Public schools are dead, long live public education?

Keeping a charter school running means constantly responding to change without the infrastructure, finances, and administrative depth of district schools. Lose an English teacher in a district high school, and there are others who can step in.  Lose one in a charter school and you have no such backup.  Enrollment drops by a few students in a high school of 3,000 and it is barely noticeable.  Lose a few students in a school of 250 and you are in budget difficulty.

So when the Utah legislature passed a law last session requiring all public schools to allow students to enroll in online courses offered by preferred providers, and stipulated that portions of the weighted pupil unit (the per-student state funding) go to those providers, there was little outcry.  But for a charter school like City Academy, the prospect of a few thousand dollars leaving our budget every time a student chooses an online course is troubling, because it makes it more difficult for us to pay for the teachers, building, and resources needed to support the student when he or she is in class.

I will leave it to others to determine whether this law is good or bad.  I expect that it is morally neutral, and may provide opportunities for innovation in public education.  But the thing that has gone unremarked is this: that this move, more than anything that has happened in the past ten years, is likely to weaken public schools even while it may strengthen public education.

Here is what I mean: allowing state funding to follow student class selection creates a revenue stream for providers of classes, not diplomas.  Thus a future is possible where a student takes a math class from one provider, a history class from another, and a science class from a third.  The experience of school disappears; all that remains is taxpayer supported coursework, made whole, if at all, by parents, advisors, and students themselves.

 Public schools may be on the way out; we will have to decide whether the public education that replaces it is what we desire.

Emergent education, or, Can friends start a college?

There is a long tradition in American civic life--one that I love.  It is the tradition of small groups of people, friends often, co-religionists sometimes, bonding together to respond to a social problem.  Many things might come out of that response--laws, for example, or organizations, or movements, or communities.  But at the core, these responses have always been organized around an ethos of friendship.

The intellectual history of the tradition runs from Tocqueville through Mary Parker Follett and Jane Addams to Jane Jacobs and Myles Horton and Ella Baker to Steven Johnson.  The organizational history runs from frontier towns to community organizing and social settlements and folk schools to the civil rights movement and into the movements of today.

Today some of the most important thinking and organizing in this tradition is coming out of evangelical Christianity under the umbrella of "the emergent movement."  Emerging Christian organizations have eschewed mega-churches and literalism and are focused on building Christian community out of questions and friendships.  Doug Pagitt puts it this way in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope: "The emergent imagination is at its most basic level a call to friendship--friendship with God, with one another, and with the world."

When we talk about trends in education today, we tend to focus on structure and infrastructure: charter schools, standardized testing, technology, for-profit higher ed, assessment and accountability.  There is some value in this.  But in doing so, it masks the cultural changes that are going on in schooling.

One major cultural tendency is towards standardization, efficiency, and systems.  That tendency runs through all of the structural trends in education--systems of charter schools, national tests, system-wide adoption of technology, etc.  It is largely about measuring outcomes to create a one-size-fits-most way of education. It values the involvement of parents, students, teachers; but largely as choosers.  Pick this school or that one; select this curriculum or that. Leadership is traditional--one person or a small group of experts in charge.  Elected or selected.

The other cultural tendency is towards emergence, relationships, and ecosystems as the basis of education. Where the systematizing trend focuses on choice as involvement, emergent education focuses on co-creation as involvement.  It  can be seen in charter schools, those started by collections of parents and educators who want better options for "their kids."  It underlies the way that home-schooling is no longer a parent teaching her/his own kids at home, but instead a network of parents taking that role, and meeting to share curriculum, go on field trips, or expand educational offerings.  It is hidden in some portions of the open learning movement  and in some versions of technology-enabled education. It is behind collaborative creation of curriculum, and behind efforts to improve advising. It creates flat organizations and has little organizational structure.  People lead where they can lead--they play the role they seek (and are best prepared) to play.

One wonders, though, if it has any chance in higher education.  One would hope so, since higher ed is the home to some of the worst results of big, efficient, standardized education.  But I know of no instance in the recent past where a group of friends got together to talk education and ended up starting a college.  This sort of thing happened a lot in the 19th century, where many small towns had their own locally grown colleges.  Can it happen today?  Can a college emerge?

"Where there's mystery, there's margin"

A couple of days ago Bob Frankenberg spoke to Westminster's chapter of Delta Mu Delta, the business student honor society.  Bob is the Chair of Westminster's Board of Trustees, a venture capitalist, and an innovator in computers and networks who has been involved in most of the major shifts in computer memory and networking in the past 30 years.

