Education Reimagined: Michael Horn's Blueprint For Success

CT: [: 00:00:00

Today, it's a great privilege for me to be speaking with Michael Horn. Michael Horn is a thought leader in the world of education, and he's got so many credentials, I'm going to just read them out. He's an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He's also a distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute.

And on top of all of that, he's an author of multiple books, including the most recently, From reopen to reinvent recreating school for every child. So it's really exciting. There's a lot to talk about today Welcome to the show Michael.

ichael: Yeah. Thanks so much [: 00:01:00

CT: So Michael tell us a little bit more about Your book reopen to reinvent and what it means for leaders in k 12 education

Michael: Yeah. So the book was born out of the pandemic and a series of conversations I was having with my co hosts on my class disrupted podcast, Diane Tavner. When we were saying, so much of the conversation right now is how do we get back to normal? What was pre COVID in education, but the reality is that schools education wasn't working for the vast majority of our students.

ortunity as a real chance to [: 00:02:00

So that every child can experience success as a core part and a designed part of the school system itself.

CT: Okay, so with the reopening I think Basically, it's a chance for us to really rethink the way that education is done. And there are so many things that you covered in your book many different frameworks that I, what I really liked was you drew from many other different fields and disciplines and applied them within education.

So one of the things that I want to touch on are these different frameworks. So you covered frameworks like jobs to be done. And they're very familiar in, say, the technology world, but are less familiar in education. Maybe let's expand a little bit more about that cause I think for many of the listeners, this is going to be new to them.

heir life. They're trying to [: 00:03:00

We great on a curve or we graded certain intervals, even if you haven't actually mastered all the material yet, because we have a fixed. Sequence of fixed time and variable learning. And so a lot of students leave subjects, classes, units, et cetera, feeling like failures. And that's how the system was designed.

s, we tell them that they're [: 00:04:00

And so the insights from that are how do you create an educational experience that gets the job to be done of society and educators, which is we want to make sure that they're learning, right? We're not just trying to hold soccer practice in school. But how do we make sure that People are learning while they're experiencing a true sense of progress and success and having fun with friends.

g piano lessons we don't say [: 00:05:00

We say, no, you are just mastering twinkle, twinkle little star. So we're going to move on to this next appropriate piece, right? And so school is an anomaly in, in, in that way. I would argue in terms of having fun with friends. Allowing them to collaborate on rich projects and assignments where I'm not looking for the freeloading problem that some of us experienced in school, but like that there's meaningful opportunities where we can work on problems and projects together in school.

We're not asking them to do it outside of school, but actually in school where they can really have fun as they're exploring passions and areas of interest and actually learning. As a part of the schooling, as opposed to something that's separate. So that's the jobs to be done framework. We use it in the book, as you noted for kids.

or parents because all three [: 00:06:00

School in some meaningful way. How do you do it? Like it's really hard for any organization in any field to do that. So we introduced this notion of dual transformation which has been used in universities. It's been used in newspapers. It's been used in different spheres that have a social sector purpose to them.

And we talk about what that might look like in a school district Or for an individual school or things like that to break out of this one size fits all schooling models that we have right now. We, those are a couple of the frameworks that I think you're referencing where we just basically say, if we look through this framework to see some insights, what might that be?

hinking about what motivates [: 00:07:00

And If you look at the, how we've designed teaching jobs again, no, no one in our current system did this, right? These were baked decades and decades ago when we designed schools and frankly, in many ways, those were careers for people who didn't have access to other careers, women back then. But knowing what we now know, how do we make a far more rewarding and motivating thing.

look, it's not for everyone, [: 00:08:00

Not just balance, but frankly, better work lives themselves.

CT: Yeah, you touch on so many things there that I'd love to unpack. And especially that last bit around teacher satisfaction that just rang a whole bunch of bells for me because I'm such a nerd in the space. And it's so interesting to me how the research has progressed so much in organizational psychology, organizational behavior.

