Author
Michael B. Horn
Articles
Now Trending: Chief Innovation Officers
New titles abound, but with limited evidence of real change
A Certificate, Then a Degree
Certificate-first programs can help tackle America’s college-completion crisis
What Colleges Can Learn From Toyota
An excerpt from Education Next executive editor Michael Horn’s new book
Taking Tablet Learning Global
Can learning technology eradicate illiteracy in less-developed countries?
Online Learning Goes Hollywood
Using video storytelling to motivate learning
Rethinking the Rules on Federal Higher-Ed Spending
How can Congress spur innovation while clamping down on fraud?
Change the Rules to Unleash Innovation
Although federal spending on higher education has expanded access, it has also had an unintended effect.
Putting School Budgets in Teachers’ Hands
What if end-users in the classroom made purchasing decisions?
Hey Alexa, Can You Help Kids Learn More?
The next technology that could disrupt the classroom
Now Trending: Personalized Learning
Can a buzzword deliver on its promise?
Competency-Based Learning for Teachers
Can micro-credentials reboot professional development?
Virtual Reality Disruption
Will 3-D technology break through to the educational mainstream?
Using Blended Learning to Design Schools that Motivate Students
An excerpt from “Blended” by Michael B. Horn and Heather Staker
Moving Edtech Forward
School networks AltSchool and Summit are betting on a breakthrough
The Ideal Blended-Learning Combination
Is one-third computer time about right?
The Rise of AltSchool and Other Micro-schools
Combinations of private, blended, and at-home schooling meet needs of individual students
MOOCs for High School
Unlocking opportunities or substandard learning?
Digital Roundup
States legislatures scramble to boost, or in some cases block, online learning
The Transformational Potential of Flipped Classrooms
If 2012 was the year of MOOCs (massive open online courses) in higher education, then the flipped classroom was the innovation of the year for K–12 schools.
Can Digital Learning Transform Education?
Education Next talks with Chester E. Finn, Jr., and Michael B. Horn
As Digital Learning Draws New Users, Transformation Will Occur
Part 2 of a forum on whether digital learning can transform education
Game Changer
Might it be “social learning”?
For Digital Learning, the Devil’s in the Details
State planning is key to progress
How Do We Transform Our Schools?
Use technologies that compete against nothing
Blog Posts/Multimedia
Covid-19 Boost to Online Learning May Backfire
Many courses will be poor substitutes for the originals
Bloomberg Higher Education Plan Sends Progressive Signal
Democratic presidential candidate aims to boost low-income college access, end legacy admissions.
The Disruptive Playbook for Bootcamps to Upend Higher Education
An unbundled higher education system could focus on helping learners earn and learn, as opposed to the existing pattern of learn and then later, maybe, earn.
What If Teachers Could No Longer Give B-minuses?
In a competency-based learning model, students keep working at something until they demonstrate mastery.
How Harvard Hurts Small Colleges
Over a quarter of existing colleges may fail in the next 15 years. Harvard is partly to blame.
Amid College Success Push, The U.S. Overlooks The Fact That One In Four Students Are Parents
When parents enter postsecondary education, they meet a system that isn’t designed with them in mind.
WeWork Helps Online Learning Take its Next Step Forward
WeWork and 2U are not recreating the sprawling campus environment of college, but they are offering an in-person environment in an experiment that could dramatically bolster engagement
Let’s Retire the ‘Gifted-and-Talented’ Label
If we allow students to move at their own pace, there is no longer a need to label and sort them.
Accreditation’s Insidious Impact on Higher Education Innovation
While Washington, D.C. slams accreditors for not holding colleges and universities accountable for their student outcomes, the more insidious failure of accreditation is the stifling effect on innovation at existing institutions.
Stealing a Page From Disruption to Transform Accreditation
There is a fundamental mismatch between what accreditors value and what external actors want.
The Forgotten Students
Over one million students drop out of college each year, and colleges do little to bring them back.