His talk focused on the need for students to keep learning throughout their lives in a society where the half-life of information and skills is about 4 years.  But among his pieces of advice was this; "Where there is mystery, there is margin."

The mystery/margin insight is not a new one of course.  Anyone who innovates in a business has discovered a mystery--how to shrink computer memory, for example--and made money off it, because by understanding the mystery that others don't, they are able to supply products that others demand.

But that formulation got me thinking about my previous post on making money on learning.   Educational entrepreneurs, by and large, are focusing on a single mystery--how to deliver schooling to a bunch of students in a way that makes money.  And they do it, by and large, through enrollment and systems management improvements.  So, if a school can enroll more students, or deliver schooling at lesser cost, then they can make money.  (Or perhaps more accurately in the k-12 environment, they can capture more of the education subsidies that make providing schooling financially feasible.)  This is the insight of nearly all of the new educational ventures that have sprung up in the past decades--the University of Phoenix, for example, or Green Dot and KIPP schools.    The biggest effort in this direction comes from the Gates Foundation, which is focused on improving the access and completion systems that get kids from high school into college.  Their attention is turned to the huge systems--community colleges especially--that school millions of students each year. Now in each of these instances, lots of learning takes place, it is true.  But the essential business model is around schooling, not learning.

I have no interest in criticizing any of the above innovations.  Their work is important and their successes meaningful.  But I do want to think more about the learning mysteries. So what are they?

1. How do you engage students in learning who are not engaged in schooling?
2. How do you reach those potential students?
3. How do you provide that learning in a way that is inexpensive enough to be welcoming to low-income students and families, but remunerative enough that you can make money off the learning?
4. How do you ensure that learning takes place?
5. How does that learning translate into the credits and degrees that the learners will need to show the educational and employment systems?

How do you provide learning that makes money by responding to these mysteries?  Here are some thoughts:

1. While there are tons of  people (many of them young) who hate school, most of them love learning about something.  For many of them, that something lies in the arts and humanities, or in sports.  They love music, or art, or writing, or dance or video games.  Or they love skateboarding and snowboarding and football and martial arts and dance.  Most schooling-focused efforts place these passions on the margins so they can focus on an academic core.  But a learning-focused effort would start with arts, humanities, and athletics, not think of them as a distraction.

2. Learning is an intensely social, relationship-focused thing.  Or at least, the sorts of learning above are like that.  So whatever solution you choose, it cannot be simply based on learners sitting alone watching clips on YouTube or taking classes on MIT's OpenCourseWare, or taking online courses.  It is not that learning fails to happen there, just that it is deficient learning.  or put another way, learning in isolation and schooling are close relatives.

3. The two key fixed costs in schooling are physical facilities and personnel.  (These are the major fixed costs outside of education, as well.) Innovators outside of education have gotten around these costs by using technology, it is true.  But they have also gotten around them by using franchises and distributorships.  Learning lends itself to this model as well.  If, for example, you want to find a business that reaches across ethnic and class lines, take a look at Amway or NuSkin.  They have representatives everywhere, who make money on selling but also on inviting new distributors into the system. If you want the reach of learning to be broad, and to get into communities where a representative of a college cannot speak authentically, then a distributor/franchise structure works better than building schools.  And it resolves some of the personnel cost issues associated with schooling.

4. Because learners will need to translate their learning into credentials, the formal evaluations of learning ought to be done in part using tools that help with that translation.  Here I am thinking about AP, CLEP, IB, and other sorts of tests that are accepted for college credit.  Such an approach both allows for systematic measures of quality across distributors and helps work around the accreditation problem and leads students into the formal systems of schooling, which I hope it is clear, I believe have substantial value. (Or put another way, a student can learn through a passion for video games, but cannot be learned unless s/he can do math and understand history and know how to learn and how to become what s/he hopes to become.)

What does this look like in the real world?

It starts with places that already make money (albeit only a little) on learning--people who offer piano lessons, or teach art, or host writing groups.  Martial arts studios and driving schools.  Their offerings expand and become more sophisticated so that they attract teens and 20 year olds.  The learning places then expand their offerings more to include formal instruction leading to AP tests.  So a music school would eventually offer music theory courses, a game shop eventually graphic design, etc.  As students succeed with those passion-specific tests the schools expand to offer more traditional topics--English or History example--that could also be assessed through standardized exams.

