I recently blogged about how the role of education administrators is structured in ways that stifle innovation. My thoughts weren’t that original.
In the Innovator’s Dilemma, a now canonical business leadership book published in 1997, Harvard Business professor Clayton Christensen explains how “Great businesses fail by doing everything right." In education, we tend to do the same thing. In Christensen’s words:
“In the cases of well managed firms…good management was the most powerful reason they failed to stay atop their industries. Precisely because these firms listened to their customers, invested in new technologies that would provide their customers more and better products of the sort they wanted, & because they carefully studied market trends & systematically invested in innovations that promised the best returns, they lost their positions of leadership.”
He continues:
“What this implies, at a deeper level, is that many of what are now widely accepted principles of good management are, in fact, only situation-ally appropriate. There are times at which it is right not to listen to customers, right to invest in developing lower performance products that promise lower margins, and right to aggressively pursue small rather than substantial markets. This book derives a set of principles…that managers can use to judge when the widely accepted principles of good management should be followed and when alternative principles are appropriate”
It’s somewhat problematic to rewire his dry, 286 page business analysis from 1997 and apply it to schools in 2020. It's not always a clear 1 to 1 comparison, but it’s illuminating. I’ve focused here on 5 of Christensen’s Innovator's Dilemma “principles” and how they relate to education administrators (they're all key, but rules 3/4 are most important).
Rule 1 - Companies Depend on Customers and Investors For Resources
Christensen says:
“While managers may think they control the flow of resources in their firms, in the end it is really customers and investors who dictate how money will be spent because companies with investment patterns that don’t satisfy their customers and investors don’t survive”.
As problematic as it may be to compare students/parents to customers, think if we replace “managers” with “Administrators”, customers with “parents/students”, and “investors” with politicians and state legislatures. Do our administrators really control the flow of resources in their building? Aside from hiring, not really. How many of their decisions are limited by the budget, aid, and laws set by the state? Most. How much of their decision making goes through the “What will the parents think” filter? Or the “What will the teachers’ union think” filter? Depends on the individual, but those concerns always seem to be front of mind.
Obviously the issues that weigh on the choices of educational admin vary by district & building. It's the nature of their job to take them into consideration. In fact, they would be bad at their jobs if they didn't. That's the the catch. Innovations in education, some of which have the potential to fundamentally improve & change the way we've always done things, hardly ever make it past the "constraints" filter that admin must use if they're going to do their job well. To prove it, look at a relatively straight forward change to our school system that mountains of research has supported for decades: Getting rid of summer.
Summers are great for a lot of things, but learning is not one of them. They are bad for learning; this is especially true for students that come from low-income households (ie the kids that need a world class education THE MOST). Okay, so let's get rid of summer. We’ll take more breaks throughout the year and go year round. Now, put ourselves in the admins shoes. What are the first things an administrator would have to think about?
One would most would likely start with the higher cost: You’d likely need to renegotiate salaries, a monumental undertaking when unions are involved. That also means reworking a budget, again, something that is mostly out of the control of administrators. You’d need to think about additional building costs. Once you’ve taken those off the table, then you’d have to think about parents & students, both of whom would be angry. Students for obvious reasons, but parents for more multifaceted ones. What about summer baseball? What about swim lessons? What about “time for kids to be kids”? etc etc.
It’s easy to see why administrators, even though they know that summer is bad for learning, would balk at the heap of work that rapidly piles up given the constraints. It makes sense that the logical next step is to abandon getting rid of summer to instead focus on improvements that can be made to the school year. Almost all schools make this decision, as is evidenced by the fact that I’m sitting on my couch blogging in late July when I should probably be working with kids.
To go back to Christianson, “There are times in which it is not right to listen to the customers." We know summer doesn’t make sense anymore, let’s get rid of it. Instead, we admin are pushed to give in to the constraints of put on them by parents, students, teachers unions, budgets, etc, etc. In this way, they don't actually "control the flow of resources in their firms" in the ways they think they do.
