Prepared by Diane Tavenner

The epilogue to Diane Tavenner's book, Prepared, shares a revealing insight. Tavenner turns briefly to explore the gulf between what adults experienced in school when they were children and what they now wish for their children. In encountering the reality, she perceives a masked disappointment if not an outright disillusionment. "'Fine' is the word I hear most often when talking with parents about their kids' education," Tavenner writes.

She cites a 2018 Gallup report sharing that while 70% of parents are generally satisfied with their child's education, less than half (43%) of "are satisfied with overall K-12 education quality in the U.S." Her conclusion: "I believe the underlying narrative is that we've settled."

She probes, "But why?" "Why would anyone settle?"

It's a generous question. "Why would anyone settle?" Yet, I can't help a pointed retort: Well, you just spent 250 pages showing your readers that it's too damn hard.

If I take Tavenner at face value across those 250 pages, then right now I would have frighteningly few options before me to ensure that my child graduates from high school prepared to live and lead a fulfilled life in a fulfilling community. None of those options are easy:

1. Start my own school, following a similar, arduous path as Tavenner's in opening Summit.
2. Get lucky that someone within a reasonable commute of my home has started a school like Summit and similarly lucky that I can afford it.
3. Move to a town with a Summit or Summit-inspired public school. I would still have to get lucky, though, as my child would need to win in a random selection admission process (i.e. a lottery).
4. Convince my local board of education, superintendent, and school to change it's ways knowing full well the response I might receive would echo what Tavenner heard from one superintendent before she started out, "'That is the dumbest idea I've ever heard.'"
5. Pull my child out of school and dedicate numerous hours - perhaps even to the point of significantly reducing my family's income - to assemble a set of experiences for my child that form the core habits of a fulfilled life.

So, maybe I haven't settled.

Tavenner already knows that, though. She knows it's not about settling. She told us so on page 25 when she shared a fraught discussion with a friend: "'Well, what I am supposed to do, Diane? I don't know how to start a school for my child, and he can't go to one of your schools. I bought a house in the best district we could afford, I'm spending all my time working with the school and this is what I've got. So, what am I supposed to do?'"

After reading Prepared, we're all Julie.

Now what?

Tyler Cowen, economist and host of the popular website Marginal Revolution, often comments on pieces he's read by noting the multiple layers available for interpretation. Beneath what might be interpreted by a surface reading, there is strong case to search for and consider an interpretation below the surface. Cowen calls this a "Straussian reading" – a nod to philosopher Leo Strauss. For an example, here's a "Straussian reading" of a Taylor Swift episode).

The "Straussian reading" of Prepared is where the book fully comes to life and where the implications are most exciting.

Implication 1: the next phase of improving education for children in the U.S. will be driven by parents.

Implication 2: the pandemic has ushered in a future that Tavenner hints at but it's coming much, much faster than she anticipated.

Implications 3: the value chain of school has never been at greater risk of disruption, yet "modularizing" academics alone isn't a long enough lever for broader sector transformation (c/f Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Solution).

This essay explores those three implications.

IMPLICATION 1: THE NEXT PHASE OF IMPROVING EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN IN THE U.S. WILL BE DRIVEN BY PARENTS.

Prepared speaks to a different audience than do most of the books written by leaders from the education reform movement over the past 15 years. Those narratives speak to education leaders, to policymakers, and to the broader education community. Tavenner's book is an attempt to speak to parents. It's not an always successful attempt, but it's a worthy one. What works most are the very personal and humble anecdotes she includes about her own life as a student and her life as a mom. These are not always easy stories to read, and I can only imagine the difficultly Tavenner encountered as she wrote them. I'm glad she included these stories; I feel like I have a clearer sense of her and what has motivated her these past 20 years.

