Maybe the Shift is Happening

Good news!

According to a recent article posted by Tom Vander Ark, CEO of Getting Smart, there is a shift happening between our traditional K-12 school system and newer, more innovative learning organizations.

Vander Ark writes,

“After a two-year investigation including hundreds of interviews, Kim Smith and Jen Holleran published a landscape of innovation in U.S. K-12 education. What they found was a lot of confusion because there is not a single unified landscape. There are multiple systems operating simultaneously, often in the same geography:

• Traditional efficiency: Schools organized in age cohorts focused on grade-level proficiency tests
• Efficiency innovation: Tech-enhanced, often networked schools of choice, and
• Future-Ready: Flexible student-centered models with broader aims and opportunities”

“The traditional efficiency system [referred to as Horizon 1 schools moving forward] includes most public district schools (probably 70% of the total) but is in decline as parents, students and teachers opt out and as new and conversion efficiency (Horizon 2) and future-ready (Horizon 3) schools and learning experiences are created.”

“Most charter schools according to CREDO, particularly those opened by networks, are Horizon 2 models ‘that opened with strong results and delivered stronger gains compared to traditional public schools.’”

“Smith and Holleran described a new learner-centered ecosystem that is agentic (with student agency at the core) and defines success as thriving in life, careers and democracy. ‘It requires shifting from ‘schooling’ towards more focus on deeper learning. With the support and guidance of a robust community in which each student is known, connected, and engaged, learners have agency to define their path, own their data, and pursue their goals.”

…

“Inspired by the expression of new learning goals…and next generation schools, the Getting Smart team distilled a set of learning design principles:

1. Accessible: All students deserve access to high quality learning opportunities that support long term success and a strong sense of belonging.
2. Personalized: Every learner is different. By providing personalized approaches to meet challenging outcomes, we increase the chances of success for every student. Competency-based approaches ensure proficiency on all outcomes.
3. Purposeful: Learning experiences should help students find/develop a purpose to make a difference in the world.
4. Joyful: When learning leads to awe, wonder, joy, and engagement, outcomes are stronger. Joy can be supported by strong relationships with others (peers, mentors, teachers, etc.).
5. Authentic: Building learning experiences that are culturally connected, contextualized, relevant, or real-world increases engagement and outcomes.
6. Challenging: Every learner deserves to be intellectually challenged with high expectations. We believe in experiences that build opportunities for flow with the appropriate balance of challenge and engagement.”

…

“Dr. Yong Zhao describes the Horizon 2 ‘essence of personalized learning is to create individualized paths for students, adjusting the difficulty and pace of the material based on their progress and understanding.’ However, another emerging (H3) version of AI-powered personalized learning is drastically different. ‘It does not aim to help all students achieve the same outcomes. It does not allow students to move along the same path to the same goal. Instead, it is to help each student to become uniquely great in their own way…Since every child has strengths and deficiencies, we should shift our mindset of education toward developing the strengths of each child instead of fixing their deficiencies.’”

“Zhao explains the need for entrepreneurship and difference making: ‘In the age of AI, the first thing students need to do is to find problems worth solving because when they enter the society, they need to create value for others using their unique greatness. With AI and related technology, human greatness can be drastically enhanced. Today, everyone needs to have an entrepreneurial mindset as everyone has the potential, opportunity, and perhaps necessity to create solutions to problems with the assistance of AI.’”

“Together, these design principles outline next-generation (H3) environments and experiences. The three routes to create H3 supply is new school development, learner experience networks, and school transformation.”

“One in three students in the U.S. attended a new public school created during the last three decades. A 2020 Carnegie report suggested that new school development has been an important change strategy. Because school improvement typically yields better but not different, new schools are the primary way new H2 and H3 school models are introduced. ‘The schools of the future that our society needs won’t come from transforming our existing schools. They’ll have to come through launching new versions of schooling from new value networks,’ explained Thomas Arnett from the Christensen Institute.”

…

“Of the 3.4 million students likely to be in new options by the end of the decade, maybe half will be H3 models, which leaves 42 million students in traditional public school options. That suggests a massive new school opportunity and why we’ve launched a microschool initiative to support the formation of next-generation models in school districts, in charter networks, and home schools.”

“Microschools offer a faster and less expensive approach to new school development, one that can supplement and accelerate traditional approaches. But even with aggressive acceleration in the next five years, the shift to H3 requires new strategies like learner experience (LX) networks.

“A growing number of initiatives are inserting H3 experiences into H1/H2 schools. It’s a faster and cheaper entry point than new school development and scales more rapidly. The downside to these LX networks is that it’s typically a partial day and can be limited to upper-division high school students.”

…

“School improvement efforts typically yield incrementally better but not different results. The multifaceted transformation required to move from one horizon to the next is rare especially early cycle. It requires leadership, capacity, and models of success (often found in new school development).”

…

“New school development is the early key to building H3 supply. New schools can bundle new goals, new strategies and new tools into coherent models. While they expand access to next gen learning, they illustrate the way forward for transformation. This transformation is multifaceted and can be technically and politically challenging. AI will lower the technical complexity of transitioning to agentic and experiential pathways (while introducing new concerns).”

“Learner experience networks can scale relatively quickly but are typically partial day programs for upper division students. ESA funding in a dozen states (while mostly a private school subsidy) creates an opening for innovative new models and expanded family agency.”

“If large urban districts remain preoccupied with traditional improvement and school closures, they will stagnate in H1/H2 and increasingly be displaced by new H3 supply (as context variables permit). Even with aggressive new school development and LX networks, the majority of students will rely on late-stage transformation as proven models, deep capacity and new policy incentives expand.”

Much of what Tom Vander Ark writes here is exciting news, and I agree with most of it.

Vander Ark would be smart to stop using the term “school” when describing H3 models and begin using the term “learning organization” – because what H3 means goes way beyond places we have called schools for the past centuries.

Also, Vander Ark’s organization, Getting Smart, would be wise to stop investing in traditional school systems that say they want transformation, but their actions over the past 50 years suggest otherwise. Their recent microschool initiative is a good start toward demonstrating their commitment to H3 innovation instead of H1 incrementalism.

Let’s see how many H3 learning organizations are created over the next 20 years.

Til tomorrow. SVB