Consolidation, Collaboration or Closure? How Colleges Stay Alive in 2018
What will 2018 bring? I asked some experts for their best predictions on four key questions.
Can Online Credit Recovery Recover?
We must try to set rigorous outcome-based standards for credit-recovery courses with rigorous assessments.
New Research Answers Whether Technology is Good or Bad for Learning
There’s been an infuriating log-jam between those who argue technology is a distraction at best and those who argue it is an extremely positive force.
Without the Right Curriculum, Personalized Learning Is Just Another Fad
Personalizing learning will be most powerful when it is coupled with intentional, coherent and rigorous instruction.
Government Accountability Goes Unaccountable: Chilling WGU’s Innovation Engine
The Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General released a faulty audit of a highly innovative model that complies with both the spirit and letter of the law.
John Danner, Education Entrepreneur, Doubles Down on Human Capital
An interview with the founder of NetGravity, Rocketship, and Zeal
What the Closure of 2 Bootcamps Means for the Industry’s Future
An interview with Jake Schwartz, CEO and co-founder of General Assembly, one of the world’s leading bootcamps.
Educational Choice, Not School Choice, Making Moves in Florida
Florida is one of the homes of “course access” or “course choice” legislation that allows public dollars to follow students to pay for an individual course of their choice.
Universities Gone Innovating
Higher education is capable of innovating, but each institution will have to figure out what is right for its circumstance.
Inequality and Education in the Age of Trump
To tackle the specter of mass technological unemployment, we need to lower the cost for adults of getting more education and training.
Complement and ‘Commoditize’ Teachers, But Don’t Substitute For Them With Tech
We can’t expect teachers to reach every single student effectively at scale without somehow reconfiguring teachers’ existing workloads.
How Will a Trump Presidency Impact Education Innovation?
A relative lack of activity from the federal government could create uncertainty, paralysis, or an opportunity for local educators to innovate.
Inputs Do Not Guarantee Outcomes: Getting Online Credit Recovery Right
It is a mistake to demand that online credit-recovery courses require the same time and effort as regular courses.
Virtual Reality Digs Into Brick-and-Mortar Schools
As the hype around virtual reality in education swells, new developments show that the movement may have some staying power this time around.
Harnessing Benefits, Reining in Downsides of Virtual Schools
A new report offers constructive recommendations for improving virtual schools—and online learning and schooling more generally.
As Google Steals its Education Thunder, What Can Microsoft Do?
It would be great to see Microsoft focus on three things that will transform our education system into a more student-centered one.
Don’t Teach Grit. Embed It.
Without talking about grit or perseverance, competency-based learning systematically embeds the building of those skills into its design and fabric.
Reinventing Research
Research that shows that, on average, a particular approach worked, may be masking a deeper understanding that is critical so that all students—not just most students—succeed.
Bullish on Blended-Learning Clusters
An increasing number of regions are trying to create concentrated groups of blended-learning schools alongside education technology companies
Time’s Up: Full-Time Virtual Charter Schools Must Become Transparent Together
The full-time virtual charter schools that care about quality need to band together and create a membership organization and take responsibility for their industry’s results.
Majority Of School Respondents In Ohio Report Using Blended Learning
A big challenge with blended learning is knowing how many students are actually experiencing it. A new report tackles this problem in the state of Ohio.
Stepping Aside To Dig Deeper: My Next Career Move
A significant focus in my next stage of life will be to work with a portfolio of education companies in a variety of board and advisory roles to help shape the future of education in ways that I could not as executive director.
How Independent Schools Can Ward Off Disruption
Micro-schools have the potential to transform the independent schooling landscape—and threaten existing independent schools in the process
Finland Offers Lessons For Building Student, Teacher Agency
American schools don’t expect youth to be responsible for themselves or their learning. Finnish schools are different.
Julie Young Returns To Online Learning
Julie Young’s new venture offers international students the opportunity to earn a dual diploma from their native country and from a U.S. accredited high school through virtual learning.
