Class Disrupted is an education podcast featuring author Michael Horn and Futre’s Diane Tavenner in conversation with educators, school leaders, students and other members of school communities as they investigate the challenges facing the education system in the aftermath of the pandemic — and where we should go from here. Find every episode by bookmarking our Class Disrupted page or subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Play or Spotify.
Many people talk about transforming “factory-model schools” to “learner-centered” models. Or replacing them. That’s not new.
Much of the conversation Diane Tavenner and Michael Horn had last season on Class Disrupted centered around the notion of three models of learning that moved from “Horizon 1” (today’s factory-model schools) to “Horizon 3” — schools that fully transcend the industrial model of schooling.
In this episode, the hosts discuss how existing school models, despite efforts to innovate, remain constrained by the foundational structures, policies, funding mechanisms, and data systems rooted in the industrial era. The conversation explores how a future core could focus more on individualized learning pathways, competency-based progress, unbundled educator roles and funding tied directly to learners. Throughout, Tavenner and Horn talk about the need to build this new core with models of schooling that truly prioritize each student’s unique trajectory, leverage advances in technology, and respond to growing public demand for meaningful change in education.
Listen to the episode below. A full transcript follows.
Diane Tavenner: Hey, Michael.
Michael Horn: Hey, Diane. Good to see you.
Diane Tavenner: I’ve been thinking about this conversation we’re about to have all summer long.
Michael Horn: I know you have. We’ve met up a few times and had this conversation off camera, but like at various levels of maturity, and we’ve been thinking about it, I think, in some shape or form, probably since we first started recording Class Disrupted, arguably before that, Diane.
Diane Tavenner: I think that’s true. And it, I mean, it definitely falls into this sort of, this is our life’s work category. I think for us, in so many ways, it’s like our origin story, as you said, the origin of our friendship and the foundation of the collaboration, at least where we met and came together about these ideas.
Michael Horn: Yeah, I think that’s right. So we’re probably getting like mysterious and dramatic for folks at the moment. So we should probably pull back the curtain on like the noun of what we’re actually talking about here and succumb to the English teacher in you, Diane. But today we’re going to go deep on the quote unquote industrial model of schooling. I know a lot of people don’t like that phrase. We’re using it. We think it works. But rather than focusing on just the problem side of that, we’re going to come with yet, yep, yet another framework for what comes after it in my mind and the beginning of a proposal for what that could be.
We used the Horizon 1, 2, 3 last year. I think it was useful as conversation starters go, and I think it left us both feeling like we can do better. So this is continuing to iterate on this, and you’ve been doing a ton of thinking about this.
The industrial model of schooling
Diane Tavenner: I have been a little obsessive about it, and I agree with all of that. Maybe perhaps we’re even coming a little bit with a hypothesis for how we could get to what could be. Because at the end of the day, you can talk about this all day long, but unless we’re moving it forward, it doesn’t feel very productive or satisfying. And so, yeah, I think that this is like a lens that we’re going to use to think about this season. And for me, I think it’s going to be really helpful as we engage with all of the guests over the course of the season to think about things in this way.
Michael Horn: I think that’s exactly right and takes us further into sort of the nuance, if you will, of this AI conversation that continues to percolate. What is it going to do to the future of schooling, et cetera, et cetera? We’re sort of trying to create a place, if you will, to have those conversations en route. Hey, are you talking about improving the existing system? Are you talking about building something new? It sort of grounds us, I think, in all those conversations and hopefully makes it more practical. Frankly, as we go through the podcast season, Diane.
Diane Tavenner: Yeah. And so, maybe without further ado, should we dive in?
Michael Horn: Yeah, let’s do it. As we sort of said, like, you’ve been doing a lot of thinking on this. You’ve been convening a lot of different small groups around this conversation, iterating and so forth. So, maybe like, let’s start there. How are you defining the old system model, whatever you’d call it, and the new? Like, ground us in what are we talking about here? And as we said, not just on the problem side, like what are we building toward?
New models of schooling
Diane Tavenner: Yeah, so I’m going to use words, and these are, these are, as you suggested, these are words some people don’t like, don’t feel comfortable with. I’m not even 100% sure that the word I’m going to use for the new version is going to be the word, but we can talk about that, and certainly open to suggestions, but we’ll just use them in a disciplined way so people know what we’re talking about. So, I think the place I want to start is we’ve used the word model for a very long time, for as long as we’ve been talking about this. And we’ve often called it the industrial model. And then there’s a lot of conversation about, well, if it’s, you know, what’s the new model, you know, and the easiest title is post-industrial model, but that is, you know, certainly not going to work, definitely not inspiring. And so I think the first place to go is to say there’s an industrial model and a post-industrial model. But what became really clear and how I think I’ve been updating my thinking in a lot of these conversations is the model is really describing the school, if you will. And it’s what we can see and it’s what we can touch and what we go to and send our kids to.