Rule 2 - Small Markets don’t Solve the Needs of Large Companies
This one is harder to apply to education. It says that large companies often don’t invest in emerging markets because those markets aren’t large enough to make sense for the company. Christensen:
“To maintain their share prices and create internal opportunities for employees to extend the scope of their responsibilities, the successful companies need to continue to grow. But while a $40 million company needs to find just $8 million to grow at 20% in the subsequent year, a 4 billion company needs to find 800 million in new sales. No new markets are that large and, as a consequence, the larger and more successful an organization becomes, the weaker the argument that emerging markets can remain useful engines for growth. Many large companies adopt a strategy of waiting until new markets are ‘large enough to be interesting’, but we will show why this is not often a successful strategy.”
Schools aren’t profit driven, they are learning driven. That makes things harder to measure and makes comparisons to this business principal difficult. Still, if you think about a “new market” as a “new learning framework” or “new assessment methods”, it does apply.
Too many schools wait for ample research & evidence to back up any small move they make in regards to curriculum or instruction. The desire to make sure decisions that are "researched enough to be interesting", to paraphrase Christianson, is particularly problematic in a world in which technology changes much faster than institutions. Technology continues to create an ever-growing lag in what is actually good for student learning vs what research has had time to prove to be good for learning. That lag necessitates trying things, especially in regards to technology, that may not be research backed for some time. Self paced curriculum through online learning comes to mind, for example. But again, put yourself in the administrators shoes.
Imagine having to go to your a school board and say, "I want try XYZ. I have no research to support this move, but I think it seems like a good idea that we should try out." No reasonable admin is going to do that because they are good at their job. It's a catch 22 at the core of the US education system's failure to meaningfully change and improve since its conception. It also explains why educational technology has yet to truly revolutionize our education system in the same way is has in every other aspect of our economy. Relying on new approaches to be "researched enough to be interesting" also becomes a self-perpetuating problem, as nothing can be "research backed" until someone actually tries it (more on this in the Rule 3 section).
Again, this isn't individual administrators' faults. It's a flaw in the role. Admin that want to change anything of substance need research, approval from a board that may have no experience in teaching, and approval from a superintendent that has to keep a sharp eye on a budget that is beyond the control of any given district.
Rule 3 - Markets that Don’t Exist Can’t be Analyzed (**this is the big one)
Christensen:
“Sound market research and good planning followed by execution according to plan are hallmarks of good management….In dealing with disruptive technologies leading to new markets, however, market researches and business planners have consistently dismal records. In fact, based upon the evidence from the disk drive, motorcycle, and microprocessor industries, the only thing we may know for sure when we read experts forecasts about large emerging markets will become is that they are wrong….In many instances, leadership in sustaining innovations - about which information is known and for which plans can be made - is not competitively important. In such cases, technology followers do about as well as technology leaders. It is in the disruptive innovations, where we know least about the market, that there are such strong first mover advantages. This is the innovator's dilemma. Companies whose investment processes demand quantification of market sizes and financial returns before they can enter a market get paralyzed or make serious mistakes when faced with disruptive technologies. They demand market data when none exists and make judgments based upon financial projections when neither revenues or costs can, in fact, be known. Using planning and marketing techniques that were developed to manage sustaining technologies in the very different context of disruptive ones is an exercise in flapping wings. "
The bolded part is my emphasis. What’s the solution to this? What Christensen calls "discovery based planning"
“Discovery based planning suggests that managers assume that forecasts are wrong, rather than right, and that the strategy they have chosen to pursue may likewise be wrong. Investing and managing under such assumptions drives managers to develop plans for learning what needs to be known, a much more effective way to confront disruptive technologies successfully.”
When we resist changes to curriculum and instruction until they are researched backed and vetted, we fail for the same reasons Christianson discusses above. We "demand market data when non exists", or, worse, we make judgments about new and potentially disruptive methods in our classrooms using research and mental schemas that have always guided our schools (ie "sustaining technologies" in Christianson's lingo). To reference my first blog post, this is exactly what happened when I suggested using larger class sizes alongside 1-to-1 devices in schools in effort to free up teacher prep and feedback time. To simply say "well, research clearly states that larger class sizes aren't good for learning, so we won't consider that" is flawed, as it fails to take into account the impact that disruptive technology like Chromebooks, Google Classroom, online learning tools, etc, etc, etc can have on student learning, even in larger settings. It's an "exercise in flapping one's wings" to use pre-existing research to guide curriculum & instruction decisions in the context of disruptive educational technology. It's likely the case that research on class size & student learning outcomes did not take place in a technology infused classroom. It's likely that the overwhelming majority of research on best practices in education did not take place in technology infused classrooms. This should, at the very least, make us skeptical about relying so heavily on it to guide decision making processes in 2020.