Privacy Push Must Not Prevent Personalized Learning
The fierce debate over the privacy of student data often risks preventing students from benefiting from the enormous breakthroughs that technology makes possible in 21st century schools.
Change Education To Attack Technology-Driven Unemployment
As technology transforms society in the years ahead, it’s critical that our education system keeps pace.
Charter Schools Innovate To Tackle Teacher Preparation
The skills teachers need to be successful are changing and our current institutions that prepare and train teachers are woefully unprepared to support the shift.
School Districts Are Using Blended Learning, but Aren’t Keeping Data on Student Outcomes
To help school districts implement blended learning, we need to amplify the stories of places that are doing it right—and push districts to get more rigorous.
District Schools Showcased as Blended Learning Proof Points
To call attention to some district schools that have adopted blended learning and boosted student outcomes, here are profiles of six schools.
When It Comes to Blended Learning, Charter Schools Get Most of the Attention
There are plenty of district schools that have adopted blended learning and boosted student outcomes.
Match Beyond
Match Beyond combines College for America, the disruptive, online university, with a relatively new college and jobs services division of Match Education, a charter management organization.
Stop Pitting Technology Against Quality, In-Person Time
Technology can help us redesign schools to allow students to have far more meaningful face-to-face interactions with teachers and peers
Snow Days Show Why Schools, Blended Learning Matter
No, this isn’t another piece about how online learning can allow students to continue to learn even when school is canceled because of snow.
Coursera, K12, Inc. Make Bold Moves to Drive Learning
The two innovators still have a significant amount of work ahead, but their moves are pointing in the right direction.
Five Predictions for Education in 2015
A few scattered predictions from around the world of education about what we might see.
Obvious Flaws Obviate New Education Efficiency Index
A new report ranks which countries get the best bang, in terms of student outcomes, for the government buck.
Cisco Networking Academy Provides Clues For Future Of Testing
The online training program’s diverse assessment system and its flexibility should help us move toward a competency-based learning system in which time is variable but learning is constant.
inBloom’s Collapse Offers Lessons For Innovation In Education
inBloom, a non-profit that offered a data warehouse solution designed to help public schools embrace the promise of personalized learning, collapsed and has ceased to exist, as privacy concerns from interested parties mounted over a period of many months
What Else Should KIPP Be Doing With Blended Learning?
Is KIPP falling prey to the classic innovator’s dilemma by not deploying disruptive innovations?
How To Get Blended Learning Right
What happens when reformers try to use blended learning in a disruptive way in the hardest-to-serve parts of Detroit?
Amidst Edtech Horror Stories, Some Blended-Learning Schools Shine
A growing number of examples show that used well, blended learning—and hence education technology—can help boost student achievement in both charter and district school settings.
How California Superintendents Can Bust Through Policies to Implement Blended Learning
We need more opportunities for education leaders to help their peers with solutions to the problems and barriers they confront as they move toward blended learning.
Barbara Dreyer: A Champ to the End
Barbara helped create the K–12 online-learning movement, a powerful disruptive force that has the potential to create a more personalized and equitable education system that is student-centered so that all students can succeed.
Five Reasons Districts Should Love Course Access
Course Access is still a new policy, but for many students, no matter where they live or what school they attend, it will give them a significantly greater chance to fulfill their potential.
Rosetta Stone, MegaStudy and Educational Software in Korea
In Korea, where popular teachers become millionaires by broadcasting their lectures online, schools and families are only very slowly warming up to other kinds of online learning.
Disruptive Innovation And Education
Disrupting our K–12 schools or our public school districts is impossible today because there is no nonconsumption of education in this country, but helping our schools use disruptive innovation to disrupt the classroom—the way they arrange teaching and learning—is possible.
Stop The False Generalizations About Personalized Learning
The main reason personalized learning is needed is that each student learns at a different pace and each student’s pace tends to vary based on the subject or even concept one is learning.
