the "Ed"

Andrew Rotherham recently pointed to a McKinsey analysis of national education data. A few things jumped out at me after a quick scan of the supporting materials to the article:

• We can learn from our neighbors (Canada is among the highest performing countries)
• We can spend less money (the US spends more per achievement outcome than anyone else)
• We can create more potential (effective graduates)
• That potential is worth a lot (the more graduates you have, the greater your GDP)

Then there's something missing - there has to be, otherwise how could the American education not be be better than it is?

If you were told: "You can spend less to create a better product that will make you more money, and one of the best examples of this is your next-door neighbor." Wouldn't you do it?

What are we missing??

This reminds me of The Karate Kid, a coming of age film where a boy learns how to defend himself from a group of thugs with the help of his Japanese superintendent. The Super starts him off with some work around his house, painting the fence, washing the floor, waxing the car - all done in a very specific way. After doing all these seemingly meaningless chores, the boy gets angry and frustrated, and that's when the old man, with a slew of attacks, shows him that he's unknowingly built the muscles and reflexes that are the essence of self-defense!

The sensei was wise, proven and savvy enough to know what elemental skills the boy needed, how best to teach them to him, and once these seemingly unrelated skills were mastered, he helped the boy realize that he had learned something altogether different.

The American education system needs a sensei. Someone with the wisdom and guile to craft a profound outcome out of a series of seemingly unrelated acts that suddenly explode on the American people,  forming the basis of a great education system.

The traditional approach is based on the Everett Rogers Innovation Diffusion Curve to the left. School teachers fit this curve very nicely. The most visible, Web 2.0, twittering blogger-types are all in the Innovators category, with Early Adopters, the Majorities, and maybe a slightly bigger than smaller category of Laggards.

But the Innovators are too far ahead of everyone else, so much so that the mainstream simply can't connect with them. Traditionally, the Early Adopters would bridge the gap to the Majorities and help pull them along into the future, and while this is how grassroots/organic change will happen in education, I think this process is too slow and too fragmented to yield meaningful results by itself. Moreover, the Majorities have enormous inertia and inadequate incentives to be receptive to quantum change.

We need a catalyst (sensei) with unimpeachable authority and strength, based on wisdom and experience to create the circumstances where "epiphanically" a national transformation occurs. It might take a decade to happen, but we all know it will, because our sensei is just that good.

I wonder - who is the Peter Drucker of Education?

Where is this person who has the chops and cred to be able to make profound change happen? And how would it happen?

It's time for America to create a non-political, national sister organization to the Federal Reserve/Ben Bernanke for Education.

We could call it "the Ed."

We just need to find our sensei.