Even beyond the paralysis of "research-backed" approaches, a lot of innovation in education doesn’t take place because of fear. We can’t even fathom what everyone’s jobs would look like if we made XYZ changes, so we don't bother. For example, how do you measure student learning if you get rid of grades or class-rank? How do students apply for college if they don't have a traditional “GPA”? How do you rework salaries if teachers have to work year round? How do you rework the school activities schedule if your school goes year round, but others don’t? How do you evaluate teacher performance if they’re teaching a class with 5 other teachers in the room, with 150 students, in a 1-1 environment where the kids are using a lesson built by Khan Academy? I don’t have these answers, but the solutions that would require the questions to be answered aren’t implemented out of fear to even begin to have to wrestle with all of the unknown that comes with real innovation.
What would most likely happen is failure, because we would attempt to use the same processes we used before to guide us in an entirely new context. That might even make things worse than they were before. That said, failure is the key to learning and growth. What Christensen calls “Discovery Based Planning” is semantics for would might better be called “Failure Based Planning”. Yet, failure is not something that any sane Superintendent or school-board member is naturally inclined to be attracted to. Present any reasonable decision maker with a choice between:
Option 1: (The Blue Pill) Subtle changes to curriculum and instruction that won’t rock the boat too much, are backed by substantive research, and will keep the machine working at the same reasonably tuned pace it currently works, with subtle peaks and troughs of improvement or failure. Nothing bad, but nothing incredible either. The name “Marzano” comes to mind.
Or
Option 2: (The Red Pill): Massive, substantive changes that have the ability to restructure the entire school system and all the lives associated with them (basically, a huge chunk of our culture in the United States), a much higher likelihood of failure (and resulting anger from everyone involved), all with very little research to backup the changes.
Any sane administrator goes with option 1 because they are good at their job. Option 1 is chosen because administrators are logical people who have to balance many different factors, most of which are out of their control. When put in the decision makes shoes, option 1 it clearly the better choice. So the system stays the same.
Because of this, the problem compounds itself. Lack of innovation becomes auto-catalytic: Schools opt for the safety of choice one. Because they do this, little research or track record exists to guide those that are pondering the risk & real change of choice 2….thereby making it much more likely for them to choose option 1. Like calling off school for a snow day, our schools wait for others to take the lead so that they can safely follow suit rather than think for themselves. No trail blazer? No research? No one to take the fall if failure occurs? Better opt for the blue pill. And so the circle goes and we stay in Plato’s cave, or eat the blue pill, or whatever allegory resonates with you. The system stays the same.
I don't see this scenario every changing on its own. Incredibly driven, intelligent, passionate administrators have tried for decades to no avail. That said, I do see it changing eventually. Schools will inevitably be forced to choose option 2, within the next 10-20 years, because technology will continue to out-innovate our education institutions. This will eventually undermine our approach until we will be forced to change. This is already happening at the collegiate level, it's only a matter of time until it trickles down. And then I think something else will happen.
School will begin to opt for choice two….and fail miserably. It will scare the heck out of decision makers more than they already were. They'll run back to option 1 and smugly judge the district that failed. But as any Carol Dweck reader knows, it’s better to learn from failure than continue to opt for the easy, small, even superficial decisions that we make in the name of what will make us only marginally better.
Rule 4 - An Organization’s Capabilities Define Its Disabilities
Christensen:
“When managers tackle an innovation problem, they instinctively work to assign capable people to the job. But once they found the right people, too many managers then assume that the organization in which they’ll work will also be capable of succeeding at the task. That is dangerous, because organizations have capabilities that exist independently of the people who work within them...An organization’s capabilities reside in two places. The first is in the processes, the methods by which people have learned to transform inputs of labor, energy, materials, information, cash, and technology into outputs of higher value. The second is in the organization's values, which are the criteria that managers and employees in the organization use when making prioritization decisions."
"People are quite flexible...they can be trained to succeed at quite different things. But processes and values are not flexible. A process that is effective at managing the design of a minicomputer, for example, would be ineffective at managing the design of a desktop personal computer. Values that cause employees to prioritize projects to develop high margin products cannot simultaneously accord priority to low margin products. The process and values that constitute an organization's capabilities in one context, define its disabilities in another context .”