What Constitutes Success For Course Choice?
“Course choice’ policies give K–12 students the option of taking courses from a range of providers, often but not always online, and public dollars follow students to the chosen course.
Elucidating Blended Learning On Khan Academy
Moving to a student-centered, blended-learning environment is tricky. A new video “course” on blended learning shows how it can be done.
NCAA Goofs On Online Eligibility
What is the NCAA objecting to that California, land of input-based regulation for schools, isn’t?
What Koreans Wish Obama Understood About Their Schools
In my travels throughout Korea, in virtually every meeting I heard a variation of the same theme. “Why does President Obama think that Korean schools are good?”
School Reform and Vocational School Reform in Korea
Meister High Schools are converted vocational schools that partner with companies in specific industries to create educational experiences tailored to the needs of the workforce.
Can Disruptive Innovation Transform South Korea’s Schools?
Can Korea maintain its educational edge if it does not change its public education system into a student-centered one that can personalize learning for each child’s different learning needs and be intrinsically motivating?
Disrupting Vietnam’s Education System
The most natural places for educational disruptive innovations to take root are in emerging markets and developing countries.
Julie Young: Disruptive Innovator For Students
Julie Young’s guiding vision for the Florida Virtual School (FLVS) began in 1996 as she wrote the word “student” at the center of a piece of paper and then asked a series of questions of the team gathered around her. What could school look like if the student was at the center?
Successful ‘Edupreneurs’ Reignite For-Profit Debate
Critics often accuse school reformers of “privatizing” public education. When for-profits enter the conversation, those same critics level more serious charges and often accuse those companies of having one motive: making money off of the backs of kids.
The Intelligence Of Education Elements
Education Elements is one of the few entities helping schools do the most basic work of implementing blended learning into traditional classrooms.
Teach to One Earns Promising Marks in Math Learning
Personalized-learning models powered by technology posted more promising gains in the 2012-13 school year, according to a recently released Columbia Teachers College study.
In The Best Interest Of Students: Blended Learning In Newark Charter Schools
The move to blended learning matters because learning science has long told us that students learn at different paces, have different working memory capacities, and possess different background knowledge when they enter a learning experience.
What Education Can Learn From Kung Fu
Kung Fu offers an interesting example of a system of mastery-based learning: enabling students to learn at their own pace and advance as they master content, rather than moving forward based on time requirements.
Digital Learning and State Legislatures
Will digital learning fulfill its potential to create a student-centered education system? The actions of state legislatures will inevitably shape part of the answer.
For-Profits: Aid Or Vice In Public Education?
Stating whether an organization is for-profit or non-profit says little about whether it is doing good things for students.
Moving Schooling Forward: Next-Gen Grants Possess Promise
I’m excited to see many more blended-learning programs funded that don’t only provide online experiences but also project-based learning experiences as a central part of what they do.
Organize The Team, Then Train The Teachers
Too often in the edtech world, people claim technology would have impact if only we paid for professional development alongside it.
To Lower Costs, Don’t Expect Professors to Lower Salaries
Those who fear that the emergence of technology will replace teachers have their worries misplaced.
Avoid The Hype: Online Learning's Transformational Potential
How — and how much — will online learning grow?
Data Support Disruption Theory As Online, Blended Learning Grow
When Disrupting Class hit the bookstores five years ago, it contained a prediction that stunned many: by 2019, we said, 50 percent of all high school courses would be delivered online in some form or fashion.
Is K-12 Blended Learning Disruptive?
Analyzing blended learning through the lens of disruptive innovation theory will help people anticipate and plan for its likely effects on the classrooms of today and schools of tomorrow.
What We Can Learn From A Dinner Controversy In The Desert
Will we still need teachers as digital learning rises?
Why Don’t Entrepreneurs And Learning Scientists Talk Much?
All too often, products and services in the education market are not informed by what we know about learning.