And we now know. That incentives. There's how we draw that balance between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. How we tighten that relationship between managers and the employee in order to drive greater Sense of community, greater sense of belonging, and so on. And yet, the tragedy in many cases is no one's fault, as you said.

eally been well applied. And [: 00:09:00

Michael: you, it's crazy when you say it that way, right? It's so simple and it's insane. Yeah,

CT: yeah. And there are all these different systems and frameworks out there, which I think so much of which I'm from private sector. So all of this, I think has evolved in some other sectors and not all, in many sectors, this has moved. But I think one of the things that I've encountered in applying some of these frameworks within education is there is something a little bit different in education where there's.

be done as you know I buy a [: 00:10:00

How do we think about this? Because the kids themselves, they have certain wants and needs and jobs to be done in their heads. As parents, we believe they may not always know what's best for them. And we need to figure that out.

So how do you think and there are multiple stakeholders in education as well. And we have to navigate through all of this in a very different way than how many industries and private sector would do it.

ard to create meaningful and [: 00:11:00

There's several general community of taxpayers, right? Et cetera, et cetera, all have jobs to be done. And so the act of trying to change education. Is like lining up all those jobs to be done in like a six dimensional chessboard or something like that and hoping that your move drops through all six dimensions, right?

as to look one way for every [: 00:12:00

What would it instead mean if we could have schools within schools, micro schools, a portfolio of options that I could as a family and educators Opt into so that we're not imposing it on anyone, right? And that's the big and frankly I think leaders of schools need to grapple with this reality because the reality is families are opting out of traditional school districts increasingly, particularly in urban areas, but everywhere.

We know more and more have stayed in homeschooling arrangements. We know more and more are going to micro schools. for joining us. They're now, depending on where your count is somewhere between 13 to 19 states that have education savings accounts laws, they're certainly going to be fueling options that are outside.

do you create other options [: 00:13:00

It's certainly not how kids learn right in lockstep, but it's even more important now because parents and society are actually making choices to break out of this one size fits all. And so as a school leader. Your job in some sense is to figure out how do we create these different options?

And it's not infinite . There's constraints, but how do we create these different options that still cultivate important senses of community against the meaningful role that I think schools play in any society, right? Of, of educating the young of acculturating them, of, in our case, protecting the democracy in the United States, right?

y and purpose. Those are all [: 00:14:00

Good luck. That's going to get rejected and just take team teaching, for example, right? Yeah. If you go to into any Montessori school across the country or world today, they've been doing team teaching for over a century. Not novel there. And it's not to say every single teacher who opted for the public schools where there's not team teaching would want that arrangement.

But We know from research and we know from some examples in Mesa public schools and elsewhere that actually a lot of them really do, because to your point, creates a lot more intrinsic motivators in the job and frankly, it improves some of the extrinsic motivators that again don't lead to satisfaction with the job, but can lead to plenty of dissatisfaction.

Mesa and elsewhere have been [: 00:15:00

Like student teacher ratios and things like that. That's not actually the right lever to move those things.

CT: Yeah. And I'm particularly excited about the team teaching model because it's a really good. example of thinking outside the traditional box that we're given. And in fact, at some point we're going to be getting Brett on the show as well, to talk about that, which will be fun.

modate the learning needs of [: 00:16:00

It got me thinking about service based businesses like hospitality or restaurant business where you can go to a Marriott. Which is super high end, your JWs, go there and you got a luxury experience, but you have different needs as you go along. And Marriott tries to cater to all those different needs.

So you have, I'm on a road trip and I just want a motel. I just want to hang out for the night after eight hours of driving. And I've got that, like Marriott's got that for me. And they're just a lot of different ways that the service business has been thinking about the customer.