And what that conversation has been missing, I think, is a delineation between the school model and then the system, or what I’m calling the core, that it sits on top of. And so I think that it’s probably more fair to call the core — the industrial core — if you will, because so many people, and we know them and we’ve been in them and I’ve started them, are trying to build school models that move away from that industrial core or that industrial system, and they have elements of something updated and different, but the core is still fully industrial. So I guess place one to start is a difference between a school model and the underlying core that all schools end up sitting on top of right now.
Michael Horn: Yeah, let me just jump in there with a couple thoughts, which is one, I think this fits very nicely with frankly how we’ve thought about disruption over the years, which is that you have a business model that is disruptive to another model. And one of the reasons I think, just to say, like, we weren’t wrong to talk about models historically, right?
Is that technology just layered into an existing model, operating model, business model, whatever, learning model, whatever we call it, is only going to make that model more efficient, sort of improve it as it’s designed to function. It’s not going to fundamentally transform that model, hence our obsession with designing new models and then thinking about technology in that context.
Diane Tavenner: Right.
Michael Horn: But the other thing, and Clay said this, gosh, it’s in Disrupting Class in chapter 5, which was systems disrupt systems. It’s not that a point solution comes along and like turns it over completely. And we’ve thought about that as a, like business models are part of a value network or an ecosystem in some ways. And Tom Arnett at the Christensen Institute writes a lot about this. And it’s that value network that has sort of synonymous or different rhythms that are mutually reinforcing among the different parts and plug-and-play compatible with each other.
Diane Tavenner: Right.
Michael Horn: And that’s sort of — so I think it’s a useful delineation. Let me, let me say one more thing quickly about why I think maybe we’ve conflated them historically.
Diane Tavenner: Yeah.
Michael Horn: Which I think is that there’s only been really one model in the industrial core. And so they felt almost analogous or the same.
Diane Tavenner: Right.
Michael Horn: As opposed to realizing there actually could be many models that plug into a post-industrial system or core.
Diane Tavenner: There could. And I do think that there are, if you think about the breadth of schools that exist right now, no one would say, oh, that school’s exactly like that school’s exactly like that school. And so I think that we imagine different school models right now. I think what I’m arguing is all those existing models are still sitting on a single, whether you call it a system, and I don’t call it a system for some reason, for, because it gets confusing because we have systems of schools right now. So I’m calling it the core to try to really be clear.
Michael Horn: OK.
Diane Tavenner: The industrial core, all of those different looking schools, whether they be CTE or project-based or competency-based or what, are still sitting on the industrial core because I would argue that is our ecosystem being another word, or, you know, that is this huge gravitational pull that just ultimately pulls you back to the industrial model.
Michael Horn: I’m having this big unlock as you say that, which is a lot of those models you just alluded to. I think the reason they don’t take off is that they’ve made some very compromising accommodations to the industrial core to kind of fit in, right? Because like college is part of that core. Our testing systems are part of that core. Transcripts, how employers— like all that stuff is part of that core, right?
Diane Tavenner: Yeah.
Michael Horn: And so they’ve kind of had to fit in in uncomfortable ways. And so I actually think maybe the cardinal sin has been not building a new core, if you will, by them and sort of accommodating that. But however you read it, I think that’s how I, in my head, some of these models that we named even last year that I would think are more naturally post-industrial.
Diane Tavenner: Yes.
Michael Horn: They have been trying to plug into the industrial core and therefore have made a variety of compromises and not scaled, I think.
Diane Tavenner: Well, and I don’t know that they want to plug into the—
Michael Horn: Well, and they could change, right? I think some of those are probably better suited to changing and could hit escape velocity in something different, in a new core or ecosystem.
Diane Tavenner: Yeah. If the new core ecosystem existed, that’s where their aim is, their vision potentially. But right now they’re just stuck in the core that we have, which is industrial. And so let’s just define what the core is. It’s this set of elements that collectively create this required foundation on which every school is built. And they have an industrial point of view. I don’t want to spend forever here. People have PhDs in this problem, right? Like, it’s not worth retreading this forever.
I know that’s somewhat of an oversimplification, but at the end of the day, they have an industrial point of view, which is much more about the system than any individual in it. And so maybe that’s how I would say that. I think that this collection of elements is quite as designed, efficient and elegant for what it was designed to do. And I think the problem is it’s just no longer aligned with our current society needs, who we are, what we want. And so it’s out of date. And so I think we’ve been feeling that pressure, you know, collectively for a while. We know it intuitively that it’s out of date, but we can’t seem to escape it. And so part of that, you know, strategy to build a new one is to really get crisp and clear and define it and wrap our arms around it so that we can build something new.
Proposing the Precision Core
Diane Tavenner: And, you know, as you know, I’m proposing that the new core, at least let’s call it working title, the Precision Core versus the Industrial Core, is different in that it’s still this collection of, you know, coherent elements of systems of education in schools. But in my view, it has a humanistic point of view versus an industrial point of view. And it is proposed to realize different outcomes than the industrial model was. Specifically, in my mind, it’s about literally every single human and child. The industrial system was like, how do we get enough people to do enough things for our society, but there’s going to be waste. There’s going to be people who fall out. There’s going to be people who it doesn’t work for. And this one is literally about, no, how do we focus on every single individual? And it leverages new technologies and tools that just didn’t exist when we invented and created the industrial core.
