Clayton Christensen |

A proposed budget out of Washington State’s House and Ways Means Committee last week would have eliminated funding for the state’s Alternative Learning Experience (ALE) programs for students in K-6. Given that K-6 online public programs operate under ALE, if that had been enacted as proposed, they would all have been shut down.

After an outpouring of responses from families across the state that would have been affected, Representative Pat Sullivan stepped in and introduced an amendment that restored ALE and restored the supposed savings through cuts to transportation. The amendment passed unanimously. Good move.

I get that there is a budget crisis right now and that things need to be cut. I advocate for that in many cases. Although we might wish for more funding for everything, it is neither realistic nor a good idea.

But eliminating programs that have the potential to disrupt the traditional monolithic education system and be part of the wave that transforms the education system into a student-centric one isn’t smart. Online learning can be a way to transform the system into a lower cost one that saves the public money and gets better results—read Tom Vander Ark’s blog on the topic here and Governor Bob Wise and the Alliance for Excellent Education’s report on how online learning can help solve the shortage of quality teachers, improve student outcomes, and allow states to do more despite flat education budgets here.

Walking away from this opportunity and kicking out the homeschoolers who have joined public education in the last decade won’t cause this revolution to stop. It just means that the revolution would not have been under the auspices of the state of Washington’s public education system.

Online providers are innovating constantly in the private space to deliver affordable high-quality education. For example, in a list that’s growing nearly every day it seems, another online school of which I had not heard popped onto my radar recently. It’s called Advantages Online Private School, and it offers a full-year of schooling for tuition rates between $3,000 and $4,000.

Public systems will push out online learning only at their own peril—and to the detriment of their students. Perhaps we wouldn’t expect this not to be a struggle in the public landscape? After all, it’s hard to overcome the innovator’s dilemma and disrupt yourself. That doesn’t mean disruption won’t still happen or that ignoring it is a good idea. Washington’s public education system dodged a bullet here. To follow this storyline, you can check out these sites here and here.

One out of every 110 babies born in the United States today will be diagnosed with autism, according to the CDC, and the diagnosed incidences of autism over time have been increasing.

One of the evidenced-based interventions for autism is called Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), but there are few people certified in ABA so many families and school districts with autistic children do not have convenient access to a trained professional. In addition, when a professional is nearby, the service is costly—in the range of $100 an hour—so even more cannot access this service.

When we see a service that is too expensive, inconvenient, and centralized such that a large population cannot consume it, it’s an indication that it is a prime area awaiting a disruptive innovation.

Rethink Autism is attempting to pioneer such a disruptive solution—and it bears many of the classic traits of one. Profiling it helps to clarify the pattern that characterizes disruption.

In brief, the way Rethink Autism works is that a parent or adult fills out a skills checklist online, and Rethink Autism creates an individualized ABA-based plan for the child. That plan in essence guides the parent or teacher in what to do with the child and how to do it through the use of videos of experts demonstrating the interventions and so forth that break down complex tasks into short, easy-to-understand steps. As the child learns new skills, the platform adds new lessons to his or her curriculum and continues to customize over time. Much of the interventions are, of course, offline, but the platform is delivered in a child-centered way online. No expert is involved.

In essence, Rethink Autism does several things to allow nonconsumers the benefit of an ABA intervention. First, it commoditizes the expertise of trained ABA professionals and allows less-skilled people—parents and teachers and the like who are not trained ABA experts—to do ABA interventions. Sure, they aren’t as good as the experts, and the platform probably isn’t as good at customizing a curriculum for a child as an expert guided by rich intuition, but for the many autistic children who do not have access to those experts, this is far better than the alternative, which is nothing at all. And like all technologies, it will improve over time as it scales, just like transistors and personal computers did. As a result of commoditizing the professionals’ expertise, it’s also a lot more affordable than the traditional service. Instead of $100 an hour, it costs less than $100 a month—a price many more families and school districts can afford. Now that’s disruptive!

Although it is certainly not the flashiest technology out there, how it’s used and the business model in which it is planted is far more important in determining if it’s disruptive, and this meets the tests. That isn’t to say Rethink Autism is guaranteed of being successful. It is off to a good start, however.

Online learning conjures up lots of images in people’s minds. Some people imagine the vast possibilities for how it could develop as learning migrates to an online platform that allows for rich collaborations and private explorations both online and offline. Others think drill-and-kill software and imagine offerings that drive education to a narrow and sadly limited definition of learning.

