In this episode of Class Disrupted, Diane and I stepped back from our interviews to have a one-on-one conversation to reflect at the midpoint of our season on AI in education. I left the recording thinking “wow” after this one, because it felt like we didn’t hold back and explored a lot of different questions on this episode in a way most “education reformers” aren’t addressing at the moment.
We dove into the evolving role of AI in education and questioned whether AI is truly transforming the system or simply being layered onto outdated structures. We explored a framework of three school models that Diane posed (and I’m still noodling over!)—and discussed the challenges of meaningful innovation amidst existing accountability systems and educational policies. From these models, we then analyzed how one might expect transformational change to occur in K–12 schooling—through industrial schools incrementally changing and evolving over time or, as we both argued, through fundamental migration away from the existing system. I thought this was among the best episodes we’ve recorded, so I’ll be very curious your thoughts.
Diane Tavenner
Hey, Michael.
Michael Horn
Hey, Diane. It’s good that you came to Boston and in the freezing cold weather, no less, to hang out a little bit with me here and have a conversation.
Diane Tavenner
It’s really fun to be in person. We haven’t done this for a long time and the timing worked out perfectly because we are in the midst of this super interesting season where we’re exploring AI and education. And we’ve had several touch points where I’m like, oh, my gosh, there’s so many things that are coming up for me that I want to talk with you about. And so we get to have a conversation, the two of us, this morning.
Michael Horn
I am looking forward to it. And I’m sure you’re going to say things. I’m going to say, wait a minute, I think I know what you mean, but double click on that. Tell us more. And so I’m excited to go deep on wherever you want to go because the conversations, they’ve both been illuminating, but they brought up more questions for me, as seems to be constantly the case with this topic.
AI Disrupting Education Processes
Diane Tavenner
Indeed. Indeed. Okay, well, let’s dive in. And I had the great pleasure of spending time with you in your class yesterday. Thank you again, so much fun. And one of the topics that came up was this idea of. I think it turned out to be more provocative than I anticipated it to be. But this idea that I started said, you know, one of the things, a phrase I read almost constantly right now and hear everywhere is AI is changing education.
And I don’t believe that that phrase is true or accurate. And in fact, I believe AI is not changing education. And, and so I want to dig into that idea a little bit. You know, I would argue that it’s creating a lot of problems for folks in education who are sort of in the traditional model of schools. But I don’t think it’s changing education yet. And what do you think about that?
Michael Horn
I largely agree. So I’ve been thinking about this, but a different wavelength because I’ve been seeing over X and the various pundits. There’s a lot of conversation right now of banning cell phones in schools, as you know, and there’s a lot of conversation of not just cell phones, but screens, period, you know, Google Classroom, all the rest, because it creates access to all these other things, ban it all sort of things. And then you see the occasional commentators saying, does anyone ever believe otherwise at this point?
Diane Tavenner
Right.
Michael Horn
And I had this moment because I think I’m seen often as the tech guy in education. But if you read Disrupting Class, what we actually say is that just layering tech over the existing system is not going to do anything.
Diane Tavenner
Right. I think we’re going to get to that idea in a moment.
Michael Horn
So I think so I guess my instinct is, I agree with you. Like I think we’re layering a lot of AI over existing processes. It’s breaking, frankly, a lot of education. So the one push I might have on you is it may be creating the impetus to ask some bigger questions. And, and I’m not just saying I’m not going down the road of just because the world is AI, therefore this should be AI but like legitimately, you know, we have current assignments where you can now hack them through AI. That’s called cheating. And all of a sudden everyone goes in a tailspin.
Well, let’s ask some questions about the assignments and the work itself is sort of my take from that. So I think it might be an interesting push. But I agree most of what AI is doing right now is layering over existing processes. Some of them, I suspect it’s making more efficient. Great. Maybe some of them I think—it’s exacerbating problems that already existed. Is that what you have in mind or…