Steps and Leaps Into Next-Gen Learning
As schools across the country adopt blended-learning models, a few clear trends are settling in, and some groups continue to help schools push the design envelope on what’s possible for students.
Special K: Don’t Sleep On Khan Academy, Knewton
As Sal Khan explained how his team is setting up its network, it reminded me that those who are discounting the long-term value of entities such as the Khan Academy and Knewton may be making a significant mistake.
Beyond School Choice
With the rapid growth in online and mobile learning, students everywhere at all levels are increasingly having educational choices.
Building Motivation, Instilling Grit: The Necessity of Mastery-Based, Digital Learning
Digital learning is tailor made for the purpose of intrinsically motivating all students.
Could Competency- Based Learning Save the Common Core?
Common Core creates a huge opportunity for innovation and personalization and the implementation of a competency-based learning system.
Is the Technology ‘Ready’ for Blended Learning?
At the outset of any industry, the technology tends to be immature and not yet good enough for the majority of users.
Physical Activity and Digital Learning: Two Peas in a Pod
Student-centric digital learning provides a means to make sure that physical exercise doesn’t fall by the wayside
Personalized Learning on the March
Two developments this week signal that funders are pushing personalized learning and innovation forward in schools—and both herald promising things for improving education in this country.
What Are the Right Schools of Experience for Teachers in New Schools?
As innovation increases in education in the years ahead, the way we prepare some teachers may need to change as well.
Why the Latest Race to the Top Competition Matters
The Department of Education’s latest foray into digital learning is a big deal.
No Shock as Peru’s One-to-One Laptops Miss Mark
All too often advocates for education technology have extolled its benefits without recognizing that technology alone will not transform education.
Online Learning, Teaching and Misleading Opinions
Just because an experience is online or blended does not make it necessarily good or bad.
A Hope for Future Irrelevance
Teach Like a Champion’s techniques may work, but many of them may be irrelevant for the jobs of teachers in the future
Dithering and Delay in New Jersey Denies Students Important Schooling Options
States are right to be concerned about how to best regulate virtual charter schools, but blocking or delaying the option of full-time online schooling isn’t the right tact to take.
Gates Foundation Steps Up with Investments in Next-Generation Learning
It is exciting to see a foundation step up and take some risks to reinvent learning to create dramatically better and lower-cost learning experiences for all students.
Innosight Institute’s Comments on Race to the Top District Draft
We hope that Race to the Top-District competition encourages substantive student-centered reform, and in order to ensure this clear purpose we have a few suggested revisions.
Why Steve Jobs Would Have Loved Digital Learning
In the wake of Steve Jobs’ passing, many wrote about the statements he made throughout his adult life about how to improve the U.S. education system. Some noted that for much of Jobs’s life, he had, ironically perhaps, been skeptical of the positive impact technology could make on education.
Making Education Innovation Come to Life
Having taken an extended vacation the past few weeks, I returned to the United States to see that the pace of innovation in education is continuing at a breakneck pace
How Machine-Based Tutoring Could Disrupt Human Tutors
The lessons from disruptive innovation suggest that these technologies may never be as good as the absolute best human tutor, but they will be plenty close.
Virginia: Moving Forward or Backward?
A bill introduced to fix the state’s funding problems of online learning in a way that would strengthen students’ ability to tailor an education for their unique needs will now do the exact opposite.
Bright Spots Shine in Blended, Online Learning
A month has passed since the first-ever national Digital Learning Day. Given the excitement generated from teachers and others tuning in to the National Town Hall meeting and given today’s National Leadership Summit on Online Learning up on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. that iNACOL sponsored, I thought it was worth noting some great examples that weren’t highlighted during the day’s festivities.
Hewlett Assessment Competition Comes at Critical Time
The political incentives to create high-quality assessments aren’t particularly strong, so having philanthropists invest dollars to create these assessments and continue to push innovation is critical.
