids.
- It’s past time to apply competency-based goals into a learning model personalized for each of our kids.
- We must move away from a zero-sum mentality to a positive-sum mentality when it comes to our national learning model.
On this podcast, Horn talks about the importance of schools spending time defining learning goals, or in other words, creating a portrait of a graduate.
After they create a portrait of what they want their kids to be able to do, Horn then thinks it’s time to design a mastery-based model, a model whereby young learners are able to define, plan, execute, and evaluate their progress toward personalized learning goals.
All of this can be done while realizing something Todd Rose, another Harvard educator, calls “the jagged edge.” “The jagged edge” is nothing more than the realization that some of us are better at certain tasks than others. According to Horn, it’s important to understand portraits of a graduate and mastery-based learning within this context.
Later in the podcast, Horn borrows from another Harvard educator, Tony Wagner, when he defines student learning as “what kids should know and be able to do.”
According to Horn, it’s time to drop the post-pandemic “learning loss” threat. Horn thinks it’s more important to work with young learners where they are and then build their capacity to become strong skill-based learners.
There’s a section in the podcast when Horn discusses parents and their demand for learning options for their kids.
Horn talks about the importance of school innovation moving forward.
Finally, Horn encourages everyone in public schools to adopt what he calls “MVTs,” (Minimally Viable Tests). MVTs allow innovation to build small so that you can figure out early whether the innovation is going to work for kids or not.
As I listened to Horn, a lot of what he talked about resonated with me. It really sounded like our kids, our young learners, could benefit from a system he was describing.
And then it hit me.
Our public schools can’t do any of this.
They don’t seem interested in competency-based learning.
Schools are still mired in a zero-sum game where there has to be winners and therefore losers.
Portraits of a graduate don’t work since coursework in schools do not align with most of the expectations listed on a portrait.
Public school grading cycles get in the way of true mastery-based learning.
Our public schools don’t handle the “jagged edge” well. Differentiated instruction still benefits those who read and problem-solve well and hurts those who don’t.
The way our public schools have defined “what kids should know and be able to do” is often misaligned with the skills kids really need in 2023, so much so that more and more young learners are finding school irrelevant to what they want their futures to look like.
Public schools aren’t going to give up their “learning loss” mantra anytime soon. This is how they earn additional dollars from institutions like our federal government while many of our public school districts are losing enrollment and therefore funding. Making a promise to “catch kids up” helps the school budget and community relations. Whether public schools can indeed “eliminate learning loss” remains to be seen.
Even though parents are demanding more options for their children when it comes to learning, it seems our traditional school system is more interested in more of the same pre-pandemic. Stronger leadership, better teachers, more time on task, tutoring, testing – the same strategies as before COVID-19.
Most schools aren’t interested in innovation, and starting small usually gets school leadership in trouble with “the equity police” – especially if whatever small project started becomes popular or successful.
I hate to rain on Michael Horn’s parade, but our schools, in general, can’t do anything Horn lays out in either his book or this podcast.
And here’s my big rub with Michael Horn and people like him. Horn and all these folks that write books on school improvement know that our public school system is either not interested or totally unprepared to make the changes they want to see. But still, Horn and his friends continue to court the traditional school system, partially hoping some of their ideas will take root, but mainly I think to pay the bills.
Far be it from me to prevent someone from making an honest living, just as long as everyone understands this:
Whatever Horn and all of those like him are trying to sell, most of our public schools aren’t buying.
A Little About a Lot tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
Leave a comment