Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns

258 Pages·2008·1.19 MB·English

by  Clayton Christensen

Praise for Disrupting Class
Students currently enjoy powerful technology that continuously assesses skill and interest
and customizes content delivery. Unfortunately, it occurs after school when they play
games. Clayton Christensen and colleagues describe how disruptive technologies will per-
sonalize and, as a result, revolutionize learning. Every education leader should read this
book, set aside their next staff meeting to discuss it, and figure out how they can be part of
the improvement wave to come.
— Tom Vander Ark, President, X PRIZE Foundation
In Disrupting Class, Clay Christensen brings to K-12 education the powerful concept of
“disruptive innovation” that has radically reshaped thinking about private sector inno-
vation and business change. He considers the glancing impact that technology has had on
classrooms, explains why this is so, and what it will take to reengineer our nation’s schools
for the 21st century. Brushing past bromides and familiar solutions, he offers a piercing
look at the profound changes in organization, staffing, and instruction if schools are truly
to educate each child in accord with needs and an eye to their potential.
— Frederick M. Hess, Director of Education Policy Studies at the American
Enterprise Institute and author of Common Sense School Reform
American school districts are pressed by policymakers demanding achievement, by students
wanting relevant learning, by teachers looking for a professionally rewarding career, and
by taxpayers hoping for some improvement in productivity. If they are to respond suc-
cessfully to these challenges, the path Clayton Christensen maps out will be the way.
— Ted Kolderie, Senior Associate, Center for Policy Studies
In Disrupting Class, Christensen, Horn, and Johnson argue that the next round of
innovation in school reform will involve learning software. While schools have resisted
integrating technology for instruction, today’s students are embracing technology in their
everyday lives. As the authors argue, schools have steadily improved through the 1970s.
The question is whether the next innovation, truly individualized instruction, will occur
inside or outside public education. This book offers promise to education reformers.
— Kathleen McCartney, Dean, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Clayton Christensen’s advice has helped scores of major businesses. Here he applies to public
education his theory about how organizations should respond to disruptive innovation . . .
shows boards and superintendents why they, too, need to “run two businesses in tandem,”
and explains how they can do that.
— Ron Wolk, Founder and former editor of Education Week
Disrupting Class gets directly to the point of how $60 billion was spent over the last
two decades putting computers and learning software in schools with no effect on student
achievement. Christensen looks beyond public education in order to disrupt the system of
schooling. The authors show how to create research in education that will lead to greater
predictability. Disrupting Class concisely explains how to create learning organizations
needed for future generations.
— William G. Andrekopoulos, Superintendent, Milwaukee Public Schools
As a former education policymaker and a continued advisor to education companies, I
have felt—like many—frustrated by the seeming intractable challenges in transforming
our public schools. This book tackles that frustration and proposes a road map and sound
advice for how educators and policy makers can leverage innovation to achieve excellence
in our schools.
— Jane Swift, Acting Governor of Massachusetts from 2001–2003
Disrupting Class
How Disruptive Innovation Will
Change the Way the World Learns
Clayton M. Christensen
MiChael b. horn and Curtis w. johnson
New York Chicago San Francisco Lisbon London
Madrid Mexico City Milan New Delhi
San Juan Seoul Singapore
Sydney Toronto
Copyright © 2008 by Clayton M. Christensen. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States
of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this
publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or
retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
0-07-164174-2
The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: 0-07-159206-7.
All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than put a trademark symbol after
every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use names in an editorial fashion only, and to the
benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Where such
designations appear in this book, they have been printed with initial caps.
McGraw-Hill eBooks are available at special quantity discounts to use as premiums and sales
promotions, or for use in corporate training programs. For more information, please contact George
Hoare, Special Sales, at [email protected] or [phone].
TERMS OF USE
This is a copyrighted work and The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (“McGraw-Hill”) and its licensors
reserve all rights in and to the work. Use of this work is subject to these terms. Except as permitted
under the Copyright Act of 1976 and the right to store and retrieve one copy of the work, you may not
decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, reproduce, modify, create derivative works based upon,
transmit, distribute, disseminate, sell, publish or sublicense the work or any part of it without
McGraw-Hill’s prior consent. You may use the work for your own noncommercial and personal use;