The central value would be in the connection of what are now disparate efforts.  The company--let's call it Play and Learn--would build a network of people offering the intro lessons.  It would also provide curricula, training, and the business infrastructure.  As learners became more sophisticated, their learning would be more centralized--so that Play and Learn corporate would offer the direct instruction on AP preparation, sparing the piano teacher from having to become an expert on music theory. That higher level instruction could easily be delivered remotely, with open content materials.  At the same time, expansion of the company be distributed--either through franchises or distributorships.

As students progressed pricing would rise (this is already the pricing model for these learning on the margins sorts of places), with substantial fees associated with the AP or other college credit granting exams, since they provide a cost -savings over having to pay tuition for college classes.

Let me close by saying that for me the ultimate benefit of this model is not financial but social and educational.  We know that there are millions of people who do not get the education they need because schooling does not work for them.  And we know that colleges and universities lack the capacity to serve all of those people who need college educations.  And we know that nearly everyone is passionate about learning something, and that such learning provides personal satisfaction and public good.

Any takers?

Festivals and learning on the margins

Last weekend my family and I attended the Scottish Festival and Highland Games at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, UT.  We have been four years in a row, each time standing in the rain for several hours to watch musicians, dancers, and the other assorted groups that congregate at events like this.  My brother-in-law plays in a pipe and drum band; my daughter danced with an Irish dance team this year.

Though Scottish Festivals are everywhere, they are at the margins of the mainstream culture.  You never see one featured on television; no cultural icon has emerged from the Scottish Fest circuit; they shape no political movement; they make no dent on the economy.  And the festival at Thanksgiving Point (and its little sister in Payson, UT held every July) are on the margins of the margins—small towns, small festivals, no massive clustering of Scots in the surrounding district.

But the festival is evidence of the power of learning on the margins.  While a few of the people there may make some money from their participation in the event (small merchants, for example, who deal in henna tattoos, kilts, swords, and Celtic memorabilia), all of the participants are dedicated experts in their fields.  My guess is that most are self-taught, or that they learned their skills in a self-organized setting.  My brother-in-law’s band, for example, has no paid staff or instructor.  More-skilled pipers and drummers teach their less-skilled counterparts.  My daughter’s Irish dance troupe is the sort of endeavor that exists everywhere—a few teachers leading a passel of young kids in a skill that they themselves picked up from another teacher years ago.   Representatives from various Scottish clans trade genealogical wisdom. And the participants in the Highland Games who toss bales, or throw capers learn that skill by practicing in parks and competing week after week in festivals.

Festivals like this one play three roles in marginal learning.  First, they unite the subcultures that otherwise exist apart from each other, showing them that their efforts add up to something big (I would guess 3,000 people attended, paying $12/ticket to enter the festival).  Second, they create new cultures, as fans of genealogy brush up against partisans of Celtic music who rub shoulders with a gothic/new age group who sees some convergence in paganism, environmentalism, Asian art, and heavy black make-up.  That is to say that Scottish festivals are building new cultural understandings between people who otherwise don’t talk.  And third, they are public proofs of learning.  When dancers dance for prizes, or pipe and drum bands compete, or sheaf tossers break records they are demonstrating learning as surely as students do when they take a test.

If learning outside of the system of schooling is essential for the well-being of communities and humans, and if that learning will be largely self-organized, then the festival takes the place of the school building.  It is the infrastructure for learning on the margins, the place without which learning remains simply an individual pursuit.

A school in a backpack?

Two of my favorite blogs, Dezeen and Ashoka have featured posts on modular solutions to real problems. Dezeen highlights the "OpenStructure" project by designer Thomas Lommee. Lommee has designed a group of modules that fit together into a number of forms--a bicycle, a kitchen, a cabinet. Ashoka gives attention to a project at Rice University where students fit several highly important toolkits (an ob-gyn kit, a diagnostic lab, and a community health outreach package) into individual backpacks, which could be carried into remote regions or those without access to health care. This sort of modular-ization extends to the hard sciences. The site Hackteria is a gateway into projects that re-assemble biological building blocks into new uses--a sort of DIY bio-engineering/art lab.

The core idea here--that highly important things can be designed into modules, assembled into different forms, and made portable--is an exciting one. It is also one that has a great deal of frequency in education right now. There is talk about students assembling modules of learning--youtube here, academic courses there, life and work experience appended--into their own version of education. (Westminster is in the process of making it easier for students to create their own majors.)