School Finance in the Digital-Learning Era: A Review
Imposing a new funding model on top of the existing business typically doesn’t work. Instead management needs to create an autonomous organization that can craft its new business model from scratch as the innovation demands–serious business model innovation.
California Initiative Brings Breath of Fresh Air
It’s an embarrassment that California, the state that led the technology revolution in America, is, according to Digital Learning Now, last in the nation in using technology to transform its education system from its current factory-model roots into a student-centric one.
Is Mandating Online Learning Good Policy?
For someone who advocates for a transformed student-centric education system powered by digital learning, you might think my quick answer would be an emphatic yes, but I’m not so sure.
What Can We Learn about Learning?
Bror Saxberg, the chief learning officer of Kaplan, Inc., is a man for whom I have great respect. Whenever I have a question about the science behind learning, he is the first person I turn to. He verses himself in the latest in cognitive and neuroscience research and applies his multiple degrees to great use.
Colorado’s Crummy Policies Lead to Crummy Virtual Schools
An investigation of Colorado’s full-time virtual schools has revealed some dubious results and practices, which led the state’s Senate President to call for an emergency audit of all of Colorado’s virtual schools. But the state shouldn’t be shocked by the report. As the truism goes, you get what you pay for.
K-12 Education Technology Market Map launches at Philanthropy Roundtable
Innosight Institute joined the NewSchools Venture Fund and Education Elements in releasing a K-12 education technology market map at The Philanthropy Roundtable’s K-12 Education conference in San Francisco October 12, 2011.
Education Entrepreneurship, Disruption Alive and Well
ImagineK12, an incubator modeled after Y Combinator to help education startups “get it right and get funded,” held its first demo day for its first cohort of 10 companies Sept. 9 in Palo Alto.
Cramming Computers: It’s Still the Same Old Story
People should not take from the New York Times article that technology will not be a significant part of the answer for the struggles of the country’s education system. It will likely be the very platform for it.
EdTech Market is Growing–If You’re Disruptive
An article by Katie Ash in Education Week about a new report by the investment bank, Berkery Noyes, caught my eye recently because of its analysis about the education technology market. According to the piece, “companies focused on technology-based instruction and tools for data collection and analysis are thriving in the K-12 market.”
‘Quality Control in K-12 Digital Learning’: A stimulating, quality read
At the end of July, the Fordham Institute launched an important new series to examine how to create healthy policy for the emergent and disruptive force of digital learning that is sweeping through our education system.
Why Digital Learning will Liberate Teachers
Teachers will be critical to our nation’s future in a world of digital learning—and if we do this right, they should not just be different, but they should also be a whole lot better, as it liberates them in many exciting ways.
Why ‘Soccer Moms’ Matter for Digital Learning
A strong majority of already-active parents over time will demand a digital learning-powered system that disrupts the classroom as we’ve known it.
Ignoring Bad Incentives
One way to unlock innovation in our school system and help it transform into a student-centric one is to get out of our own way and eliminate disincentives. But waiting for superheroes across the country to ignore them is not a sound strategy.
Online Learning Begins to Explode into the Mainstream in Blended Schools
Across America a skyrocketing number of K-12 students are getting their education in blended-learning environments. Over 4 million K-12 students took at least one online course in 2010 and this space is growing now by a five-year compound annual growth rate of 43 percent.
The Magical – and Flawed? – DARPA Analogy
President Obama’s 2012 budget proposes to create an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Education—also known as ARPA-ED—to address what the administration says is an under-investment in learning technology. Creating agencies to spark innovation modeled on the “best practices” of DARPA may very well fail, not because they are implemented unfaithfully, but because the circumstances in which each operate are starkly different.
Is There a K-12 Online Learning ‘Bubble’?
This bubble might not fit the technical definition of the term but it has some elements of that, as well as a few others that should give all of us at least some pause.
Audio Excerpt: Disrupting Class by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn & Curtis W. Johnson
An audio excerpt from “Disrupting Class” by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn & Curtis W. Johnson