So that’s probably the simplest definition, I would say.
Michael Horn: No, it’s super. And let me just maybe point out a couple of things that it does, right? One, it goes away from calling the new core post-industrial, so defining by what it isn’t into something that it ideally is. You’ve chosen the word precision. For a lot of folks, that’s going to connote precision medicine, nutrition, like all sorts of things. Robin Bagley, our friend, Center for Education Reform, has long, sorry, Center for Reinventing Public Education by ASU. Terrible little mistake there. So Robin has been making this argument for precision learning. This is slightly different, I think, to what you’re talking about here.
I will say, like, I’m still not sure what we should call it. I kind of wonder if it should be more reflective of the society and economy and culture into which people are living, which is sort of analogous to how the industrial one is named or misnamed. But like TBD on that, I think. Yeah, I don’t think you’re trying to go down the rabbit hole of precision. Therefore, every single person has like a very prescribed, known-in-advance sort of way to optimize their learning. It’s not this sort of deterministic language that you’re using that for.
Thoughts on Individual Vision
Diane Tavenner: And that’s the piece about precision that I don’t love. What I do like about precision, to get super nerdy here, it is in my mind about each individual person having, you know, a vision for what they want and for their life and that being unique to them and that we can and will support that. And that’s what we’re helping them, you know, launch into and get ready for and prepare for. And that the elements of that, you know, healthy, good, fulfilling life. create a good society because when individuals are engaged in healthy, good, you know, human behaviors, humanistic behaviors that are good for them, that’s good for the collective as well. And so it does put the individual first versus the society first, which I think is important. But what I love about this is when we start to— we’re already starting to have the conversation that I want to provoke, which is like, what could the new one be? You know, and like, let’s actually talk about that versus anchoring it to what the old one is.
Michael Horn: And you’ve also created the room for like, so you made the point there are different school models in the industrial core, but like it’s fairly tightly bounded, I would argue. Potentially like there’s room for lots of different looking models and even unschooling, if you will, like, or post-schooling sort of approaches, if you will, if you start thinking about what is this individual trying to accomplish and what do they need to get to make progress along that pathway.
Diane Tavenner: I agree. I totally agree. Let’s pause for a moment on like where the core like is encoded. And then maybe let’s talk about what it is, what the elements of it are, the current industrial core. And then we can start contrasting that with ideas of what the precision core could be.
Michael Horn: Perfect.
Diane Tavenner: But I think for me, the easiest way to think about where the industrial core is encoded, it’s certainly in policy, and that’s not surprising to anyone. People think about policy a lot. I would say it’s encoded in policy, and then policy drives finance, and that’s a huge part of this. The money drives so much of the industrial core driven by the policy. It’s also encoded in case law and legal precedent because we’ve built that up. over time. And then, so I think people think about those things. I think they think less about it being encoded in, I’m just going to say the databases, but in the technology.
And I don’t think people spend as much time realizing that like all of the database infrastructure, so every SIS system and element, you know, all of the systems that we use to run our schools are built with the industrial model in mind, you know, as the basis.
Michael Horn: Yeah.
Challenges with legacy data systems
Diane Tavenner: I see I slipped. The industrial core elements as how they structure their data, how they think about their data, how data is organized, which is one of the things that the newer AI, you know, driven companies who are trying to replace this are running into, is that they can’t plug into these old databases because their data is not structured in that that way. It’s different data, you know, and we can dive into that a little bit. But so, structured in the technology, and then of course in the culture. I mean, the industrial core is such a part of our culture. It’s a core feature of our culture. And so, there’s just a lot of familiarity and human behavior and assumptions that hold that core, I think.
Michael Horn: Yeah, and 2 layers of that culture, right? One is, I would argue, within the system itself. I like defining organizational culture, right, as shared processes and priorities people unconsciously follow whenever they are tackling or operating or making progress against problems. And the bigger C culture, right, of society.
Diane Tavenner: Yeah.
Michael Horn: I think it operates at both of those. On the data side, just quickly on this, my friend Matt Potinsky, who started— one of the co-founders of Blackboard, and now once again the head of Blackboard Learning Management System, who I’m glad he has written that it should be called a course management system or not a learning management system, because it’s historically had very little to do with learning. He’s been making the argument in a series of papers that with AI now it can move to fundamentally being about learning. The argument back I’ve had with him is, as long as you are implementing it within the current, I’ll use the word core instead of system.
Diane Tavenner: Yeah.
Michael Horn: That core is always going to co-opt it back to the underlying operating logic. And the only way it’ll work is like really truly rebuilding that with all that AI can do. I totally agree with all the things he names, but I think it has to get rooted, I would call a different value network, different core, right?
Diane Tavenner: Yeah.
