From Reopen to Reinvent. Michael B. Horn
have little control, this is a book for administrators, teachers, and those communities involved in schools—parents and school boards—to help them reconceive what they are trying to accomplish and create a more supportive model that allows them to better serve each child. For parents frustrated with the challenges their children have faced at schools, the book presents a path forward from the pandemic.
It's also a book for policymakers and voters to help them rethink what is standing in the way of building better learning opportunities for all individuals.
The idea of this book is to shift us from seeing the pandemic as a giant threat to also viewing it as an opportunity. An opportunity to overthrow an education system that's not working as well as it could for anyone—certainly not for low-income students. Certainly not for far too many boys and girls who are judged by the color of their skin rather than for their vast potential. Nor is it working for wealthy and privileged children in our society, despite popular perception.
THE SCHOOL SYSTEM ISN'T OPTIMIZED FOR ANYONE
In a podcast called Class Disrupted that I started during the pandemic with Diane Tavenner, the founder of Summit Public Schools, a network of 11 schools in California and Washington State, we told two stories of fictional students to illuminate a flawed education system that treats students not as individuals but as parts of a group.
The first student we called Jeremy, an only child of a single mom who works multiple minimum-wage jobs, which leaves Jeremy home alone at many points during the day. The other student we called Julia, a student from an upper-middle-class home with lots of parental support.
In the podcast, we talked about why and how the school system doesn't work well for students like Jeremy along three dimensions: resources, curriculum, and sorting.
Resources
Today's school system assumes that children like Jeremy will have tools, resources, and opportunities—when in fact they aren't readily accessible to them.
Families with means can buy enrichment and advancement opportunities or, at the minimum, childcare. But families without these resources just have to make do—whether that means hours in front of the TV and video games, or worse. Jeremy has no access to summer camp or other chances to expand his horizons and imagine life outside of his home and immediate neighborhood. In normal years, when Jeremy returns to school in the fall, his classmates have done everything from coding to sports to arts camps. Or they've taken advanced math classes so they can get an edge when they go back to school. Jeremy has none of that.
The system also assumes that Jeremy has access to things like computers and the Internet—or even books at home to build his background knowledge across an array of subjects, which will give him the foundation to learn what his school teaches. But as we've learned during the pandemic, many families can't afford these tools and services. Even after roughly a year of trying to get all children connectivity, somewhere between 9 and 12 million students still didn't have adequate Internet at home.1
It's not like Jeremy's mom consciously realized she couldn't afford all these products and services. No one sent her a list. Families with means talk and network to find these opportunities. Families without struggle.
Curriculum
In life, success isn't just about the academic knowledge one masters or one's “intelligence.” Those are important, but other skills and habits are also critical. After achieving a baseline of academic preparedness, many studies suggest that these other skills and habits, along with access to social networks, rise in importance.
Jeremy misses building these skills and habits because his school's curriculum doesn't adequately address them.
In many schools, things like working on projects, teaching habits of success, providing actionable feedback, and connecting students to new networks of people aren't integrated into the curriculum—or are offered only as a dessert to the traditional main meal.
By not receiving these opportunities, Jeremy misses out on many experiences that could change his life. Take habits of success, which include mindsets and behaviors like self-direction, agency, growth mindset, and executive functions,2 to illustrate why.
Jeremy, like most of us, didn't come out of the womb as an organized human being. He hasn't learned explicit habits in the context of his academics to help him excel. Not having support to learn self-direction or executive function skills means that it may be hard for Jeremy to complete and turn in his homework each day. Unlike many of his peers, he doesn't have an adult there to remind him. That lowers his self-efficacy.
It's one thing to preach about growth mindset or grit to children, but it's a different thing to model it. Our education system does the opposite of modeling it, instead affixing labels to students, sorting them into static groups, and signaling that their effort doesn't matter.
This is because in today's system, time is held as a constant and each student's learning is variable.
Students move from concept to concept after spending a fixed number of days, weeks, or months on the subject. Educators teach, sometimes administer a test, and move students on to the next unit or body of material regardless of their results, effort, and understanding of the topic. Students typically receive feedback and results much later and only after they have progressed.
The system signals to students that it doesn't matter if you stick with something, because you'll move on either way. This approach undermines the value of perseverance and curiosity, as it does not reward students for spending more time on a topic. It also demotivates students, as many become bored when they don't have to work at topics that come easily to them or fall behind when they don't understand a building-block concept. Yet the class continues to progress, and students develop holes in their learning. This fixed-time, variable-learning system fails students.
Contrast this with a mastery-based—or competency-based3—learning model in which time becomes the variable and learning becomes guaranteed. Students only move fully from a concept once they demonstrate mastery of the knowledge and skills at hand. If they fail, that's fine. Failure is an integral part of the learning process. Students stay at a task, learn from the failures, and work until they demonstrate mastery. Success is guaranteed.
Mastery-based learning systematically embeds perseverance into its design. It showcases having a growth mindset, because students can improve their performance and master academic knowledge, skills, and habits of success.
Even if Jeremy's teachers talk about the importance of perseverance and growth mindset, today's system in which he's stuck doesn't reward it. It undermines it.
Similarly, by not providing timely feedback that is actionable, schools demotivate learners. Research shows that when a student receives feedback but cannot improve their performance with that feedback, it has a negative influence on student learning. Conversely, when the student can use the feedback, it positively impacts learning.4 It also opens the door to more positive and personalized interactions with teachers to build trust.
Most schools also don't make a point of offering students access to new networks that help them discover new opportunities and endeavors beyond those of their immediate family and friends. Connecting students to new individuals can be life-altering. It brings students together with people who can open doors and allows them to build passions in areas about which they would never otherwise know. Introducing students to successful individuals, particularly those with whom they share commonalities, can inspire them. In life, success is often not about what you know, but who you know. There's