any other use of the work is strictly prohibited. Your right to use the work may be terminated if you
fail to comply with these terms.
THE WORK IS PROVIDED “AS IS.” McGRAW-HILL AND ITS LICENSORS MAKE NO
GUARANTEES OR WARRANTIES AS TO THE ACCURACY, ADEQUACY OR COMPLETE-
NESS OF OR RESULTS TO BE OBTAINED FROM USING THE WORK, INCLUDING ANY
INFORMATION THAT CAN BE ACCESSED THROUGH THE WORK VIA HYPERLINK OR
OTHERWISE, AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. McGraw-Hill and its licensors do not warrant or guar-
antee that the functions contained in the work will meet your requirements or that its operation will be
uninterrupted or error free. Neither McGraw-Hill nor its licensors shall be liable to you or anyone else
for any inaccuracy, error or omission, regardless of cause, in the work or for any damages resulting
therefrom. McGraw-Hill has no responsibility for the content of any information accessed through the
work. Under no circumstances shall McGraw-Hill and/or its licensors be liable for any indirect,
incidental, special, punitive, consequential or similar damages that result from the use of or inability
to use the work, even if any of them has been advised of the possibility of such damages. This
limitation of liability shall apply to any claim or cause whatsoever whether such claim or cause
arises in contract, tort or otherwise.
DOI: 10.1036/0071592067
Professional
Want to learn more?
We hope you enjoy this
McGraw-Hill eBook! If
you’d like more information about this book,
its author, or related books and websites,
please click here.
For more information about this title, click here
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Randall Circle High School 19
chapter 1:
why schools struggle to teach differently
when each student learns differently 21
chapter 2:
Making the shift: schools Meet society’s needs 43
chapter 3:
Crammed Classroom Computers 71
chapter 4:
disruptively deploying Computers 89
iii
iv CONTENTS
chapter 5:
the system for student-Centric learning 121
chapter 6:
the impact of the earliest years on students’ success 147
chapter 7:
improving education research 159
chapter 8:
Forging a Consensus for Change 179
chapter 9:
Giving schools the right structure to innovate 197
Conclusion 223
Index 231
Acknowledgments
“Isn’t Disrupting Class an unsettling title for a book about the
schooling process?” one of our friends recently asked. The title
conveys multiple meanings, and that’s why we chose it. The
principal message is that disruption—a powerful body of theory
that describes how people interact and react, how behavior
is shaped, how organizational cultures form and influence
decisions—can usefully frame why our schools have struggled
to improve and how to solve these problems. We hope that our
readers will come to see through what we present here that
disruption is a necessary and overdue chapter for our public
schools.
Further, we say disrupting class with some intent. For some,
class will mean social class. To you we would say that for too
long and in far too many ways our system of schooling has
best served those who hail from homes where parents were
themselves well schooled and who support their children with
adequate resources and experiences. Class also is the venue in
which most of our attempts at education take place. In many
ways, what goes on in these classes profoundly affects social
v
Copyright © 2008 by Clayton M. Christensen. Click here for terms of use.
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
class, for good and for ill. Our nation has embarked on a com-
mitment to educate every child. No nation has ever sought
to do that. The societal stakes in improving our schools are
high.
Managing innovation successfully has been the primary
focus of my research and writing at Harvard. I’m a teacher, the
husband and son of teachers, but I’m not an “expert” in edu-
cation. I’ve practiced it for sure, but until we began writing this
book, I hadn’t studied education. Nearly a decade ago, however,
representatives of a national network of school reformers
called Education Evolving—men such as Ted Kolderie, Joe
Graba, Ron Wolk, and Curtis Johnson who had played pio-
neering roles in the chartered school movement—visited me
with a proposal: “Clay, if you’d just stand next to the world of
public education and examine it through the lenses of your
research on innovation, we bet you could understand more
deeply how to improve our schools.” Kolderie’s arguments
about schools’ institutional capacity for change and Graba’s
refrain that, “We simply cannot get all the schools we need by
trying to fix the ones we have,” compelled me to accept their
invitation. I thank these pioneers, who have dedicated their
lives to the improvement of our schools, for persuading me to
join the movement.
The Harvard Business School is an extraordinary place for
teachers to learn because in the case method of instruction,
the teacher asks the questions and the students do the
teaching. Some brilliant students—including Iris Chen, Trent
Kaufman, Dan Dellenbach, Eleanor Laurans, Gunnar Coun-
selman, Allison Sands, Josh Friedman, Emily Sawtell, and
Ethan Bernstein—applied what they knew of innovation to
the problems of public education and as a result taught their
teacher masterfully. Sally Aaron, Will Clark, Scott Anthony,
and Michael Horn selflessly postponed their business careers
for an extra year after graduation to stay at HBS to work with
me to peel off the layers of the onion one by one to discover
the root causes of why, despite the talent and energy that so