But while on the student end it is a moderately easy thing to do, on the school end it is much tougher. Even the easiest school to create--a private elementary school--is bound by enough rules, regulations, and complications to make the creation of a new school almost impossible to do at low cost and quick speed. The creation of a new, agile college or university is essentially impossible.

This is a big problem for people who love learning--because it is not clear that powerful learning comes from people solely schooling themselves. (Hence the fact that people go to teachers to learn guitar even though you can see hundreds of guitar-training videos on youtube.) And it is a big problem for people who love schools, because it makes it less likely that innovators will be able to create alternative models to existing schools. But I wonder if it would be possible to use the principles of these design initiatives to come up with a radically new form of school--a school in a backpack.

Lest you think this entirely crazy, in the 18th and early 19th centuries, such things flourished all over the US. Itinerant school teachers travelled from town to town, taking up residence for a time, contracting to teach local kids to read, and then moving on. (For Mormons, the most famous itinerant teacher is Oliver Cowdery, who came across Joseph Smith just as Smith began his work on the Book of Mormon, and became Smith's second-in-command for almost a decade.) Then formal schools, state mandates, professionalization, and inexpensively constructed school buildings put itinerant teachers and their schools out of business.

Today, many of the things that undermined itinerant schools may sometimes be impediments to learning. And the possibility of carrying a school in one's backpack is real--a laptop and the tools of the teacher's interests are about all one would need.

A school in a backpack could certainly provide the same sort of solution for rural people and slumdwellers that labs in a backpack do. And I think the logic is the same--education, like health, flourishes in the mix between technology and human interaction. High-quality, lasting improvements require more than simply sending in the technology. But I am particularly interested in what a school in a backpack could do in the developed world.

In the US we tend to believe that innovation emerges from entrepreneurs with drive and good ideas. But those innovations and the new businesses they birth almost always start small. There aren't good ways to start small with schools right now. Perhaps a school in a backpack would be the thing.

Thinking about demand

In response to a recent post about demand for tech-enabled learning, my friend and colleague Peter Ingle wondered how much demand there is for any sort of schooling--on-line or not--among the demographic groups who are supposed to drive the open learning/tech-enabled education upswing. (His full response is here.)

His post raises two issues for me. First, the "education crisis" is nearly always seen as a problem with schools, or at least with the suppliers of education. But certainly there are characteristics on the demand side that account for the differences in educational attainment between the US and other developed nations. What are they and who is thinking about them?

Second, we need to be much more precise when we talk about demand. There are at least three types of demand in this area: demand for learning, demand for education, and demand for schooling.

Demand for learning, in my mind, is that desire to find out something interesting or useful. It tends to be short-term and idiosyncratic, but also relatively easily met. So, for example, I want to learn about trail running shoes. I go to TrailRunner magazine or IRunFar, read a review, and make a decision. YouTube makes this sort of learning easy, but so do the library, Wikipedia, etc.

Demand for schooling is that desire to attend and graduate from school with some sort of official credential. Public schools, charters, private schools, colleges and universities all try to meet this demand. It is longer-term, and less idiosyncratic since students with the desire for schooling either choose (or are led into) a particular field of study and set of courses. It is also often extrinsically motivated. On-line schools are starting to make some headway here, but they don't differ significantly from physical schools, in that they both provide the same sort of structure--formally designed learning opportunities leading to a credential. I care a lot about school reform, but I have to acknowledge that schooling will always be fraught since students have so many ways to opt out, and since the value of schooling is uncertain to many (Peter's point.)

Demand for education is, to me, the most interesting. It is the longest-term desire, one that goes well beyond the search for information to the search for meaning. It can be met outside of physical or virtual schools, and it doesn't require a diploma as evidence of achievement. But it has the most rigorous, and the most student-driven, intrinsic goals. Its outcomes are the most significant for the life of a person and her/his family, because they touch on a person's conception of self and place in the world. (The School of Life is a school meeting the demand for education.)

It is my sense that schools and open learning folks would do well to find more ways to attend to demand for education, even if it means not driving everyone to graduation. This suggests that schools and open learning ought not consider themselves in a competition. Nor should we think that one should vanquish the other. Both will fail to meet the expanded demand unless they can figure out how to meet the educational needs of the publics they serve. If it is important to the student that the educational desires are accompanied by a diploma, then good. But we shouldn't be fooled into thinking that the biggest questions and struggles of life are solved by schooling or learning. They are solved in diverse and complicated ways by people who value and seek education.