And accommodating the needs off those customers at different stages of their journey and different types of customers. How do you think we can do this better? And in terms of just even taxonomies off learning needs that people have and like thinking about, Okay, this is what we need to do to change our infrastructure.

e need to raise another levy [: 00:17:00

Michael: Yeah. It's a great question. And I think, this is a place where technology that work can really help, right? Because kids can be much more self driven learners. Where the role of the Teacher is not to deliver content, but that's technology. And the role of the teacher is to really be working one on one and in small groups, the students to make sure that they're actually getting it, that they're actually doing the work, that they're actually active learners.

Cause a great body of research shows that active learning is how we learn, right? When we're passively learning, we're not actually picking up much. He who does the work gets the learning, right? And so I think that's a starting point of, The answer to your question.

infinite choices of hotels, [: 00:18:00

Courtyard Marriott. I'm like the busy one day traveler in and out. I want to like a place, right? That's not going to break the bank for my company and allow me to do the work I need to do. JW Marriott, like I'm on my luxury vacation with my family and whatever it is, right? And As I was thinking of what are the categories of learners, I think it's like in any given, um, content or skill area, there's novice learners and they're expert learners.

pportunities to really apply [: 00:19:00

So that's one category from the cognitive science research that I think You know, it's can help us think through this. There's a great piece. A couple of years ago, I think, at this point in education next by Lawrence Holt about some evidence suggesting that like those with ADHD have an extra dopamine receptor on one of their chromosomes.

And essentially, like They just need more stimulation to keep them engaged. And so if you put them in a like a online learning for example, or a textbook curriculum that had very, low slow paced, not a lot of opportunity to ask questions, have multimedia, stuff like that, they disengaged.

perience of what the heck is [: 00:20:00

So there's some set of categories, that schools, instructional designers, etcetera, like I think need to come around, come to to be able to design experiences to give us. Not an overwhelming amount of customization, but the right amount to your point to help us make progress. I don't know if that's answering the question, but that's how I think about a lot of this.

And I guess I'd say the last piece is background knowledge is a huge piece of this, right? We know on standardized tests. Historically, when you asked about like sailboats, kids in inner city America didn't know what a sailboat was and like, couldn't get the question right? Had nothing to do with the question like what the skill being tested.

es. People have so that like [: 00:21:00

If that makes sense, Thanks.

CT: Yeah I think that makes a lot of sense. Got me thinking about how education again is a little bit more different than your traditional private sector industries, because the time horizon that we're optimizing for an education can be pretty long, because if I'm thinking about user Experience design and applying that to be able to pull out those different categories.

It got me thinking, what am I optimizing for? Am I optimizing for college admission rates where, you gotta get all your diversity of experience, you gotta to. Get your excellence items in all that kind of stuff, or are we optimizing for the workforce, which is, job creation job redesign in the workforce and helping our students get meaningful jobs that can set them up for success in their life.

[: 00:22:00

Michael: I think it's a great point. I think it's a reckoning, frankly, that the country's having right now, which is that since 1983, a nation at risk, we have this viewpoint that the answer is college for all. And that's the metric of success in some sense. And I think college for all has not worked out well for large parts of the population either because it wasn't actually in tune with what the individuals wanted or their preparation for an academic track did not fit, but we know the old system of we track you at some age for academic track versus vocational.

osing individuals to lots of [: 00:23:00

It's not a full answer, I think and so part of this. What would be incumbent, I think, on to do this well is, like I mentored in the big brothers, little brothers program years ago someone and he was like, his life dream was to be a manager at a Dunkin Donuts and make 45, 000 a year.

lly. Allowing kids much more [: 00:24:00

How does that square with the life you want to live and where you want to live it? And. I'm not saying that an 18 year old is going to come out with all the answers. I think, frankly, society is changing too much that they, that's not possible. But I think the goal is really that they have a lot more information so that they can make informed choices rather than oh, everyone's, doing X. Therefore, I think I probably should go to college to or all my friends are going to, this voc tech or they're going to the military. I ought to do it too. I think that's what we're trying to avoid is the sort of. Heard social pressure. I'm doing it because others expect me to mentality and allow people to make much more informed choices in their life.

