We can talk ad nauseam about innovation and entrepreneurism in public education, but our schools will continue to resist being laboratories of innovation until we come to grips with fundamental flaws in our thinking about educational leadership and our obsession with outcomes. All the technology in the world will not fundamentally change an industrial-model of education that relies on top-down leadership that treats academic achievement as a “bottom line.” Charter schools were seen by many as a way to inject entrepreneurism into a sclerotic structure, and they have been a disruptive and, often, positive force. But the charter school movement itself has embraced the testing dogma in an attempt to outflank traditional schools and it has fallen in love with replication and franchises, which are anathema to real innovation. What is needed is collaborative leadership that encourages risk-taking and an insistence upon measuring things that are meaningful.

1. Charter Schools: Necessary,
but not the Answer
How outcome-based thinking and
industrial model leadership stifles
educational innovation
Prospectus for SXSW-Edu March 3–6, 2014
Steven Zimmerman

2. Anti-innovation forces at work in
public schools
Obsession with outcomes
Medieval leadership structure
Industrial Age Operations

3. Treating academic outcomes as
“bottom line" is bad business practice
● Great businesses are not focused on the bottom line—they produce great
products and services and the bottom line takes care of itself.
● Obsession with bottom line leads to destruction of workplace morale,
cutting corners and worse.
● Application of Campbell’s Law

4. Top-down leadership
● Based on "big man" model of charisma
and/or fear
● Essentially un-American and anti-
democratic
● Creates sycophants, not thinkers and
inventors
● Top-down leadership + bottom line
obsession = school you would not want to
send your kids to

5. Industrial-Era School Operations
● Disregard of business management theory
● Centralized purchasing destroys autonomy
● HR reinforces conformity instead of mission
● IT operations are controlling, not liberating

6. Are Charter Schools a Solution?
Goal was to improve student "outcomes" by
● Providing alternative models of education
● Encouraging entrepreneurism
How has it succeeded? Where has it failed?
Basic charter paradigm—autonomy in exchange for
accountability—is unassailable

7. Charter School Successes
1. Autonomy HAS spurred innovation—many different
models are being implemented.
2. Decentralization of purchasing creates opportunities.
3. Many ed-tech startups have been launched from charter
school partnerships.
4. Traditional public schools can no longer operate in
default mode; many now have to compete for students.
These would not have happened on their own!

8. Charter School Failure #1:
Over emphasis on Replication and Scaling up
Scaling up leads to a franchise model
Franchising is based on conformity, not innovation

9. Charter School Failure #2
No relief from bottom line worship
● Renewal of charter largely dependent upon test scores
● Regulatory creep = forced regression to the mean

10. Charter School Failure #3
Grownups fighting other grownups
Nonstop fighting between charter school advocates and
teachers' unions. Everyone acting in the best interests of
children...

11. Charter School Failure #4
Hubris

12. What’s the Answer?
Innovation in education will only come from idealistic
teachers who have not yet been beaten down by the system.
Schools that give rein to these teachers and encourage them
to try new things and take risks are the ones that will
succeed in making the classroom experience
relevant to children.

13. Democracy Innovation
How do we do it?
● Encourage risk-taking
● Allow failure to happen
● Insist upon shared leadership

14. Authentic
Assessment
Project-based
Learning
How do we do it?
Students must perform and teachers must assess
real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful
application of essential knowledge and skills.

15. Leadership Culture
How do we do it?
Define what leadership means for your school culture
Ensure hiring practices reinforce a culture of innovation
Avoid traditional interview processes
Create 360º feedback

16. Mission-
driven HR
Authentic
Evaluation
How do we do it?
All operations policies must support school mission.

17. Charter Schools must lead
● Fight regulatory creep
● Produce more independent models and stop
replicating - this isn't Blade Runner
● Stop playing the junkyard dog of test movement
● Stop fighting teachers unions and get rid of elements
who want to use the movement as a stalking horse for
privatization of public education
They have the autonomy to set the right
example, but to do so they must:

18. Open School Project
www.open-schools.org
● Community-based, democratically-
operated schools
● Open Model of governance & operations
Democracy in education = innovation