Customization in education will become the new normal

customized apple 2This spring’s legislative sessions have not been kind to the parental choice movement. Important bills have died in New York, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arizona, and a modest Florida bill had a bumpy ride before clearing the Legislature last week.

But while choice advocates fear these setbacks signal that the movement is losing momentum, I don’t. Parental choice in K-12 education is part of a larger cultural transition that is rooted in new digital technologies.

As Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee explain in their recent book, “The Second Machine Age,” we are living through a second, technology-driven industrial revolution. The first industrial revolution made urbanization and mass production possible, and led to the creation of our current one-size-fits-all, assembly line model of public education.

This second revolution is being driven by new digital technologies that are changing how we organize and manage ourselves and our organizations. These changes include increased customization of products and services, more decentralized management systems, and greater empowerment of workers and consumers.

Because they are government monopolies, school districts have been able to resist these systemic changes better than others. But ultimately, public education will succumb to the transformational powers of digital technology, and customization will replace uniformity as public education’s primary organizing principle.

Magnet schools, charter schools, vouchers, open enrollment, virtual schools, dual enrollment, tax credit scholarships and homeschooling are all part of public education’s embracing of empowerment and customization. But despite all the contentious debate around parental choice programs, the new online state assessments are the primary vehicles that will drive public education’s digital and organizational revolution. As formative and summative online assessments become ubiquitous, teaching and learning will become more digitally embedded since we can’t teach students in non-digital environments and then assess them digitally. This digitalization of teaching, learning and assessment will then lead to greater customization.

As this shift to customization accelerates, many current ways of work will be redesigned.

For example, public education’s current practice of allowing school districts to control education spending is an obstacle to customization. Consequently, Dr. Mathew Ladner, a customization advocate, has developed a plan for government-regulated, parent-controlled educational spending accounts that is being piloted in Arizona.

Under Dr. Ladner’s plan, public funds are deposited in an account that parents draw on to purchase educational services from government-approved providers. Shifting control of public education funds from school districts to parents promotes customization by enabling parents to match their children with the learning options that best meet their needs.

As parents assume more control over their children’s education, implementing systems to help them make good decisions will become increasingly important. Most of us have primary care physicians to help us select the best health care options. Similar assistance should be provided to empowered parents as they seek the best educational options for their children.

Accountability takes on new meaning in a customized public education system. Instead of focusing primarily on school performance, the focus shifts to student performance. In a customized system, every child has a personalized learning plan and accountability means ensuring each child is meeting his or her learning goals. Schools and other government-approved learning providers are primarily held accountable by the choices parents make. If a provider is not meeting a child’s needs, the child’s parent can switch her and her public funding to another provider.

The digitalization of teaching, learning and assessment will capture a plethora of data on each child.  Much of this data will be essential for informing teachers and parents about how children are progressing and what interventions are needed to enhance their progress. But privacy and data management will be concerns that needs to be addressed.

As we’ve seen in industries from newspapers to the U.S. Postal Service, the disruptions caused by digital technologies are painful. So the political resistance we’re seeing from school districts and teachers unions to parental choice is to be expected. These traditionalists will achieve some legislative victories, as we’ve seen this spring. But these are short-term wins.

The digital revolution will inevitably transform public education. Customization will become the new normal.


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BY Doug Tuthill

A lifelong educator and former teacher union president, Tuthill has been president of Step Up For Students since August 2008.

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