As with most disruptive innovations, the first examples of online learning were primitive. They often represented a PowerPoint simply put on the Web. Students clicked through some material, maybe answered a few multiple-choice questions, and exchanged a few emails with a teacher perhaps.

But technology improves predictably. Online learning has been no exception.

It has improved in several ways. First, in the beginning online learning was primarily a form of distance learning. That is becoming less and less the case as online learning snaps into brick-and-mortar hybrid environments of various sorts in which, among other things, students can have access to in-person peer interactions and relationships with caring adults.

Second, the communication vehicles that connect humans in online learning environments are improving. Companies like Elluminate are making strides in enhancing the interactive experience of online learning all the time through improved and varied video, chat sessions, and so forth. As the hardware improves and 3D and other technology becomes more affordable, who knows how “real” a 2-way video conversation in the future could feel like.

Finally, the basic content and pure technology behind online learning are improving as well. Providers are moving beyond the basic PowerPoint, and we are in the beginning stages of players architecting systems that actually “learn” and improve real time based on the results of different students’ experiences. Companies like 360Ed in partnership with the Florida Virtual School have built full video game-based courses such as Conspiracy Code that are making the content far more engaging. Other players like Agilix, Knewton, and Renzulli Learning are working on making the content increasing adaptable for each individual student. And, as this fascinating article in Education Week discusses, researchers are making advances in creating “intelligent tutor” systems that pick up on student’s cues about their emotions and adapt accordingly.

What could online learning look like in 10 years time? Who knows, but the smart bet is a lot different and better from what it is today.

A new report by research firm Ambient Insight says that by 2014, 10.5 million PreK-12 students will attend classes online. As many will recall, in the book Disrupting Class, we predicted that by 2019 50 percent of all high school courses will be online—and by 2014 we had predicted 25 percent. Guess we’re not the only ones making a bold prediction here anymore.

According to THE Journal, Ambient Insight’s Chief Research Officer says that about 450,000 K-12 students attend virtual school full time and another 1.75 million take some of their classes online. If true, those numbers—particularly the first—represent higher estimates than I had been seeing.

You can download the executive summary of the report here; unfortunately the full report is out of my price range, although if people have read it, please comment here for our other readers.

One interesting thing that emerges from this is that this market is a reasonably robust private sector one at the moment. This is a bit of a rare phenomenon in K-12 education, but these signs of investment activity are positive ones. This suggests that the government’s role may be first and foremost one of providing the context for this to grow in an efficacious way, but also to be careful not to crowd out the private investment with its own competing investment dollars or to create too much process-focused regulation such that it stifles the potential innovation that comes from this. If we manage this correctly, we will hopefully see not just the boom of online learning, but also the boom of a student-centric system that provides every student—regardless of geography, income, or learning preferences—a rich set of choices.

Judging from the article, one thing I think the report may miss is that the growth of online learning is increasingly less of a distance phenomenon and more of a hybrid one. I want to be careful about concluding that, however, because I know our own book was misinterpreted by many in this regard.

In a Wall Street Journal article titled “Online High Schools Test Students’ Social Skills,” Paul Glader writes about the challenges online schools and students have with regards to the lack of in-person social interaction.

In our case study about the Alpine Online School, we chronicled how that school dealt with this by holding activities and creating opportunities for students to mingle with each other in person. Glader chronicles similar attempts as well as some online attempts to foster more social interaction such as having an online student government and model U.N. In many cases, however, these attempts have not worked, as students have clamored for more in-person contact.

We’ve addressed some of the broader related concerns around socialization in a blog before, but this element of not meeting the students’ own needs and motivations should be of concern, too, if we’re trying to build a student-centric system. As we think about how the online learning disruption improves year over year, its ability to better connect students to other students and teachers is likely one facet of this—whether this be through improved video chat functionality or discussion boards and the like or by adding a brick-and-mortar element to the online offering to form a hybrid-learning environment. For a variety of reasons I continue to believe the latter will be the form that serves most of the K-12 students in the future.

In essence, we “hire” education to do several jobs. One of these is learning, but there are other important jobs schooling does including a custodial/safety job as well as allowing children to socialize and have fun with friends. Migrating the learning job to an online platform but keeping children in a physical spot—creating a bricks-and-clicks environment in essence—should allow us to get the best of all worlds.

