Last week I wrote two blogs on two seemingly unrelated trends in K-12 public education in America. Both however relate to each other because they intersect at the heart of Matchbook Learning’s strategy.
The first blog and trend was on the rising trend of States creating turnaround districts to intervene and takeover over their bottom 5% schools and partner with outside organizations to turn them around. Matchbook Learning launched 4+ years ago in Michigan with the hope that future States would aggressively intervene and provide opportunities for innovative, yet unproven models like ours. In addition to Louisiana (the first such State after Hurricane Katrina), Tennessee and Michigan, we are seeing such turnaround districts being planned now in NV, GA, PA, VA, AK, etc. It has taken four years, but I do believe this is now emerging as a trend.
This bodes well for Matchbook Learning as the demand for turnaround school models seems to be rising, validating our strategy of targeting failing schools. Note, this strategy of trying something innovative in the country’s worst performing schools was chosen because these bottom 5% schools have no other feasible option (they are just not targeted by charter management organizations or innovative education reformers in general) and they provide a space in which to iterate and gradually make the product or solution better over time. This lack of competition coupled with the space and time to innovate and iterate on the design are classic conditions of disruptive innovation theory originated by Harvard Business School Professor and Author, Clayton Christensen.
The second blog and noted trend was on Micro Schools. Several parents are starting to send their children to small schools that serve approximately 25 students up to 150 students across grade levels that are tuition-based and offer a higher degree of personalization that traditional, large public or private schools can provide. Personalized Learning is the heart of Matchbook Learning’s turnaround school model (every student with their own unique learning path, meeting them by their unique starting or competency level by subject and progressing them from there). While Matchbook Learning is not doing micro schools, nonetheless this trend of personalized learning is now not only be applied at the bottom end of the market (failing schools) but also now at the high end of the market (private school families) which suggests that the demand for personalization is education is likely at a tipping point for the sector.
Of course trend emergence, even powerful ones associated with disruptive innovation and personalized learning is no guarantee of success. This work is hard enough as it is. However, I’d rather be swimming downstream than upstream. Momentum fuels motivation. Motivation fuels performance.
