Disrupting U.S. Schools Wasn’t Possible Before. That May Be Changing

As Robert Pondiscio observed recently, K–12 schools have largely been spared disruptive innovation of the sort that has transformed everything from retail to consumer package goods, telecommunications, computing, steel, newspapers, and more.

Yes, there have been disruptive innovations in how students learn. Namely in the form factor.

Consider that even just 15 years ago the dominant curriculum companies were clear: McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH). All textbook companies.

Fast forward and digital-native companies have been disrupting the staid and supposedly impenetrable market of textbooks. Yes, the textbook companies are still around and transforming themselves—HMH, McGraw-Hill and Savvas (a spin-off of Pearson). But there are new entrants in the previously-impenetrable core curriculum market—entities like Amplify, Great Minds, Curriculum Associates and Imagine Learning.

But one big reason our book Disrupting Class used the word “class” and not “schools” in the title was we didn’t see a real opportunity for true, disruptive innovation of U.S. public schools at the time.

That was because schooling is compulsory for the most part. And everyone had access to what, from a consumer perspective, appears to be a free public school. As a result, there was little nonconsumption of schooling.

What’s more, because of the “free” element of public schools, there was no true “overserving” of individuals—a phenomenon that occurs when people won’t pay higher prices for product improvements and instead make tradeoffs. They’ll give up increased features for a lower cost, more stripped-down product.

Without nonconsumption and overserved consumers, disruptive innovation is not possible.

The same has not been true within schools.

There were and are plenty of examples of students who want a specific course but their school did not offer it or couldn’t offer it at a convenient time for the student.

There were and are also lots of examples of similar nonconsumption at the level of tutoring or unit recovery and the like.

Our book was called “Disrupting Class” because our hope was that by disrupting within schools—at the level of how classes are offered because there was lots of nonconsumption at that level—we could see a move away from the dominant monolithic education system.

That hasn’t happened, however, because most schools have crammed technology into their traditional classes and the value network in which schools operate—the policies, regulations, boards, unions, and more that dictate their priorities—have kept the traditional schooling model largely intact despite any disruption within.

Fast forward to today. Forty percent of students nationwide now attend schools of choice, which means they do not attend their neighborhood, district public school.

But within this growth of school choice, what’s most interesting, as far as disruptive innovation is concerned, are those states that have introduced education savings accounts (ESAs).

With an ESA, families get an allotment of dollars in, yes, a savings account, from which they can spend it on a variety of educational products and services. These range from schools to classes to tutoring to lessons, therapy, educational products and more. If you don’t spend the money in a given year, that’s OK, because you can rollover the savings for future use.

As a result, now we're not just talking about students choosing different schools or educational options. Instead, families have an incentive to consider the relative value of different educational goods and services, make tradeoffs, and choose accordingly.

That opens up the market for a variety of school types priced differently and for families to factor pricing in their decision-making as they choose the right mix of services for them.

As ESAs grow, this creates the true conditions for disruptive innovation of schooling because now there is an opportunity for lower-cost educational products and services fueled by technology enablers to enter the market, start among those who are overserved by the full bundle of public schooling, and improve over time.

For families who stay in the traditional neighborhood school district yet don’t want to use its full bundle of services—and would like a more tailored set of services for their child—they may come, over time, to see this as an “expensive” choice.

Why? Because they are sacrificing receiving several thousands of dollars in their ESA that they could allocate to different educational options to create the right mix of services for their child.

In other words, traditional public schools might not feel “free” any longer.

That would create the opportunity for lots of low-end disruptions to emerge in the market. Which could in turn shake things up in favor of the customized educational options each student needs to succeed.

Then perhaps we’d be on the road to Disrupting Schools.

This post appeared originally on Forbes.com.