Michael Horn: Of set of institutions and actors. And the challenging thing, right, for a company like Blackboard building that, or any of these companies of SIS, et cetera, the incumbents, is by definition those markets are going to be uncertain, small, scattered, not clear at the moment in terms of the where, and it’s going to be really hard to build for it in a very clear way.
Diane Tavenner: And I think you’re just naming why we can’t get out of the industrial core is because all these individual folks who are well-intentioned, they have the good right ideas, you know, although, they can’t do it alone. They sort of can’t escape the orbit, if you will, and get out of it because there’s too many things lined up against them, which, you know, will speak to the strategy I think we’re going to have to have in order— if this is true and people believe in it, it’s going to require a strategy that I don’t think we’ve yet deployed to build a new core, a precision core.
Michael Horn: Well, so maybe what else would you say we need to understand about this precision core that you’re naming to sort of start to picture where, like, where it sits and how we encode it? And, or is it better to think how we build it next? Where do you want to go?
Diane Tavenner: Well, I don’t think— let’s dive into the elements, if you will. And so one of the things I’ve been doing is really trying to get very crisp and clear and map the aspects and elements of the industrial core And then I, in my own thinking, I contrast that to what I think would exist in the precision core. And I don’t know that it will ever be like a perfect one-to-one, but I think for now it’s like a good place to start. I feel confident that we’re doing a decent job of describing the industrial core elements. And I would say that the precision core, that these are hypotheses I have, these are my point of view right now, but they’re—
Michael Horn: Well, and just to name it, right? This is why there’s so much angst right now, I would argue in general, around all these conversations is because they feel squishy still and undefined.
Diane Tavenner: Yeah. And that’s what I would love to do is get to a place that, and these are, you alluded to these conversations that I’m having and like these paper writings and these big discussions with people of like being in a really inspiring and exciting conversation with so many people about what could we build and let’s dream about what is possible and let’s let’s move to that dialogue as like, how, what would the new Precision Core be or include? And so, but, but this has been a little bit theoretical, so maybe getting a little more—
Michael Horn: Yeah, so like dive in. Yeah, list it out.
Portrait of a Graduate
Diane Tavenner: So here’s what I think the core elements are, the ones that I’ve been playing with. So the diploma requirements, you know, and this might be a little provocative, the Portrait of a Graduate. So for many people, Portrait of a Graduate feels new, it feels fresh, it feels like the thing we’re doing, I would argue a portrait of a graduate is still industrial core. And the reason being, it literally describes that every single child in a community is going to come out of high school with the same features, you know, all the same as our friend Todd Rose says, exactly the same, only better than the other one. And so, you know, really what that is, it’s just like this minimum bar average requirement of what society thinks an 18-year-old should look like. and everyone sort of looks the same. So that’s one core element. Maybe I’ll just contrast that with what I think it could look like in the Precision Core before we jump into the other one.
Michael Horn: Perfect.
Diane Tavenner: So I think my hypothesis is, and it’s a double hypothesis, is that in the precision core, like every single young person develops, and I’m gonna call it a working hypothesis because it is working, it’s a journey, a working hypothesis of the life that they wanna live and the pathway or pathways that they could take to get into that life. And the role of the institution or the school could be to validate that, you know, that’s a legit pathway. You could get to that life if you, you know, get this degree or that license or this certification or you have these experiences. And that high school graduation is just a waypoint on that pathway. I mean, realistically, I think we know this. It’s not the thing that will launch you into the ultimate life that you wanna live. It’s just not, you won’t be there yet at age 18. And so we recognize that high school graduation is sort of along that pathway and a milestone.
And that is what graduation requirements are. They’re very precise to that young person and personal to them and therefore motivating to them and focused on the things that they will need in order to get to the life that they want, which sort of takes us out, as you might imagine, of all these arguments about what are the things that every single person needs to know and focuses more on, you know, what do— does each individual need for the life that they want? So that’s like element 1 of maybe 10.
Michael Horn: Well, quick, just sort of observation. Let’s keep rolling through the others that you’ve brainstormed. The observation would be these outcomes are precise to them, hence your name, right? Because, and I keep coming back to that because I’m struggling, right, with this. So I’m thinking it through. And then the second part of that, so sorry, that’s focused on outcomes, not the inputs or how we get there.
Diane Tavenner: Yeah.
Michael Horn: The second piece I’ll just name is, in some ways, while the core obviously is the full system, pre-K through gray, if you will, In some ways, what this is doing is renaming the destination of that K-12 piece of it around the secondary school model part of it and sort of redefining the core around that secondary piece. And the only reason I bring that up is I do think in primary years in particular, there are reasons to think some uniformity around preservation of society and culture make more sense. And that as a child is getting older, it makes increasingly less sense, particularly in this world. And so that’s one of the things that I think the way you just define that, like, makes that explicit, if you’re comfortable with—
Diane Tavenner: No, I’m totally. And as you know, this— I’m thinking very much sort of adolescence right now. I’m not— nothing I’m saying is about, I think, the younger years. And as anyone who’s listened knows, that’s not my area of expertise. That’s not where I spend my time. Amazing people there. And I’m very interested in how we can. But this is very much about sort of the adolescent years, if you will.
