For almost anyone following K-12 educational reform, blended learning has created a lot of excitement. At base, the model offers a hybrid where education takes place both in a supervised place other than a student’s home (typically a school) and online at a student’s own pace. There’s strong momentum in the space, due in part to federal stimulus programs like Race to the Top and the Investing in Innovation Fund (i3). Pioneers include school pilots (NYC iZone), policy organizations (Digital Learning Council), technical innovations (Wireless Generation), hybrid models (Rocketship Education), and incubators (Imagine K12). Public and private markets have started to make serious commitments to blended learning initiatives.
But as excitement, publicity and capital accrue around this latest innovation, we need to keep our collective eyes on a critical value proposition: No matter how blended or un-blended, large or small, every educational initiative must deliver highly personalized instruction that results in exceptional academic performance. It must do so in an environment that supports students, families and staff, and through a model that achieves operational sustainability.
This statement is fundamental, so I’ll break it down further:
- Personalized learning depends on a solid performance-driven education framework; individualized learning plans supplemented with adaptive technology; access to data, information, capacity and training to personalize instruction.
- Exceptional academic performance demands quality, quality, quality. Outperforming the local district is sufficient, and outperforming county and state results for areas with similar student demographics is better, but to truly eliminate the achievement gap, every school should aim to be the top performer.
- Supportive environments support teacher and staff satisfaction, parent engagement, a service-oriented central office, low attrition and, ultimately, a school that’s considered a “great place to work.”
- Operational sustainability requires a model that includes financial sustainability at scale, an achievable human capital structure, adequate management capacity and a viable real estate solution.
In this start-up period, blended learning solutions may not incorporate all four elements. But in the long term, the funding community must develop a clear understanding of how blended learning solutions will apply each and every one.
After all, an innovation is only as good as its application – and it is up to us to push the innovators to ensure their products apply what we know is right, so their brilliant ideas can scale.