Areas of nonconsumption are often the most promising places to look for disruptive innovations. What’s hard about looking for these places is that, by their definition, there is no market and no data yet. As I’ve written before, nowhere is there more nonconsumption in education than in the developing world. As such, starting education innovations abroad where the alternative is literally nothing at all represents promising ground—and a place to look to for innovations.

I’m sure many people out there have way more expertise than do I on this topic, but a few things have caught my eye in recent days.

First, an eCampus News article discusses Yale Law School’s Information Society Project’s teaming up with University of the People, which is pioneering a tuition-free online university, to study “how online higher education is perceived worldwide and document what it takes for Internet-based institutions to achieve accreditation.”

Given the potential of innovations like University of the People to make an impact for those who do not have access to or cannot afford higher education in the developing world, the findings could be very interesting. Equally interesting might be how do innovations like this get around the regulations until the regulations ultimately cave to them and the new reality.

Second, there is a start-up learning organization in Mexico that reportedly is booming. Called the Learning and Innovation Network, it runs hybrid centers with computers and in-person facilitators to offer learning for users in the community in a variety of topics at affordable prices. The first centers opened in May, and they already have around 30,000 people from all age groups using them. The leadership team expects to reach 80,000 people by the end of year one with only 500 computers in 10 centers. Apparently there is a high demand for English courses; LIN bought Rosetta Stone licenses to incorporate into its model as a result, which has been well received thus far.

I would bet that many of the models that target these huge pockets of nonconsumption ultimately will be the most successful in figuring out the next generation of learning models. I’d love to have a discussion here with others about what else is out there to inform us all.

This blog picks up from where I left off in my previous blog.

Once a viable strategy and solution had emerged for the Florida Virtual School (FLVS), several other policies fell into place that helped it grow and evolve.

In 2000 it snapped its emergent strategy into a deliberate and codified one when it was established as an independent educational entity—the legal equivalent of a school district. With its independent status, FLVS received the freedom to create its rules and procedures and enter into agreements with providers, hold patents, and so forth in order to fulfill its mission. In essence, Florida created an autonomous division—the equivalent of a Target to Dayton-Hudson—that could disrupt the old order.

The state in essence first sheltered FLVS with line-item funding, which made sense in FLVS’s early years as it was still proving itself. It also did not compete for funding from the existing districts as a result initially. In 2003, however, because of changes in the broader Florida educational landscape, FLVS was forced to find a new funding model. What it settled on proved with hindsight to be a move filled with great foresight. The funding model it adopted was a self-sustaining one; no longer was FLVS dependent on the year-to-year whims of the legislature. It could grow organically. And rather than just get money for serving students, FLVS chose to receive the majority of funds only if the students were successful and passed the course. This funding based on outcome is a sea change in education—and represents a dramatic departure from holding schools to account through old input-based metrics like seat time, student-teacher ratios, and the like.

One other last thought. When FLVS started up, the team looked around and saw that there was really no online content out there. If FLVS hoped to offer an online school for students, that meant that, unlike a brick-and-mortar school, it would have to build online content and courses itself. Integrating to do this step as well was key to its success. Of course, for online schools starting up today, doing this really is not necessary as there is lots of online content—from FLVS’s to K12, Inc.’s to open-source content and on and on. Making full courses from scratch (often of questionable quality) doesn’t make much sense. Instead, in many cases, acting as a portal—from which students can choose which content makes the most sense for them—would be much more logical. But we haven’t seen this emerge fully yet.

What lessons or insights do you draw from this? What would you do if you were starting from scratch today and what wouldn’t you do?

Last week Innosight Institute published its second case study. This one profiled the rise of Florida Virtual School (FLVS), an online public school in Florida that, in the previous school year, served over 70,000 students up from a mere 77 in the first year of its operations just over a decade ago.

This stunning rise shows that being an education reform (or transformation) and having scale are not mutually exclusive—contrary to the opinion of many. There are many interesting aspects of the case to dissect. This week and next I’ll chronicle a few of the thoughts that I had when reading it.

What’s notable for starters is how FLVS got its start—from a small $200,000 grant. There was no multi-million dollar investment here until FLVS proved that it had developed a viable model that was successfully educating children who the existing system was not reaching.