Michael Horn: Perfect. Let’s keep rolling through your other elements.
Reimagining student transcripts
Diane Tavenner: Well, as a companion to graduation requirements or diploma requirements, a portrait of a graduate is obviously the transcript. This has gotten a lot of attention over the years. I mean, people have tried to remake this, but, but literally the transcript in the industrial core is where an accredited institution records the amount of time a young person has spent on sort of generically described general body of knowledge and a subjective and uncalibrated assessment of their grasp of that knowledge. I mean, that, that’s literally what it is. And I think in the precision core, and, you know, we’ve seen people try to move to this place, is it’s much more of a narrative that accompanies a portfolio of what they know and what they can do and how they contribute. From my view, where I think it differs from some of the stuff we’ve seen, for example, mastery transcript and whatnot have tried to move here, is that I think it should be the young person’s narrative and much less emphasis on the institution really narrating what the young person can do, but rather their role become as the validator of what that young person is narrating. And I, you know, you get these impure portfolio presentations, but you don’t see it in transcripts. And for me, what is important about that is, you know, what gets a young person opportunity in the world and careers and their first job is their ability to say and talk about what it is they can do and what they can offer and what, you know, they will bring.
And I think we’ve so offloaded any responsibility for that from the young person in the industrial core system that they never have to do that. And so they don’t know. And we spend no, almost no time helping them really think about that. And so that’s my current—
Michael Horn: It resonates. I mean, it comes out of your work of Prepared. It’s why we see so many people struggle to launch or even know where to launch toward. I think the place that I continue to be curious about in this particular area is, it doesn’t seem to me it’s one institution that is validating that because it’s my individual record, right, and narrative. Several different institutions could validate that. And how do we give recognition or sort of seals of approval to what those institutions, small i, if you will, are? And I think that’s going to be a moving target as we build out this, this new core.
Diane Tavenner: I agree.
Michael Horn: So let’s get into your next element. Transcript was the second.
Diane Tavenner: Yeah, and I think there’s a little group— grouping that comes next.
Michael Horn: Perfect. Why don’t you list— why don’t you just tick off a bunch of them?
School grading and scheduling system
Diane Tavenner: Yeah, I think it’s grade levels or the idea of grades, age-based grades, course by subject, the master schedule, which obviously defines a lot of this, and then seat time. And, you know, seat time’s connected to transcripts, so we’ve started to go there already, this idea that there’s this specific amount of time that’s allocated to learning specific things. You know, those are then defined by grade levels. So you’re going to learn these things, you know, during 3rd grade. Well, not talking about 3rd grade, 9th grade, 10th grade, 12th grade. And you’re going to learn them in courses that are subject-oriented. So English, science, math. And so that whole bundle, and then the master schedule, which situates, you know, all of those courses in very various time blocks by grade levels and over a period of time.
So it’s all that sort of, you know, what we often refer to in many ways is the egg crate, you know, like these little boxes that get put together. And so I think the big concept there in the industrial core is the time is fixed. It is the original sort of box that’s created. And then the learning gets stuffed into those and organized in those boxes. And if you’re an individual who takes longer or shorter, you know, periods of time or is ready earlier than your age suggests, it doesn’t matter. That doesn’t work for you. And we’ve seen so many efforts and contortions to try to like expand and move out of that. And of course, the whole competency-based approach doesn’t— Masterywork is fighting against this part of the core constantly.
And so I think when you look to the precision core, obviously you’re going to see some of the stuff that looks familiar. to us. So it is competency-based progressions and mastery-based progressions. It is this idea that the learning is the fixed element, not the time, and the time becomes flexible. And I would add in there, interdisciplinary. It’s not by subject. And so now you move into the efforts around project-based learning and, you know, inquiry-based learning that are less about a subject and more about a more holistic look at things. So I think this bundle, we’ve done a ton of work on as a field of what it could look like in the precision world, but we just keep getting pulled back by the industrial core.
Michael Horn: Yeah, I largely agree with that. And I think for someone that maybe has an allergy and says like, oh, but you need to learn this concept in chemistry in this way, I think what you just described, that can be an okay outcome for the kid for whom it makes sense, right? Like it doesn’t— it is much more based on the individual’s journey as opposed to an absolute way of these things wending together, if you will.
Diane Tavenner: Right. This is where the advancements in technology are so exciting because, you know, we now have all of these knowledge graphs that we can use and there’s just so much possible where before when it was like paper and pencil, you couldn’t possibly track like all the pieces that someone could learn or would learn and the orders and the sequences that would make sense. And now you can really individualize it in a way that is super exciting.
Michael Horn: 100%. And I think the learning— the one thing that I’ve evolved on a little bit, as you know, is the learning a fixed language. I think the bigger point is that learning is the currency as opposed to time. Because a kid might also be on the path of learning whatever it is, and midway through be like, this really isn’t actually in my pathway. And as long as they can articulate that, it’s okay, it can be unfinished. But we’re also not going to like give a mark, if you will, for like, you got a C in X. It’s more like you didn’t master it. Time didn’t run out on you.