Still, Tavenner is widely-respected within public education across the nation as the book jacket blurbs make so clear. Bill Gates, Linda Darling-Hammond, Wendy Kopp, Priscilla Chan, and Sal Khan – some of the biggest names in the field – came together to offer their congratulations on all she has accomplished with Summit and with the book. As a parent myself and also as a senior leader in a national education organization, it wasn't immediately clear to me that the desired audience for Prepared is parents. Even more, while the principles Tavenner extols – like self-direction, curiosity, and sense of purpose – are often developed within families, most of the strategies that Tavenner focuses on are school-based.

If the approaches are school-based from Tavenner's past, the book points to how Tavenner is imaging a different future. The release of Prepared was just the start. There is www.preparedparents.org, a free membership website for parents to receive resources and activities for bringing the core concepts into the home. The monthly lesson for January 2021? Baking bread. It comes with weekly activities that reinforce goal-setting, reflection, and social-emotional development.

This focus on parents comes after a few notable clashes Summit has had in school districts across the country over the past several years. Summit Learning grew out of Summit Public Schools with a mission to help schools and school districts nationwide adopt and implement Summit's approach. Turmoil in places as diverse as Wellington, KS and Cheshire, CT, culminated in an unflattering New York Times story. Today, Summit Learning operates as Gradient Learning, independent from Summit Public Schools (Tavenner serves on Gradient Learning's board of directors). Gradient's website reports they are working in 400 schools across the U.S. Several generations of students will wind their way through the education system before Gradient achieves a broader change in schools and districts they don’t directly manage.

The role of parents in their child's education has never been settled, and the expectations that parents have of schools and schools have of parents varies widely. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated just how unsettled this relationship is even while it remains unclear what to do about it. In many school reform efforts, it's the parents' power within our political system that attracts attention. Parents are plaintiffs in massive lawsuits about school funding and racial desegregation. They organize around shared values and goals to pressure political leaders so laws are changed and laws are created. And often they join with school leaders to advocate for more public expenditures in schools. Note, though, that these roles generally assume parents won't collectively exercise their option to exit the system altogether.

The pandemic necessitated a forced, albeit temporary, exit. The relationship between families and schools is as dynamic today as it has been in generations. They are as involved in every level of schooling in countless new ways – from advocating that schools open (or close) to reviewing school health protocols, to examining cafeteria seating arrangements, to listening in on hours of instruction each day via Zoom. These are habits that won't fade as quickly as they started.

IMPLICATION 2: THE PANDEMIC HAS USHERED IN A FUTURE THAT TAVENNER HINTS AT BUT IT'S NOW COMING MUCH, MUCH FASTER THAN SHE ANTICIPATED.

For thousands of families school isn't open. Yes, there is virtual school and remote learning and also hybrid options. The academic content offered on laptops is replacing only one piece of what we rely on schools for, leaving parents left to figure out the rest almost entirely alone.

Enrollment numbers have been on the decline in public schools due to changes in birthrates over the last decade. This year, enrollment is down another 3-4% in places like LA, NYC, and the state of Connecticut, and it's mostly attributed to COVID. The pandemic abruptly dislocated the relationship families have with their schools. To the extent that parents were relying on schools to ensure their children were prepared for a fulfilled life, that's an even rarer outcome this year than it might normally be.

In many respects, a 3-4% decline in enrollment isn't as severe as it could have been. Recall, though, that the pandemic didn't automatically change the fact that we're still Diane's friend Julie, with few alternatives. Either constrained by price or by availability, the vast majority of parents have kept their children enrolled in the school they were attending prior to the pandemic. From that school, they then choose which option they want. They may choose remote learning or hybrid learning, or where local officials allow, full in-person learning, but it's all coming from the same school.

The assumption that most of the families choosing remote or hybrid options because of health considers is mostly just that, an assumption. There has not yet been a careful study seeking to understand all the reasons that families are keeping their children home. Anecdotally, I know many families for whom remote learning has been a significant quality of life improvement for their children. Even more, the children were vocal in expressing their desire to learn from home.

