Welcome to the future of education. And now here's your host, Michael Horn. Welcome to the future of education. I am Michael Horn, and you are joining the show where we are dedicated to a world where all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. And over the past year and a half, it's been really fun because I've had a partner in crime, on this. He's been largely behind the scenes, although we have bylined, some articles together. So you've seen his name pop up in different things, different forums, but he has literally been overseeing all of my digital products, all the digital work, that I do. He's helped bring up the quality a ton, but he also happens to know a lot about education as we'll get into it in a moment. He's none other than Danny Curtis. Danny, thanks so much for actually coming on the live stage and showing your face to the audience, today. Thanks, Michael. It's, it's great to have the chance to step in front of the mic today. Well, why don't you tell folks about yourself? Because part of this idea is we want you to be in front of the mic a little bit more, either riffing with me, by aligning with me, or maybe even interviewing some guests. I know you've done one interview that's super interesting coming down the pipeline. But why don't you give people a taste of, you know, your background, your experience in education specifically, and workforce, issues as well before, you know, you and I teamed up to start doing some of this work together? Well, outside the work that you and I have done, Michael, I've also worked in education workforce policy as you mentioned at the state and local level and a nonprofit, all towards designing systems that do a better job of connecting learners to opportunity. And got my start in this work as a high school English teacher in California, where I met so many inspiring people, teachers, administrators, students, and saw incredible work being done. And also notice the ways that that work was constrained by outdated systems. And that's really what got me into policy to try and create that change. And it's also why the mission of the future of education, to unlock the potential of schools and students through innovation, why that resonated so strongly with me. Well, I I appreciate everything, obviously, and let's dive in. There's a bill that has come up that you called my attention to, has some bipartisan support. It's around research, I think. But why don't you give folks a flavor of what we are talking about and why it caught your eye and worth talking about here in the show? Yeah. So I wanted to talk about a bipartisan bill, I know very, rare these days, that has proposed increases, to federal education research and development funding, that was introduced in the senate at the start of August. It's called the New Essential Education Discoveries Act, NEED for short, and it was introduced by senators Michael Bennett, a democrat from Colorado, and John Cornyn, a republican from Texas. And it would develop a fifth center in the Institute for Education Sciences, that they're calling the National Center for Advanced Development in Education. And it would be dedicated to, developing, disseminating, investing in, what they're calling high risk, high reward, cutting edge innovations in education. And that includes technologies, innovative learning models, and it also proposes some changes to the state longitudinal data system. But but for today, we'll we'll stick to the r and d. And, you know, learning innovation, specialists have long argued that that the one of the great challenges of implementing innovation and education has been the lack of research and development and and supply stemming from that. You know, the the federal education budget allocates only about two point five, billion dollars to r and d and education, which sounds like a lot, but it's only two percent of spending on education in the federal government and, like, two tenths of a percent of total education spending when you take state and local into account. It also stands in in stark contrast to, the r and d spending in other departments. Like, you know, one department that it's often compared to is, the Department of Defense with their, DARPA fund, which spends seventy nine billion dollars a year. And so for those reasons, this bill has garnered a lot of interest from from learning innovators and a lot of excitement too. Yeah. And I I think it's great, like, if we start putting more research on those big sort of home run questions, if you will, budget behind it, see what we can develop out of it. I think that makes a heck of a lot of sense. Not nearly enough r, as you said, in education. I mean, that's, you know, that's pennies on the dollar when you think about what you just said. And for a sector where so much is riding on it, Look. We'd never do that in health care at this point. Right? We invest a lot in r and d. It's incredibly important. Basic research is incredibly important. Solving the most intractable problems incredibly important. I think all those statements apply to education as well. And, frankly, you know, I talk a lot about personalizing, customizing education that's akin to precision medicine, in the medicine field. But they went through this whole field or movement where they had empirical medicine, where on average, you know, if you have these symptoms, you should do this treatment. And, yeah, it didn't work all the time, but it started to come out of RCTs before they've started to refine it more and more. It's funny. In education, we don't even have the empirical stage often even in place. We don't even know on average, often what works, and we're sort of trying to leapfrog into the precision or personalized. We just need a lot more research on a lot of a whole host of things, not just science of reading, to to so that we can get much more precise. I love all of that. The one quibble I have is and and you didn't say it, but, you know, you you hinted to it, which is that a lot of people compare this to DARPA, the, Defense Advanced Research Projects, arm that has given us the Internet, you know, GPS. Right? All those things. And I I just I don't love the analogy, because in DARPA, it's, you know, big, thorny problems you're trying to tackle with a relatively centralized buyer that is also federally funded, right, as in the military service arms. And if DARPA comes up with something really interesting, you have a buyer that, yeah, I get procurement is broken in the military. But relatively speaking, it's nowhere near as insanely fragmented, or idiosyncratic, frankly, as school districts are in America where we don't only do a very bad job of understanding demand from the top down. Frankly, you know, what they're gonna demand, the problems that they think are most interesting are are often different from place to place in in unpredictable ways. And so thinking that we can crank out something and then there's gonna be an at scale adoption, that's the only piece that I would say, like, let let's go a little bit easier on that part of the d, if you will. But I still think the the reps of basic research leading into something that actually produces a product, it's not just an academic report on the shelf, that has a lot of value. I would agree. Yeah. Yeah. No. You you raise some really important points there, and and I agree for the most part. It not only is the education system, far more diffuse, You mentioned the defense has a fairly, centralized buyer, and, you know, schools there are about fourteen thousand school districts around the country, somewhere around that. And not only is it diffuse, but many of these school districts, most of these school districts