It’s just unfinished, but it’s not on your portfolio, if you will, in your narrative, because it’s not something that’s mastered. So, learning really becomes that currency connected to the individual’s narrative, I think.
Diane Tavenner: I love that. I love that. I love the way you just explained that, that I think that’s exactly right. Yeah.
Michael Horn: Let’s keep pushing though. What else do you got?
Diane Tavenner: Oh, well, I think the next couple go together. So then we’ve got, you know, in the industrial core, the concept of a scope and sequence and curriculum that really defines, okay, what are we going to do inside all of those time blocks and whatnot? And that is most often created by, or at least facilitated by and administered by and evaluated by credentialed teachers as the grantors of credit and the evaluators. standards, and there you have grades. And so, you know, here in this bundle in the industrial core, you’ve got a large set of standards that are grouped and sort of sliced and diced to put into different places. And then you’ve got a credentialed teacher who sort of controls and records, you know, the— is in charge of the pedagogy and the timing and the sequencing of all of those things. And then most importantly, they are the person who certifies whether or not the student learned, whatever it was in that egg crate little container. And in my view, in the Precision Core, and I think this is a bucket that people get really anxious around when you talk about doing something different. I think there’s a huge opportunity here, a huge exciting opportunity here, but we have to deal with, I think, a lot of feeling and emotion and worry about the people.
Customizing education with precision core
Diane Tavenner: But what I think is exciting here is that young people who have this working hypothesis of the life they want, we really can now sort of customize, if you will, a scope and sequence of their learning. And as you just said, you know, they could be persisting down a path and then, you know, shift their focus or change their mind. I think that for me, one of the most exciting ideas about the Precision Core is that the role of the educator gets unbundled. If you will, so one person doesn’t have to try to be this superhuman and be expert at, you know, learning science and pedagogy and curriculum writing and facilitation and evaluation and all of those pieces. We can unbundle those roles and have people be more focused and more expert, and we can leverage technology to do some of the evaluation and feedback in ways that is faster, more precise, you know, less biased, etc. And doesn’t contain the conflict that, you know, I believe deeply that teachers are conflict— they’re put in this conflicted role of teaching and coaching and evaluating, which is a conflict of interest in my view and always has been and creates a lot of problems. And so there’s just a huge opportunity here where we’re focused on demonstrations of competency versus just like moving through a sequence at a specified pace.
So lots of exciting possibility there.
Michael Horn: Yeah, there’s a lot of strong agreement, excitement around this, as you know, from me. The one quick thing I’ll just say for those, it does create a lot of angst. The really interesting thing is this is a place where I think there’s room for integrity to each side, if you will, different values. So, you know, the people that are sort of concerned about like the lack of rigor or independent validation around grading today or whatnot, or grade inflation, This should give you a lot of excitement, right? Like, there’s going to be third-party evaluators with real learning science behind the assessment, et cetera, et cetera. For those that get really exercised, and I might be teasing where you’re going, with sort of like a very narrow way of assessment that occurs today, what we call standardized assessments, that might even be generous to what we do, then like this creates actually a lot of potential, at least for innovation around that.
But it is going to require psychometricians to rethink, I think, sort of valid and reliable and try to figure out what are the constructs these things actually really indicate about, about an individual and what they can do. But I think it creates, it’s sort of an interesting compromise, I think, in some of these camps, if you will, that is not a compromise. It actually creates the room for a lot more innovation, rigor, and excitement.
Diane Tavenner: I think there’s so many exciting things that happened in that set of things in the precision core, that the precision core makes possible. You’ve gone to, you know, we’re down to the last few here, and these next 2 I think are bucketed together, which are standardized benchmarks and year-end assessments, and then accountability systems that are based on those assessments. And, you know, all those systems just reinforce and fortify grade levels, subjects, seat time, scope and sequence, everything we’ve just listed, you know, the reporting is focused on the system. It’s not focused on the individual. It’s not designed to help you as an individual. In fact, there’s always these caveats like, this is not actually, you know, designed for use in figuring out what a young person could or should do next. I think this is one of the more very exciting places, and there’s people trying to push here to design what could be part of the precision core, but they keep running up against, you know, being pulled back, and this is where assessment is on demand or ambient, again, using the technology tools we have. Your results are instant, they’re transparent, they’re actionable by the learner and the people who are supporting the learner.
They’re focused on real world, you know, and actual desired outcomes, and I think they can also balance institutional and individual, you know, responsibility and accountability. And so, to me, again, another really exciting part of what could be possible is this piece.
Michael Horn: You’re going to hate the analogy I’m going to use right now to try to explain this, but I think it’s actually— stick with me for a moment. I want people to imagine the College Board’s Advanced Placement exams, particularly like AP Art and stuff like that. And I want you to now imagine that that can be given on demand whenever a learner is ready to raise their hand and say, I’m ready to show mastery of X, and your transcript is in effect some set of these markers of the things that you have mastered and shown mastery of in lots of different ways, right? It can be composition, it can be performance, it could be sitting in a proctored conversation of some sort. Like, you can imagine lots of these. In a very sort of next-gen, untethered from whatever May date AP European History today is given. That’s why you’re going to hate the analogy. But just as helping people, I think, get their head around, oh, we actually have some analogues that if we just sort of imagine now a next-gen version of it, what it can be. I actually think we have elements of this that we can move toward in some pretty neat ways, given AI and the advances that at the moment.
