Apple's K-12 Education Play: Skepticism Should Rule The Day

I had to really think about this one.   Last weekend, I was trading emails with my good friend and colleague, Michael Horn.  He and I agree on almost everything when it comes to disruptive innovation in education, and I have great respect for the noble work he is doing around student-centric, blended learning.   He recently discussed Apple's announcement in an interview with the Heartland institute, and it may be the first time we have differences of opinion about a particular issue.   I should say we have minor differences, not major ones.

Michael and I were having a very intellectual discourse about whether the iBook was a disruptive innovation and whether it had a good chance of succeeding.   In the aforementioned article, Michael correctly points out the opportunities it holds for iTunesU.  I believe that for higher ed, there may be some interesting plays here.  

With K-12, I am very skeptical, and I believe that education reformers should not be jumping up and down thinking that that the iBook will be the killer app, the "savior" for education.   It's funny about Apple, though.  I believe that Disruptive Innovation is not a theory, but a law.   However, there is one notable exception, one company that has been able to disrupt itself:  Apple.   HBS Professor and Author, Clayton Christensen, who once wrote of the iPhone's inevitable failure, said about Apple, "There's just something different about those guys. They're freaks."  You can never count Apple out, that's for sure.  Their brand and market clout make competitors tremble.

But lets look at where the iBook deviates from disruptive innovation theory.   Why was Apple able to gain the support of the music labels when they launched the iPod?  First of all, remember that Napster was destroying value - completely destroying value.  Labels were getting zero, and Apple came to them with the opportunity to protect their IP and get something instead of nothing.   The price points were low - $0.99 per song, and the iPods were attractively priced.  So at the time, Apple had market leverage.  Disruptive innovations are typically low-cost solutions and at the time, were focused on tech-savvy music lovers who wanted to download songs from the Internet.

So with the iBook, Apple has decided to broker deals with the major textbook publishers immediately, and giving them a pretty sizeable revenue share.  But here, we see that price points are high ($450 for an iPad and $14.99 for an e-textbook), and you also have a monopoly in the distribution channel:  school systems.   Can textbook publishers really innovate the online textbook?  I'm afraid it's going to be more of the same.  The immediate opportunity is to innovate on hardware already installed in public schools, and that is the computer.   This will be a sizeable investment for school districts.  Apple should fare well in districts where it has a large installed base of iMacs.  To me, the opportunity will be in three places:  i) independent content developers;  ii) remedial programs such as Kumon, Kaplan and Sylvan; and iii) online schools such as K-12 and Florida Virtual School.   The education market doesn't operate the same way as the music industry once did, so it is hard to compare apples with apples.

I have another analogy to offer.   I was part of the founding team of GameTap, which was an early pioneer in the digital distribution of video games.   It's strategy was to do for the video game industry what cable networks did for movie studios, and thus, provide a post-retail exhibition window for its content.   It was disruptive.  It was able to forge deas with nearly every third-party publisher, even Electronic Arts.  But the three console makers:  Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, all stayed on the sidelines.  Nintendo still hasn't embraced online games one iota, even with the surge in social gaming.   Traditionally, disruptive innovators are ignored by the incumbents.  GameTap didn't have the brand strength of Apple, but there are other reasons to compare them in a similar vein.

All in all, I am nonetheless encouraged by Apple's initiative.  I would very much like to see the textbook eliminated completely, so my children aren't carrying around bookbags weighing 40-50 lbs.  But do you really think that the textbook publishers are going to invest so heavily in their ultimate demise?   For them, it's like buying an option - hedging their bets on the future.   But until our education system can break up the textbook publisher monopoly and the cycle for buying instructional materials, I'm afraid I have to hit the "pause" button on this one.   Maybe Apple will prove me wrong.  They've proven everyone wrong for over 25 years.

Why is Georgia Celebrating Education Mediocity??

I have wanted to write this post for quite some time, but I needed a week to gain perspective.

Around 10 days ago, EducationWeek released its annual report:  Quality Counts  its national, and state-by-state report card on our education system.    According to their website, the researchers collect information from chief state school officers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia via a comprehensive survey.  This survey collected information "on a range of state-level programs and policies including those related to the teaching profession, standards, assessments and accountability."  I'll come back to the methodology later.

The report was less than flattering, as the nation received a C when graded across six distinct areas of policy and performance:  i) chance for success; ii) K-12 Achievement; iii) Standards, Assessments and Accountability; iv) the Teaching Profession; v) School Finance; and vi) Transitions & Alignment.  No state received an A, and only 9 states received a B minus or better!  

Somehow, Georgia received an overall grade of B minus and was ranked 7th in the nation.  Georgia's Dept. of Education immediately shot out a press release to announce these results.  But why the rush?  Does a ranking matter if it's a battle of mediocrity?   Within the K-12 Achievement rubric, Georgia was graded an F on achievement, one of the 3 elements making up the grade.  How is this possible, then, that it received an average score of C minus in this category.  Where is the measure on graduation rates?    it also received a D minus in the School Finance sub-category, "Spending." 