are locked into an industrial paradigm of education that makes it hard for them to, incorporate a lot of these innovations and and therefore, kind of suppresses demand. And there's historical precedent for these challenges that you're raising. In the nineteen nineties, there was the New American Schools, federal initiative, that had a lot of the same R and D goals as as the current one. In the Obama administration, there was the I three initiative. Having said that, I do think that there are some factors at play here that that point to maybe this time being a little different. Post COVID, I think there's a lot of, there's a renewed sense of urgency around, supporting students to recover learning and maybe increase openness from that. I also think that the, growth of of new education AI tools and all of the buzz around AI, has has created a sense of excitement about learning innovation. And then in the post secondary front, I think I think the wave of college closures that we've seen, also increases a sense of urgency to try something new. And also included in the bill, there are measures, designed to solve for this. There's a lot of discussion about these, in within the bill about these innovations being community informed. And the the plan for going about that is, they they would create these advisory panels, and they'd be comprised of teachers, specialists, parents, students. And the the idea there being that they want to ensure that, what is being produced by, this this new center is solving for problems that exist in schools. And so they're kind of, working to ensure that whatever is created, there is a practical use for. But, I think that stops short of of necessarily solving all the demand problems that you're describing, but there there is more that that can be done, at the state, federal, local level, to to stoke demand as well. Yeah. And I I in in some ways, let's have the breakthroughs, and then we could figure out the demand side of the equation. Right? Is I I I think part of, the thinking that I I think would be great anytime we can get researchers. Frankly, they struggle often to get into districts to do really good research. If we can get researchers into districts with, you know, companies, those who can create product, I think that's all to the good, and and I think would get me excited. I'll add one other thought, which is we also know that there's another bipartisan bill, around research. It's much more around the model providers. Our friend Joel Rose in new classrooms has spoken about this in the past. And I I think model providers are super interesting because they can also more more readily rethink the industrial model itself, which to your point, frankly, if you're trying to innovate with a within an industrial model context, the the model can only prioritize those things which perpetuate it, not undermine or overthrow it. And so I think having model providers out there deeply integrated, maybe frankly you know, what about an army of two hundred lab schools, truly lab schools, not sort of John Dewey reprised, but, like, real lab schools paired with deep researchers at research universities where not just the ed schools, but cognitive neuroscientists, etcetera, could come in, and really be playing in an integrated way with all the different inputs there. I I think there's some very cool things when you get into, you know, really rethinking the model, integrating all the parts in very different ways. That's where the real breakthroughs, frankly, in any field, come when you get to rethink all of the parts together. So, Danny, like, that bill starts to get into some of the out of out of the box, providers that have been written about, that Joel's written about, new classrooms has written about, and a series of recommendations there for how we would, start to get that, really really started as an engine of innovation in America's schools as well. Thoughts on that as we wrap up here? Yeah. I mean, you you mentioned the out of the box report. So much good stuff in there on how the the system can sort of more comprehensively in addition to this, r and d initiative, increase that demand and and ensure successful implementation of of innovations. And so, looking at the federal level, I think there's a real opportunity here to create a grant, and and introduce funds that will facilitate the adoption of innovations, by unburdening districts that decide to take these on of the costs of implementation. And so helping them them cover some of those startup costs for, creating new schools and and new classrooms that are are gonna be implementing, new forms of learning. Both state and federal level, there's an opportunity to change regulation, open up flexibility around testing and procurement, so that districts can can implement these innovations to their best ability or to their fullest potential rather. The California math framework, that was at this time last year stands out as a really good example of that to me. And then at the local level, and at the school level, Michael, you you write a lot about, how difficult it is for an organization to or a school to build the classroom of tomorrow while also operating the the classrooms of today. And so I think schools can start thinking about, creating those separate arms, that are dedicated to innovation, and and dedicated to, thinking up new ways of of teaching and learning. Yeah. It's a great point. It's a great point, Danny. Sorry. Keep going. Well, I was just gonna bring it back to to your earlier point around model providers. There are we we've already talked about the diffuse nature of of our education system, you know, so many districts doing so many different things. It can be really difficult to, have, your finger on the pulse of of learning innovation when you are operating a school day in and day out and doing that difficult work. And so partnering with with model providers who, do have that landscape and, have worked on implementing these these new forms of teaching and learning, across the country, can be a a great way to really get the ball rolling and and ensure the success of of implementing innovations. Yeah. No. All of that makes a lot of sense. And I think, to your point, and and we'll wrap up with this thought, is that as you start to have, you know, different arms, different educators coming to the table with space, time, and their only job is to create these new models and then find places for them. That makes sense. Right? Asking someone to operate your classroom and innovate in a radically different way doesn't make sense. You never ask pilots to come up with new ways, you know, to build airplanes. That's insane. And similarly, I think with schools, frankly, that's true in health care too. We're not asking the doctors on the front line to come up with the vaccines. They're giving input into the vaccines, but they're not actually, you know, doing doing that sort of work itself. That's where the researchers, the developers, etcetera, come together. Same principle here in some ways, like, it's surprising that we think, oh, you know, why aren't schools innovating more? Well, of course, they aren't because they're trying to operate the schools and serve the kids. And, like, of course, you need other people to do it. So great set of points all around. Really appreciate you bringing, this bill to the fore so we could talk about it. And, we'll look forward to seeing you much more on the future of education. And for all of you tuning in, It'll be a relief because you won't just see my, mug made for radio on the screen. You'll also get to see Danny. So thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you next time.