Diane Tavenner: So many. I think you’re pointing to 2 things, and we’ll finish off this last element of the industrial core, and then maybe we can go to the strategy or how we get there, because that is where I think we’re pulled. But I think you’re pointing out 2 really important things. The first is that we have done— we, the collective we, the field— has done so thinking about and experimenting with and trying on elements of what I think will go into the precision core. So it’s not like we’re starting from scratch here by any stretch of the imagination. I think there’s so much that exists in the world that can be deployed into an effort around building a true precision core. So just illustrating how it’s like we flow from the model, the school model, into the core and back and forth between the two, you know, like how those two interact is really critical. And I think that is for me the biggest unlock of this summer is like really delineating the two from each other and then understanding their relationship to each other, so.
Michael Horn: Well, it bleeds into your last element, I think.
Diane Tavenner: It does, which is funding. And so in the industrial core, funding goes to accredited institutions for the most part, some unaccredited, but we’ll leave those aside for the most part. Accredited institutions get the funding and then they choose how to deploy it. I think that in a Precision Core, and again, this is an example of where we got lots of stuff happening that’s moving in this direction, the money’s allocated to young people to become educated. And it’s a real flip in the mindset of what does that mean for your Core in your system when you flip it from we’re giving it to institutions to do, to educate kids versus we’re giving it to young people to become educated. Yeah. So.
Michael Horn: And I think this bleeds into the how do we get there one. And so let me just dwell on this for a moment because I think there’s some principles of the funding. I don’t think this is someone who signs up for something and funding is allocated. I think it’s instead much more like an account where I have funds from which I’m making these decisions to make progress and making important— making trade-offs along the way, which is actually important, where I’m having to say, gosh, do I want to go do X or am I going Y? And I, as a young person, therefore have reflection and opportunity to think about it. I think this bleed— so you referenced it, there are a lot of education savings accounts, scholarships, a bunch of things going on right now that I think move in exciting ways toward this direction. My big concern about a couple of those is twofold. One, some of them are putting in requirements like, oh, the institutions to which those dollars go to must be accredited. So I think it’s pulling us back to the industrial core when that happens.
Diane Tavenner: 100%.
Michael Horn: Right. And then number 2, I think when they restrict, oh, like your first funds have to be to a tuition school-granting organization, then I’ve all of a sudden made a bunch of assumptions as well that locks in. And if you look at the policies, increasingly a lot of them are tuition first.
Diane Tavenner: Yes.
Michael Horn: I think that is also a mistake. This really needs to be about the young person’s journey and what’s right for them. Florida is an example, I think, that’s done this quite well. And you’re starting to see real innovation in how young people and families are piecing together their education in unbundled ways that I confess I think are complicated still for most people. And we’ll probably end up with your rebundled sandwich metaphor ultimately.
Diane Tavenner: I love the sandwich metaphor.
Michael Horn: But yeah, but like, I think it’s critical that we do not say, hey, 80% or whatever, you know, first has to go to a quote unquote school and then you can sort of dabble around the edges.
Diane Tavenner: Well, and I think what you’re pointing to is the ESCAs, the tax credit scholarships, all of these things are still beholden to an industrial core. And so that is why we have to work on the core at the same time we’re working on— and that’s funny because people will be like, wait a minute, these are big policies that drive finance, but they still have an industrial point of view and perspective and are still anchored into the core, I would say. And so I think that takes us to like, how do we get from— okay, well, how do we rebuild the core then? And I’ll offer, for many years there during Summit Learning, a group of us were on this exploration of how do you actually change a giant system and spent time with some of the world’s sort of experts on like, how do you change a system? I will say at one point, some of them just kind of threw up their hands. They’re like, I don’t know how you change this one. It’s so giant and crazy, but we should not lose hope. And so I think the simplest strategies that came from that work for me was, and people are not gonna like these words, but these are the words that I was told, so just, you know, bear with it, is that the first thing you have to do is to build a shadow system. And it’s an enclosed, comprehensive system. So in this particular case, that system would be a new core, a precision core, and models. So both of them, like, together, you’d have to think about how you would build them together as a system.
Growing public demand for change
Diane Tavenner: And then you have to use strategies to, quote, infect the existing system. So this whole other big system’s going on, and you’ve got to show them what’s possible and sort of infect that new system with it. And then you have to have sustained public demand. for the new thing that you’ve built. And so what makes me hopeful in this moment in time is not just the technological advancements and, you know, where we are in— it is literally, I think, a growing and sustained public demand for something different and more aligned to what we’re talking about. And decades of work on what the, you know, what is possible so we can truly dream and build, not from scratch. And so I think there’s a lot of things converging that make this, you know, we’re eternally optimistic, but that makes this the moment that we could be really making serious progress.
