Change and transformation at the K12 level are stalling, even though many see its flaws. So, how does real change happen in this public education that will support all learners? Sharing his wealth of knowledge with Change Starts Here host Dustin Odham, author and speaker Michael B. Horn, Senior Strategist at Guild Education, shared his experiences and thoughts.

Horn labeled himself as a change agent and first attempted to disrupt education by co-writing a book with his Harvard professor Clayton Christensen. In discussing what he and Christensen learned writing this is “Systems are not designed to change. They perpetuate and can improve incrementally. Fundamental change often comes from the outside and requires different systems of learning."

The disruption initiative is to personalize education. “It’s kind of like disrupting tutoring, so everyone has that experience. Technology helps do that, but you can just layer it on the existing system,” Horn explained.

Personalization at scale is a probability, depending greatly on looking at learning from new perspectives that aren’t tied to the batching by age.

EdTech adoption occurred as Horn’s first book predicted. Yet, there’s still work to do with scaling blended learning. “We still haven’t thrown off the yoke of time-based learning of the grade-level curriculum. We need to shift to a mastery-based system."

Another key aspect of the disruption equation is that K12 depends on higher ed. “A good high school is one that gets kids into good colleges. So, it’s not starting at the earliest but with higher ed, which is misaimed. It’s hard to transform K12 unless we’re building a valuable workforce and creating lifelong learners,” Horn added.