May 1, 2019
5 Pitfalls to Scale in Education
Education has a problem. It’s not a shortage of great ideas. Solutions to just about every challenge in education have already been discovered by a teacher in a classroom somewhere or a researcher in some university. No, the problem that education has is that it is really hard to get good ideas to be widely adopted.
This is a problem I’ve been fascinated with ever since grad school. I watched as research projects, led by the faculty at my university, all met a similar end: a publication in a paper in a journal that sat on a shelf. This valuable (not to mention expensive) investment in knowledge would never reach the wide audience for whom it was intended to help. My mentor-professor suggested I read Everett Rogers’ The Diffusion of Innovations. This became the topic of my thesis and the beginning of a career-long obsession with figuring out how to bring initiatives to scale in education.
My jobs have bounced between roles in ed policy and ed tech — in my opinion tech and policy are the two most powerful levers we have for taking innovation to scale. I’ve helped take many national and international education initiatives from an idea on a whiteboard to broad adoption. But I’ve also seen many solutions fail to reach critical mass. At a recent gathering of education leaders I reflected on the reasons why the innovations in education fail to reach scale. I’m sharing them here in the hopes that it will help current and future innovations avoid the pitfalls.
What is Innovation?
Before sharing the list though, let me take a second to define ‘innovation’. For this I turn to former Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Education, Jim Shelton, who explains it like this: we can place potential innovations on a chart where the x axis is scale and the y axis is impact. Many ideas have enormous impact, like the research studies from my former university, but never have a shot at reaching scale. Those are inventions and would be placed in the top left quadrant. On the other hand there are ideas that quickly reach scale, but don’t improve on the status quo, like an ‘Learn Your ABCs’ app that gets hundreds of thousands of downloads but doesn’t really help kids learn to read. Those trends would be placed in the bottom right quadrant. An innovation is a solution that could be placed in the top right quadrant — a solution that dramatically improves on the status-quo and can reach scale.
The Five Pitfalls
1. Ignoring Context
The problem: The first challenge to reaching scale is not paying enough attention to the context where an initiative will be implemented. A program that is designed to be effective when used with an experienced educator teaching students in urban schools might be totally ineffective if used by a new teacher in a rural school. One of the clearest examples of ignoring context can be seen in the US Department of Education’s “What Works Clearinghouse.” The Department has spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding “gold standard” research on education initiatives. However, the studies largely show no significant impact because they don’t take into consideration the context. Essentially all of the money tells us that that nothing works anywhere because nothing works everywhere.
The antidote: The antidote for this pitfall is to recognize that common principles are not the same as common implementation. To bring educational initiatives to scale we must have the ability to have the implementation adjusted to the environment (experience of teaches, language of students, level of instructional support, robustness of technical infrastructure, etc). The ISTE Standards, for example are widely adopted throughout the world. The implementation of the standards will look very different in Lima and Bejing, but the ability to adjust the implementation to the context allows the concept to reach global scale.
2. Boiling the Ocean
The problem: Education may be the sector most vulnerable to the “boil the ocean” syndrome. Educators can’t bear the thought of leaving any child behind and therefore try to tackle all of the problems at once. We ask “what’s the most we can do for kids?” We want a solution that helps kids get on grade level in math, and teaches them social emotional learning, and critical thinking skills. But we also want it to work for all students from kindergarten to college. Oh and we need to make sure it supports English language learners, new teachers, home schoolers, charter schools, and community colleges. When we try to tackle all problems for all learners the potential innovation can’t get off the ground because of it’s complexity.
The antidote: The antidote for this pitfall is to take a lesson from silicon valley. Instead of asking what’s the most they can do, successful tech companies are really good at asking “what’s the least we can do that still adds value?” This is a concept know as MVP or minimally viable product. The first version of a social media app might only allow you to read posts. That’s the least functionality that is still beneficial for the users. But soon there will be an update and you will be able to upload your own photos. And another that will allow you to tag people in your photos, etc. By keeping the scope focused we can make sure to deliver quickly and then move on to adding more. the developers have aFacebook had waited until they had finished developing the perfect app before releasing it, we’d still be waiting for the first Facebook app)
The next two go together…
3. Too much focus on tech
The problem: Placing too much stock in tech can be a major stumbling block to scaling an educational innovation. This happens when we expect tech to be the solution. But tech is neutral. It is just an accelerator. If it is applied to ineffective practices it will make faster, more efficient, and cheaper ineffective learning. Applying technology to a half-baked solution will not make it fully baked.
The antidote: [see #4]
4. Not enough focus on tech
The problem: In an attempt to stay true to the original form of an educational innovation — often something that started in a classroom — some innovators resist leveraging technology. If an idea has worked in-person why not just keep doing more in-person implementations? Unfortunately after a certain point, the cost of trying to scale almost any educational solution without technology becomes so expensive and slow that it can never reach the critical velocity necessary to become widely adopted. In addition, it becomes harder to collect data and monitor progress which is critical to maintaining the fidelity of an initiative as it grows beyond what a single person can manage.
The antidote: The antidote to both tech related pitfalls is to recognize that tech is must be applied in the right way. It should be used to make effective solutions less expensive to scale and easier to adopt in geographically remote locations. It should be used to help maintain fidelity without limiting flexibility. Tech is most effective when used to support the human role in an innovation as opposed to replacing it.
5. Prioritizing ownership over buy-in
The problem: It’s easy for a single group or organization to invent and test a solution. But taking that solution to scale can rarely be done alone. Depending on the initiative, you may need collaboration between school networks, researchers, technologists, policy makers and advocacy groups. Reaching scale may also require buy-in from competing organizations. There are 117,000 education related non-profits, many of which compete for the same sources of funding. Working with the groups required to take initiatives to scale would inherently require the inventor to lose some ownership of the solution. When faced with this situation, many education inventors prioritize retaining complete idea ownership over the getting the buy-in required for scale.
The antidote: When I first came to Washington and was learning my way around public policy and the large bureaucracy of the federal government, a friend gave me some excellent advice. He said, “Richard, you can get anything done in Washington as long as you don’t need to get the credit for it.” This became by secret weapon for getting things done that others couldn’t. In fact, I can’t think of a single idea that I helped bring from a small pilot to national scale that didn’t involve allowing someone else to take credit or think it was their idea at some point along the way. It also means that sometimes the idea must morph a bit to allow the joint ownership. This requires humility and ultimately requires the inventor to ask if they would rather be the co-owner of a widely adopted idea, or the sole owner of an impactful, but obscure, project.
This is far from an exhaustive list. But I hope that by sharing some of the lessons I’ve learned from my work in increasing the adoption of educational solutions, we can help turn more inventions and trends into true innovations — that can make a huge difference for the widest group of learners possible.
Richard Culatta is the chief executive officer of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and design resident design and innovation firm, IDEO.