If that makes sense.

about it. And it really cuts [: 00:25:00

Have a clear point of view on what this looks like and what they want for their kids in their community. And, I'm interlacing this with some data on jobs and technical skills in the workplace where I think it was IBM and someone else that came up to say that hard skills in the workforce their half life today is between two and a half to five years.

Meaning about half of our skills are going to be completely obsolete in five years. And if we look at the trajectory of the kind of jobs that exist today, there's so many that just didn't exist even 10 years ago, like when I was going to college. There was no such thing as a digital marketing manager out there.

a digital marketing manager [: 00:26:00

Michael: Yeah. Influencer. Yep. Yep. Totally. Totally.

Yeah. Talk about a winner. Take all market. Yeah.

CT: When we think back to I don't know, to my day, it's I want to be a movie star. And , that was the thing where it's also a very kind of. a winner take all, but it's so hard really get to that. What is the, like societally, what is the job to be done for middle and high school?

Because there needs to be some level of alignment and as a parent myself. Just selfishly and in a very short term manner, I want my kids to go to a good college like, that's the thinking that a lot in my generation probably have, but how do you think we can change that?

Or

Michael: I think it's [: 00:27:00

I think independence have fallen off a cliff as well. So I say that and I think there's some societal things that are changing. And I'm not I don't want to be anti college here. That's not that's not my argument. But I think we do want more pathways that can be productive, right for students.

ant to be overly reductivist [: 00:28:00

That's not the case anymore in that way. And I think it's some combination of informed choice, having a sense of how things are changing in the market and what IBM has also said. T shaped individuals, right? Some set of general skills that cut across Pathways or vocations or careers or college that allow you to be adaptable and learn new skills.

And so when I think about it, the other two things that I think are important are one at the end of a high school experience, students know how they learn and can continue to upskill throughout their life. And that's an expectation. Like metacognition, like they know how they learn, they know the process, it's transparent to them and they can continue to do it.

thought that I would add on [: 00:29:00

But but what I think is true is I guess the way I would frame it is this, say I got a bunch of experience. Installing solar panels. That's a job at the moment. But if we're not careful and we're too narrow about what that means, all I know is like how to get up on a roof, bolt on a solar panel, like what to do if it breaks very narrow set of things.

at, yeah, it can allow me to [: 00:30:00

Job presumably evolves over the coming years and maybe goes extinct, but then I'll still have a set of skills and a base and a way to learn that I'll be able to hopefully migrate and tick and tack to other things over time.

CT: yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I like that because then you, you have both the technical skills and the metacognitive skills of contextualizing your technical skills within this broader. Societal need that we have, and I'm going to pull the pull us a little bit back to kind of leadership and leadership in education, particularly, and the superintendency today isn't the most popular of jobs.

high school student is going [: 00:31:00

And at the same time, when, in this job we need superintendents to think about all of these issues and to allow you mentioned autonomy in the book to, to devolve a little bit of that autonomy into the different school sites, into the different departments so that they start taking ownership of this new way of thinking.

And to a certain extent that, that helps the superintendent themselves, but it also helps to guard against superintendent turnover because You don't want like this pet, this to be a pet project of one superintendent and someone else comes in and it's totally different. Do you think leaders can balance that autonomy as well as the degree of accountability that they have to the board and the community in this kind of environment of high turnover?

ervation. I think meaningful [: 00:32:00

That said, I think you raised a good set of points, which is if we can empower more people throughout, schools, departments, et cetera. A, it's a little, it maybe makes our lives a little more sustainable as a superintendent, but B it maybe makes some change more lasting. And so I guess I would say I think that's a critical design principle.

ifferent things we've talked [: 00:33:00

And that's not something you know, we've given lip service to that historically in education, but we haven't actually done it. We haven't really empowered people. We generally shackle them in their bounds. I think the other thing, frankly, if I were a superintendent pushing more and more resources. Away from the central office and into the school sites themselves would be another thing.