According to data obtained from the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, Georgia ranks 35th in 4th grade math, 41st on 8th grade Math, and 35th on 8th grade Reading.   Our graduation rates are still below 50 percent, especially in Atlanta.   in addition, the Atlanta Public Schools are still not out of the woods from the cheating scandal.  APS was recently ordered to repay thousands of dollars in federal bonuses awarded to schools making AYP, which only made it because of erroneous reporting data.   They have a school board largely intact, and a disgraced former Superintendent who does not appear to be held accountable for her failures, no required to repay any bonuses earned due to the cheating scandal.  And finally, we have a primitive constitution that refuses to allow anyone but local school boards to approve the creation of new schools.   Competition drives innovation, and while remedies are currently underway, it will take considerable time to find a way around these archaic rules.  It is very, very difficult to pass a constitutional amendment (requires a 2/3 vote in the Georgia legislature).   Policy makers are doing their best to right this wrong, but it'll take time - time that our children don't have.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether I have combed every detail in the report.   I have seen enough already.  It is clear that these report cards are going to be used by educators to think they are making progress.   Take a look at this blog post which might raise some eyebrows on the methodology behind the Education Week report.

Lets have some  dialogue on how this report was created and whether it makes sense.  From this author's standpoint, it doesn't.  And Georgia should have paused before choosing to celebrate these results.

The Cockeyed Optimist: Hope for Education Reform in 2012

I have decided that the best end-of-year post should be to re-introduce some lyrics I posted over a year ago from the famous musical, South Pacific.  Despite my serious concerns about the decisions (or lack of decisions) being made in Washington DC to reform our outdated education system, I always like to end the year with a ray of hope.   Maybe 2012 will be the year that we finally take the steps to dismantle our education system and rebuild it from the ground up, so that every child in the United States has equal access to a quality education.  So enjoy the lyrics, and have a happy new year!

THE COCKEYED OPTIMIST

When the skies are brighter canary yellow
I forget ev'ry cloud I've ever seen,
So they called me a cockeyed optimist
Immature and incurably green.

I have heard people rant and rave and bellow
That we're done and we might as well be dead,
But I'm only a cockeyed optimist
And I can't get it into my head.

I hear the human race
Is fallin' on its face
And hasn't very far to go,
But ev'ry whippoorwill
Is sellin' me a bill,
And tellin' me it just ain't so.

I could say life is just a bowl of Jello
And appear more intelligent and smart,
But I'm stuck like a dope
With a thing called hope,
And I can't get it out of my heart!
Not this heart...

Culture is Just as Important in Public Education

As we near the holidays, I wanted to talk briefly about culture.   One of the things I have highlighted several times in my posts is the need for superintendents to be trained like CEOs.    They are, in essence, the CEOs of their school districts.   And like any good CEO, they need to surround themselves with strong talent, including strong educators.   While public policy has severely hampered the ability of superintendents to effectively manage their school districts, they are still the leaders and thus, are the people that run these school systems.

I wish that superintendents such as former APS Superintendent Dr. Beverly Hall would have been given the management training to be effective leaders.  And unfortunately, the Atlanta business community turned a blind eye to all of this throughout the past decade.  Having said that, a recent post in the Harvard Business Review contains some "best practices" that district superintendents should definitely heed about how great organizations manage culture:

1. They invest more in their employees
2. They're upgrading
3. They recognize that culture is critical to talent retention.
4. They know their stakeholders

My new year's resolution is that we FINALLY start seeing reinvention of our public education system, and that we start laying the foundation for eventually reasserting our reputation as a global leader in educating our children for success in the 21st century work environment.  This will require creating a true "innovation ecosystem" that will allow new instructional methods such as blended learning to become integrated into the instructional pedagogy.   And lets work on investing in social and emotional learning programs (e.g., after school enrichment programs in the arts and music) so that at-risk youth can have an equal chance at the American Dream.  

Why The Response To The APS Cheating Scandal Was ALL Wrong

That's right.   I believe the response to the nation's worst cheating scandal was 100% wrong.

First and foremost, this scandal is the direct result of a failed policy called No Child Left Behind.   It has created "ends justifies the means" management and systems, and has forced too much emphasis on standardized test scores, which are inherently flawed by design.  We know that for the most part, they are not covering 21st century skills and are more about memorizing facts without context.   This author would have NEVER received an Ivy League education if the school he applied to used SAT scores as the "be all, end all" measure of a student's degree of fit for college.

Second, it was a failure of leadership.   It may be overly harsh to assume that Dr. Beverly Hall, former APS Superintendent, forced teachers to cheat.  I don't believe she did.  However, Dr. Hall did allow this culture to manifest itself, and as the leader, she needs to take full responsibility for the actions of those under her watch.  Yet, she continues to deny any responsibility for the transgressions.   This recent interview reinforces this conclusion.  As former President Harry S Truman once said, "The buck stops here."  Dr. Hall's intransigence reinforces the notion that our school administrators need better management training, because they are not in the classroom teaching.  They are CEOs of their districts.  And good CEOs have good people under them, and these people need to be the pedagogical experts.  So I believe it is politically correct to challenge her leadership skills.

Third, it was an over reaction to fire the teachers who cheated, especially if their superiors compelled them to cheat.  Firing these teachers will not change the culture of APS.  This was a teachable moment, and instead of teaching kids about mistakes and second chances, we instead showed them, that if you make a mistake, you're done.   And that is NOT how the world works.

A few weeks ago, I was attending a Friday night service at my local synagogue, and the teens who led the service recited this poem by Heather Brown which immediately led me to think of the APS Scandal: 

SECOND CHANCE

Everyone deserves a second chance

No matter what they've done

For people learn from their mistakes

And make up for them in the long-run.

So if anyone ever hurts you

Or even does you wrong,

Just please give them a second chance

Or forever they'll be gone.

Maybe if there wasn't such a rush to judgment, APS Interim Superintendent Errol Davis would have reconsidered his response to the scandal.   At the end of the day, it's the APS students who deserve our utmost attention and sensitivity.  My thoughts are with them and my hope is that they will find a way to overcome the barriers that have been placed in front of them.