The arrival of the vaccine won't allow school officials to simply flip the switch back to February 2019. In some polls, 30% of Americans are saying they won't take the vaccine. Some parents having witnessed a positive change in their children learning from home, may be inclined to keep them home and advocate for an option to continue remote learning. At what point will states move to enforce truancy laws? Unlikely by Fall 2021. What rights do parents have to receive educational benefits if they don't vaccinate their children against COVID-19?

Regardless of the dynamics in public schools over the next several years, it's clear that schools today are playing a smaller role in preparing children for the future, and the smaller role is likely to remain small for hundreds of thousands of children over the next 1-3 years.

Prepared then is an introduction for parents to consider how they are already setting their children up for a fulfilled life as well as where they can continue to get better in that critical role. The future Tavenner imagined when sitting down to write Prepared didn't include a global pandemic. Instead, she was likely imaging how to equip parents with information on what they can be doing in their own homes and offering them a point of view on what they may encourage of their children's schools.

As parents spend more hours with their children today and have fewer partners to share the burden of preparing their children with, Tavenner's book came at just the right time.

IMPLICATIONS 3: THE VALUE CHAIN OF SCHOOL HAS NEVER BEEN AT GREATER RISK OF DISRUPTION, YET "MODULARIZING" ACADEMICS ALONE ISN'T A LONG ENOUGH LEVER FOR BROADER SECTOR TRANSFORMATION (c/f CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN'S INNOVATOR'S SOLUTION).

The late Clayton Christensen is known for his research and writing on disruption and innovation. One of his insights is around how value chains work and where they are vulnerable to competition. In his book Innovator's Solution, he writes

Formally, the law of conservation of attractive profits states that in the value chain there is a requisite juxtaposition of modular and interdependent architectures, and of reciprocal processes of commoditization and de-commoditization, that exists in order to optimize the performance of what is not good enough. The law states that when modularity and commoditization cause attractive profits to disappear at one stage in the value chain, the opportunity to earn attractive profits with proprietary products will usually emerge at an adjacent stage.

Let me try to boil that down a bit: one way companies create value is by understanding how to organize the components of their products relative to the context in which those products will operate. With changes in technology or culture or customer preference, other companies can gain a footing in the market by reorganizing how the components fit together. Uber is a good example. It reorganized the ride-hailing market by placing ride-hailing, dispatch, and payment all on an app, allowing riders to find cars. Now, the car was a modular component of the value chain; all it needed to participate in the market was a driver with the app. Same basic components as found in a traditional taxi business but reorganized to create a spectacular growth opportunity.  

If we use this as a lens for considering education over the past 70 years, it becomes clear that we have organized several key components – academic instruction, childcare, address-based enrollment, etc. – into one integrated service. We call it school. For that integration to function, though, we end up treating the students as the modular component: one student can be replaced by another with little need to adjust the architecture of the whole education system.  

Christensen builds on this idea in Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. He examines the rise of computers in the classroom and the possibilities of computer-enabled, personalized learning. At the time of his writing (2008), Christensen projected, "that by 2019, about 50 percent of high school courses will be delivered online...the world is likely to begin flipping rapidly to student-centric online technology." I can't find exact numbers regarding how many high school courses were delivered online before the pandemic, but what I can find suggests it was far lower than 50% (here from 2015 and here from 2019 are as close as I can get and the 2019 report corrects the 2015).

Christensen might argue that we haven't seen widespread improvements because we haven't achieved the "flipping" his book argues for. What the pandemic has demonstrated, however, is that the transformation in academic instruction and content delivery (more personalized and internet-enabled) is as unlikely to achieve widespread improved outcomes as any other reform effort of the past 20 years.

Using his own language: treating academic content as the modular component in the architecture of the education system is insufficient to produce transformation. Solving for academic content delivery, no matter how beautifully designed to be responsive to each individual student, isn't enough to achieve the learning gains Christensen imagined.

