Past, Present and the Possible Future

Innovation, when it is first conceived, experiences slow growth as it matures and is developed. In the meantime, external and internal pressure builds on the outdated system or technology until it eventually self-destructs and demand for the innovation overtakes it. At that point the once slow growing innovation experiences a period of explosive growth and change takes place. This is the S-curve.


Over the past 30 years school reform has been a hot topic in America. "A Nation at Risk" in the Eighties to today's battles with accountability, school choice and No Child Left Behind. There has been a flood of reform to come and go in our classrooms, and brain based research has exponentially enhanced our understanding of how people learn yet educational innovation has to be embraced.


In American history there are distinct periods of revolution that changed the face of the country. The Industrial Revolution forever changed the American economy. The development of the personal computer shook the tech industry to the core, and has forever changed the world. Computers, technology and the Internet have spurred the Information Revolution. Today "The World is Flat." Education today sits idle at the base of the S-curve. Isolated from market forces that often drive the innovation forward, education is torn between a battle of ideals: on one side the wave of bureaucratic traditionalism entrenched in an 18th century educational system. On the other side, the rest of the world in the midst of a revolution driven by technology and communication into a dynamic future that is both tenuous and exciting, threatening to leave American education, and the American student behind. A future whose economy and job market our students will venture into upon graduation that we can't begin to fathom today. Many of their careers have yet to be even created. Business leaders are vocalizing the need for a future workforce who must be innovative problem solvers, who can collaborate, lead and adapt to the changing landscape of a worldwide economy. They must be technologically fluent and must be life long learners. Change will be the only constant. Today, regardless of the rhetoric, a sole standardized test is the "Holy Grail" of our public education system, it is the driving force of what we do in our classrooms. Decisions are not made by the highly trained professionals closest to their students. They are made by politicians and central office administrators who typically have no contact with those students their decisions affect. Teachers are treated more as over-educated and under-paid assembly line workers than professionals, as all of the professional decisions are made for them. This is not a system that supports innovation. Constancy is the norm.


While this is the reality within most of our traditional schools we've seen the emergence of charter schools. Growing slowly at first, these independently run public schools, have experienced steady growth. Many have had mixed results, some have succeeded, and some have failed. The unrealized potential of the charter school movement is to create a foundation for innovation. As traditional education struggles under the external and internal pressures No Child Left Behind poses, increasing the focus on testing and the move from progress, could it be an opening is emerging for an educational system based on the demands of our century? Focused on allowing teachers to be professionals, teaching students to think critically, collaborate and problem solve, and allowing schools the ability to operate efficiently and effectively based on the academic and emotional needs of its students. Could education be poised to climb the latest s-curve or destined for more of the same, as the Information Revolution leaves the next generation of Americans behind?