FLVS’s leadership team also had a blank slate with which to rethink what education should look like. The team was not bound by tradition. FLVS put the student in the center and wondered how to best serve her. The outcome? Among other things a solution that does not follow the old agrarian calendar and is not tied to seat time.

The school was also free to experiment. As it used a totally new medium for delivering education, no one knew what FLVS should look like. It tried all sorts of things. And it made lots of mistakes—including the 2-year chemistry course we write about in the case. But what was important was that FLVS tested things out, received rapid results—and then changed course accordingly and promptly. This is a necessary component of any start up—and not something we allow that often in education. Indeed, from The Innovator’s Solution, “research suggests that in over 90 percent of all successful new businesses, historically, the strategy that the founders had deliberately decided to pursue was not the strategy that ultimately led to the business’s success. Entrepreneurs rarely get their strategies exactly right the first time. The successful ones make it because they have money left over to try again after they learn that their initial strategy was flawed whereas the failed ones typically have spent their resources implementing a deliberate strategy before its viability could be known.” Ultimately, from FLVS’s rapid experimentation, a viable solution and strategy emerged.

In keeping with the above, FLVS also confronted an initial puzzle—who would use this? The answer? Nonconsumers. Why? Because the solution for them was better than their alternative, which was nothing at all. And it didn’t invite push back from the existing districts and interests. In fact, it helped the existing schools better serve their students, which was a new value proposition. Classic disruption.

According to an article in eSchool News, online programs are seeing a dramatic spike in teaching applications.

Specifically, K12, Inc. and Connections Academy are reporting massive spikes in applications, and the article theorizes that it’s because of the layoffs in the traditional brick-and-mortar schools. There are some other contributors as well—such as specialists like mathematicians wanting to share their knowledge and teachers who are seeking a change.

I can’t say I’m all that surprised. As online learning continues to grow rapidly even as there is contraction in the traditional system, there will be more jobs available in online, and for certain people—although certainly not all—online teaching presents a more attractive career path for a variety of reasons (the ones cited above, flexibility, etc.).

Additionally, there is an interesting piece in Education Week that is an interview with Chris Dede, a professor of learning technology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. When Professor Dede speaks, I make it a matter of habit to try and listen (or read in this case!), and this interview doesn’t disappoint as he talks about both the current state of and the future of online professional development in a short piece.

As I’ve noted before, professional development is in fact a big area of nonconsumption in many districts and presents an exciting place to provide potentially much more useful, just-in-time training to teachers that matches with the need they have in a format that will be most effective for them.

Professor Dede paints a richer, more nuanced picture—from the current challenges facing online professional development and why simply converting face-to-face professional development to an online format doesn’t make sense to the types of customization, interaction, and reflection that are possible in this world. In addition, he sees that, in this case, the market seems to be working and pushing online professional development to improve. He also believes that two factors—the need for scale in professional development and the need for fundamentally more affordable models—as a big drive for why online professional development will evolve and grow rapidly in the years ahead.

Also, one note — watch the video of Professor Dede where he talks about our book. I actually don’t see this as a disagreement at all, as readers of this blog will know. We don’t say in the book that schools will go out of business in the book as Professor Dede asserts. That’s why it’s called Disrupting Class–not Disrupting Schools.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is beginning to announce details of the $650 million Investing in Innovation Fund that Jim Shelton is leading for the Department, and there are some promising signs including the wise decision to divide the fund up into three different buckets that focus on, at one end, scaling up proven innovations with larger grants to, at the other end, funding out of the box ideas that have not yet been proven with smaller grants.

This article in eSchool News has a good summary but also highlights something that excites us quite a bit for its focus on disruptive innovations in education. The below is all from the article:

“Duncan pointed to virtual schools as one tool that can help students succeed where they otherwise might have fallen behind.

‘Online courses and supplementation are catching on fast, but we’ve made only limited investments in understanding online instruction,’ he said.

Online courses can expand access to high-level courses, especially in rural areas where 21st-century learning opportunities might be limited owing to distance, lack of funds, or lack of qualified instructors to teach specialized subjects.

‘An effective teacher is the single biggest factor in determining student progress,’ Duncan said. Tools are available today that weren’t available just a decade ago, he added–including formative assessment and real-time data to inform instruction.

‘We want to provide powerful incentives to districts and nonprofits to build the next generation of education reform,’ Duncan said. ‘Successful innovations, we know, are disruptive–we not only understand that, we welcome it.’”