This became much clearer over the past year. One of the pandemic's most painful disruptions has been the loss of childcare provided by the K-12 system. Once schools closed parents were largely left to figure out childcare on their own. And it's the absence of childcare that has many families advocating for schools to reopen or paying a premium to enroll in private schools that opened their doors at the beginning of the year and have remained open since. The component that stabilizes the entire architecture of the system is childcare. So long as that component is functioning, the performance changes of any other component produce only marginal effects.  

It's easy to see how Christensen missed this. Again in Disrupting Class, he starts with the hopes we have for schools without considering schools' "jobs to be done" (ironically, another Christensen framework). The aspirations, according to Christensen:

• Maximize human potential.
• Facilitate a vibrant, participative democracy in which we have an informed electorate that is capable of not being "spun" by self-interested leaders.
• Hone the skills, capabilities, and attitudes that will help our economy remain prosperous and economically competitive.
• Nurture the understanding that people can see things differently -- and that differences merit respect rather than persecution.

While acknowledging that we're "not doing very well in the journey toward these aspirations," and the numerous ways in which change efforts of all kinds have eventually sputtered, the book claims that the current results of American education are a product of American prosperity which stifles the motivation children must have to pursue and excel challenging academic fields. Schooling isn't intrinsically motivating to American children.

Why? Christensen believes it's because we have not yet "customize[d] education to match the way each child learns." While I agree that there is ample room for improvement along that front, it's not where I'd start. The education system is stagnant not because of a lack of disruption to it's monolithic approach to academic instruction. It's stagnant because it is a monopoly provider of childcare. So long as it maintains it's advantage there, it can neglect serious, productive improvement efforts elsewhere.

Change in the education system won't happen until childcare is treated as the key modular component. Christensen missed that. Tavenner gets us closer.

CONCLUSION

It's not quite true today but it will be soon: your child will be able to learn math just as well on the internet as at the local school (and depending on where you live, better than the local school). Same for writing, same for research, and the list goes on.

That progress will proceed slowly and expensively so long as it's occurring within a context where the essential performance indicator is providing childcare. Schools don't think of themselves as primarily providing childcare, and taxpayers don't normally think about school as an investment in childcare. Instead, we collectively think about the hundreds of billions spent each year through Christensen's aspirational lens. So, to be clear, I believe childcare can be incredibly educational and developmental for children of all ages. Indeed, it's one of the most important and path-defining decisions my wife and I have made. Summer camp, afternoon and weekend clubs, sports teams, musical productions, religious training, cultural and heritage education are all powerful learning experiences for kids. Often, these are the mediums through which some of the most formative experiences of childhood occur. While each enrichment has its own dialect, they claim to be in the business of helping children grow to be prepared for life. They can benefit from Prepared to connect the implicit benefits of their domains to the broader effort we're collectively engaged in to prepare children for a fulfilled life in a fulfilling community.

One area where I would love to see emerging competition is in the distinct offerings of schools, camps, and community centers when it comes to how they develop. The academics (again, a modular component and increasingly delivered via the internet) can move with a student continuously as their other interests evolve and they seek out new opportunities and new communities to learn from and with. It shouldn't just be the tennis phenoms who get to do what they love for the bulk of each day at year-long tennis camps (same with the competitive downhill snow skiers - they already get to have too much fun!).

If the academic offering of the local school becomes less important over time, that then allows each school to develop a defined value proposition beyond childcare. What makes your school different from the 15 other schools when it comes to helping my child prepare for life? What then are the mechanisms parents will need to search out, select, and enroll with the providers that meet their needs?

Prepared and Diane Tavenner's outstanding work through Summit over the past 15 years bring together implications from many of the developments in and around public education. We're getting closer and the pandemic has provided new lines of sight into core issues that have been overlooked in the recent attempts at systems change. In preparing for post-pandemic K-12, there are many exciting projects to build that will improve the experience for children and families. Many opportunities to demonstrate – both to Tavenner and more importantly to ourselves – that we have not settled.