Transforming Thomas Jefferson's Successful Education System by Michael Horn

How do we transform our education system to prepare our students for the world and challenges of tomorrow?


Image: Wikipedia

 A few weeks ago, in mid-November, I had the privilege to once again attend and speak at the Virtual School Symposium, iNACOL’s annual online learning conference, which looks toward this very future.
The title this year was “Online and Blended Learning: The Future of Education.”

As usual, it was a great conference—for my two cents, it’s consistently the best education conference year after year. The energy is infectious. The focus is on the student. And, in classic disruptive fashion, amidst tough budget times, it—and the sector more generally—continues to grow. The continuing innovation in the field is thrilling as well, as the title of the conference suggests.

I hope the field does do better, and the topic of always improving quality and transforming the system toward a very different end from the one when Thomas Jefferson was alive—not to mention from the time of the industrial revolution—remains at the forefront of the conversation. If in 2019 50 percent of all high school courses are delivered online, for example, but it is still largely stuck in our current flawed, monolithic system that is designed to sort students out, online learning won’t have proven to be transformational in the way the country and its students so sorely need it to be.
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Source: Forbes