If ever there were a rally cry for technology integrationists looking to truly change our education system, this is it: The processes and values that constitute an organization's capabilities in one context define its disabilities in another context.
Translated to education, the processes and values that have constituted our schools’ capabilities in their traditional context define our disabilities in the new context of a technology infused school. Summer, 8 period days, classrooms based around one teacher teaching one subject isolated from other subjects, bells and lockers, the sage-on-the-stage teaching model, in class lectures with notes, GPA’s, class rank, homecomings Kings/Queens, prom, Cheerleaders, football teams. These are the things that defined education out of culture or necessity or lack of educational research in previous contexts of the late 19th & 20th centuries. Yet research and technology now show us that all of the things previously listed no longer make sense in our current context. That they still exist make them the cornerstone in defining our current disabilities, as an education system, in 2019….or ANY year in which the internet, its resources, & complementing devices are found in the pockets of every one of our students.
Why do we still have grades when we could instead do something like progress and mastery based learning whereby we measure growth or mastery rather than a random snapshot percentage AND save time on grading if done digitally(ala Khan Academy style)? Why do we still have summer when we no longer go to school houses with no air conditioning or live and work on farms? Why do we have 8 periods when we could have larger class sizes and fewer periods...or no periods, and self paced learning? Why do we have bells and lockers when kids don’t really need textbooks any more (in 1 to 1 environments) and would rather carry things in their backpacks anyway? Why do teachers still lecture and act like they are the go-to source of information (sage on a stage) when kids have devices in their pockets that allow them to tell the teacher everything about their subject matter ever written (or close to it)? Why do we have homecoming kings and queens when we know popularity contests are detrimental to student self image and confidence?....I suppose I’ll let the other stuff go. Prom is okay, I like Prom. Cheerleaders enjoy what they’re doing, I guess I just don’t understand it. The research on football / CTE / brain damage is still not conclusive.
All the same, the answers to these questions usually end with “that’s how we’ve done it before”...and that is not an acceptable answer. We are hobbling technology’s ability to improve our education systems by doing things the way we’ve always done them. In other words, “The process and values that constitute an organization's capabilities in one context, define its disabilities in another context “
Rule 5 - Technology Supply May Not Equal Market Demand
This one relates more to tech coordinators than admin, as it focuses on the pace at which companies should change in relation to how people are using their products. It’s still worth listing and discussing. Christensen:
“Disruptive technologies, though they initially can only be used in small markets remote from the mainstream, are disruptive because they subsequently can become fully performance-competitive within the mainstream market against established products….this happens because the pace of technological progress in products frequently exceeds the rate of performance improvement that mainstream customers demand or can absorb. As a consequence, products whose features and functionality closely match market needs today often follow a trajectory of improvement by which they overshoot mainstream market needs tomorrow….when this happens,the criteria by which customers choose one product over another changes. When the performance of two or more competing products has improved beyond what the market demands, customers can no longer base their choice upon which is the higher performing product. The basis of product choice often evolves from functionality to reliability, then to convenience, and, ultimately, to price.”
The pace of technological progress in products "frequently exceed the rate of performance improvements that mainstream customers demand or can absorb" could not apply more to the educational tech world. It all moves faster than our organizations, as currently structured, are able to absorb.
Sometimes, the ed tech world falls guilty for the trap of thinking it can absorb more than it can. It’s the “just give me what’s next" mentality that, in my opinion, is seen in things like teachers putting Amazon Alexa’s in their classroom or districts adopting new, $1000 dollar smart-boards in every room without asking: How is this addressing the needs of our learners?
Also, "The basis of product choice often evolves from functionality to reliability, then to convenience, and, ultimately, to price," sounds like a wordy catch phrase for every tech coordinator who decided on the Chromebooks over the Macbook Airs last year.
At 3,222 words, I’m surprised if you’re still reading. I hope these ideas don't come off as some cheap alchemy whereby I form some flawed alloy out of my half-baked ideas & Clayton Christianson's seminal work from 1997, mix it all up, and present it all as gold. All the same, I believe firmly in what I’ve shared. I'm 99% I don't want to be a principal because of it and would rather pursue the educational technology will eventually undermine the dilemma discussed here. I’m curious: What do you think?
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