I would say, you look at a place like I'm going to get the numbers a little bit wrong, but like New York City, it's, 30 some odd thousand dollars per kid. They spend a lot of money. It's more than a lot of private schools. But probably only half of that money is getting into the school.

I get it, it's hard, because [: 00:34:00

That's just a reality. It's like very different from other contexts. But I do think the more you say this is where we're going and if this isn't for you, like this is going to be an uncomfortable place because this is where we're going. And let the individuals themselves make the choices. I think is another important, way you can get about that.

But let's be clear, that also relies on superintendents being there more than two to three years because otherwise the teachers or administrators or whomever are like this too shall pass. I'll ride this one out.

ct when, as we were talking, [: 00:35:00

They feel better about coming to school and so perhaps, maybe this is me just looking for I'm just a hammer looking for nails, but if we addressed the challenges within education in how we create a more engaged teacher workforce, how more engaged leader workforce within the education itself.

e across any research or any [: 00:36:00

Michael: So I let me think about that. I agree with that with the basic thrust which is. Our most important asset is human capital, right? And education is a very human endeavor and individuals that feel ownership have responsibility and autonomy are likely to bring a bigger game to the table.

to make changes and choice. [: 00:37:00

They would figure out ways to do and I think I think it would fall in line ultimately, but I think that's why it's probably you probably have individual case studies, but probably not like large scale research. Yeah. But I still think your basic point is a good one.

CT: Yeah, I have struggled to find a large scale research on this, we're, I can't believe we're already running up against time. I think the final thing I want to discuss with you is all of these ideas are amazing. And the book is amazing. Like I think Like all of you in leadership in education should just go pick up a copy of this book and go read it.

e ideas, I want to make sure [: 00:38:00

Where, I've got my five year strategic plan in place already, I don't, I can't change that. I've got my school board that's demanding all of this stuff that, I just got to deliver within the next school term. How do I meaningfully take steps in the right direction, however small they are?

And what kind of steps do they, should they be?

Michael: Yeah. I guess what I would say is I think there's been an encouraging movement across the country of communities and districts and states creating portraits of a graduate, which are really reflections of what's the purpose. Of schooling and I think I'd actually even up level that from the portrait of a graduate to that more foundational conversation, which is what do we want to achieve?

ultiple conversations within [: 00:39:00

Because I think without the fundamental why we're going to struggle to get consensus. And I think without some autonomy and some time for educators, like no one in the industry would expect you to come up with a new product while you're operating the existing one, like [00:40:00] pilots don't build planes while they're flying them.

We got to give some time and space. I think also is the second part of it and it can feel daunting, but I think if you're saying just build like a new way to do math or, like the question can be grain sized, right? And you can say, we'll give you some resources to explore what others have done around this.

You don't have to reinvent every wheel, but you're going to tailor it for our community, for our circumstance. That's how I think I'd get started.

CT: Yeah, I like that. And it's very well, it's very well grounded in change management literature for even the private sector where you look for create bright spots and quick wins in small test cases. And if you keep these test cases small and just run a lot of them, you're likely To fail in the majority of them, just because they're new and you're trying something different, but the failure is going to be on a really small scale.

hit success. That's gonna be [: 00:41:00

Michael: Yeah. Check out my sub stack, Michael B Horn, future of education on sub stack. It's a great way to be reading what I'm thinking about, but you can respond directly to me there. And I reply you can comment on things I'm on. Twitter or X as it's now known at Michael B Horn, LinkedIn same thing, Michael B Horn.

I'm in all the social places, websites, michaelbhorn. com. So pick your poison, any of those ways, love to be engaged, love to support the change. And I love what you just said there at the end, right? Which is we're going to fail, but as long as it's not spectacular failure, it's how we learn. That's how we learn what works.

opportunity to model for the [: 00:42:00

CT: Absolutely And thank you so much once again and for all of you listening. Thanks for tuning in I've been your host CT And it's been a real pleasure speaking through this whole episode. I look forward to speaking to all of you again. This is CT signing off.