Michael Horn: I couldn’t agree more. I’ll go back to the thing I always say, systems disrupt systems. I know Peter Senge at MIT has made a huge set of work around how systems transform themselves. My read is that they can reform themselves, not transform. And fundamental transformation requires this shadow system that you just described. You named an important thing, which I think is also going to drive people nuts. In my view, those early versions of that shadow system are often closed, proprietary. There are a few that are actually competing with each other and not in lockstep.
It’s like when trains got built and they were all building their different gauge railway and competing, and all of a sudden they’d meet at a place and be like, the train can’t move. And then we had to sort of fight it out and come up with standards.
Diane Tavenner: Yeah.
Michael Horn: Standards are not something that are just like dictated and imposed. They are going to be demand-driven and a little bit more as these proprietary shadow systems battle it out a little bit in the trenches. And it’s going to feel messy and anxiety-inducing. And it’s not how we like to work in education. We like consensus. I just, that messiness is going to be a part of it. And people like us are going to continue, I think, to push and prod for how we can create this.
Diane Tavenner: Yeah.
Michael Horn: But that’s my ultimate read. I think the step function that I’m making also in this conversation is a bunch of those elements that have been plugging awkwardly into the industrial core, this may be your infection point, can actually be like, hey, I don’t have to make that compromise anymore. Let me flip, right? And start to be part of this. And that could unleash a lot of creativity, productivity, progress.
Diane Tavenner: I agree. I agree. Much more on the strategy, I hope, in our conversations across this season. And I hope folks will now recognize that we’re going to use this sort of as a lens and a frame in our conversations across the season. And so we’ll come back to this idea of the industrial core and the precision core, or I’m sure we’ll get a lot of suggestions about what we could potentially call it, and the difference between the core and the model. And so we’ll just try to sort of track those and keep track of that as with people across this season.
Michael Horn: Perfect. Let’s do a quick wrap-up for those who’ve stayed with us this long. Let’s bring back that segment. What are you reading, listening to, watching right now that has you excited?
Diane Tavenner: Well, I’ll be quick about this one. Michael, Ted Lasso is back.
Michael Horn: Yeah, I know. But then everyone did not give it good reviews, and I don’t know whether to jump in or not. What are you doing?
Diane Tavenner: Oh, well, I think you’ve got to jump in. That’s interesting. I wonder if something— I didn’t read the reviews, but it is about women sports and so –
Michael Horn: Oh, OK.
Diane Tavenner: Yeah, it’s Ted Lasso. You got to watch it.
Michael Horn: Is it good? You’re enjoying it? OK.
Diane Tavenner: I am enjoying it. And then a little late to the— I’m actually on track with Ted Lasso. I’m watching the weekly episode, which is kind of a throwback to childhood because it only comes out once a week. But I am a little behind. Just saw The Odyssey this weekend, the new one. And it’s fascinating. Well, we could talk about that for an hour.
Michael Horn: For so many choices. The Odyssey, I was going to see it, and then, as you know, summer blew up on me a little bit, so we have not yet. So it’s still on my list, so I’m jealous, but good for you. Yeah, I still really do want to see it.
Diane Tavenner: It’s worth it. It’s worth it.
Michael Horn: Awesome.
Diane Tavenner: I’ll say one word: redemption, which is a new feature, I think.
Michael Horn: OK, okay, says the English teacher. I could list all the books that I’ve been trying to read, but it’s— we’re recording this, it’s basically the beginning of September. It’s US Open time. Who am I kidding? I am glued to tennis at the moment.
Diane Tavenner: As always.
Michael Horn: And that, I’m just going to be honest, I’m— and despite my best efforts, I’ve been trying to avoid like work-related books, but I keep kind of failing, Diane. There’s so much coming out right now. I did really enjoy Mickey Revenaugh’s School’s Out quite a bit, for example. And those who watch my Future of Education Substack know that my daughter read it ahead of me and interviewed Mickey for our podcast, which was a trip. And this was great, Diane. Like, you would’ve loved it. She literally came up to me and was like, I finished the book, Dad. I know you haven’t read it, but these are the questions you should ask her, like a list.
And I was like, why don’t you just ask her? Right? Like, and so she did. And now my other daughter’s almost done with it as well, which is really fun.
Diane Tavenner: Wow. OK. See, I’m on a mother-son team and now you’re moving to a father-daughter team.
Michael Horn: Y’all are building. Yeah. That’s funny, right? They’ll just replace me as host though. That’s the difference. Amazing. All right. Well, for all of you tuning in, we look forward to extending this analogy and this concept together. It is the prism we’re going to be looking through all of our conversations, I think.
And you’ve heard it very clearly from the industrial core to the precision core, understanding what that looks like, how models can lock into it with a focus on secondary. Let us know what you think. Send us the hate mail, send us the good suggestions. We’re up for all of it, and we’ll see you next time on Class Disrupted.