Disrupting School at the Juncture of Teen Choice
What is the nexus of any disruptive change? Is there really an “Uber of…” K-12, particularly the public high school?
In school, the points of choice remain few. While some teens can, with their parents, choose a new school; for 90–95% of teens, that’s not really an option.
“Student choice” and “student voice” are hot topics among educators this year. These offer more options as to how, and occasionally when, learning is done. Yet few would find this adaptive, or transformative, enough to generate the school we’re seeking.
Where, then, could disruptive change take hold in education?
When Netflix changed TV, they didn’t try to change how video stores served walk-in traffic. Instead, they completely disrupted that pattern; they meet consumers at their phones and computers. UBER didn’t try to get cities to contract with their dispatchers; instead, they divert consumers by offering a new, different way to choose a ride. Going back much further, Fedex didn’t slice a week off the time it took to get a package by offering the USPS a new process; they instead diverted customers into an entirely new chain of package delivery.
At an even more transformative moment, MCI disrupted the lethargic AT&T | Bell system by unleashing an entire industry of innovation.
None of this is to suggest that the majority of students can, or should be diverted from the public high school. Not by a long shot. It tells us how we'll know when the public high school has found a truly disruptive path.
In each case above, these disrupters examined consumer choice and thought it anew. They used consumer choice to push themselves into ever-increasing improvement in meeting the end-user’s needs. High school needs such faster, broader, adaptation.
Where do teens actually have choice in learning, once they’re already enrolled in a public school?
Where do they themselves (not parents) make a decision? Where do teens— at some level — contract to provide something (effort) in return?
Nearly always, teens ‘contract’ their commitment at the course level: ‘I agree to take Band first period, Ms. Tipton’s Psychology class second, Spanish II third’. “I’ll load my courses in the morning so my free period is in the afternoon.” And lately, “I’ll take two dual-enrollment classes when I’m a senior.”
For most teens, course choice is the only point of consumer choice. Teens can’t choose if they go to school, and only rarely can they choose where they go. The when — and for how long, and how fast — constraints are usually set by adults. The what is almost always limited to content/skills the school wants to teach.
So it only makes sense that, to give teens more power, we should give them far more choices at the level of the semester course. 2016’s connected world gives teens the expectations of far more choice. Fortunately, it can also help us offer them realistic opportunities for just such fine-grained choice.
How?
A Ready-Made Lab of Teen Choice
As it happens, Ohio gives every teen the legal right to just such choice and control. Every teen now has the right to sign a custom learning contract. They can do so for one or for many courses. The possibilities are nearly endless.
Moreover, we’ve worked out a process to give teens even finer-grained control. Using open badges and prototypical learning blueprints, teens can choose from a wealth of learning. Often, teens can even design their own course.
However they choose, they’ll get the guidance to help them identify the right earning and to sync their work with semester half-credits. This guidance will build up a community of connected learning partners.
A Hundred Remarkable New High School ‘Courses’.
While it takes far more space to describe the benefits of switching to this new high school OS, let’s paint one small picture.
Imagine that students at an 800-student rural, Appalachian high school find, in 2017, nearly a hundred new course opportunities. Not just online video-and-multiple choice courses, but deep, completely rethought course approaches that engage them, press their creative limits, and have been vetted by teachers and fellow students alike.
Imagine that these courses take them away from screens, away from the building itself, and immerse them in aspects of their surrounding community. And imagine, that the community as a result, finds itself far more vested in the high schools and students it calls its own.
Ed Jones is author of the forthcoming book Hacking High School: Making School Work for All Teens. He is bootstrapping A Statewide Laboratory for Student-Driven Learning, and looking to test a new High School OS.
