The Education Business Blog

What do you do with 112 degrees of dry Texas heat on a Sunday afternoon? We sheltered in the Alamo Drafthouse for the Harry Potter matinee and brunch.

Our 17 year old son Peter was sitting between Leslie and I, his broad shoulders connecting us as a family. The cartoons had run, the infamous "no talking" video had played (nsfw), french toast was cooling, the lights dimmed.

As the Warner Brother's logo emerged on screen I began to cry. This final movie, at the start of Peter's final year of High School, was a moment that caught me completely off guard.

It was the realization that the childhood of both our boys had been wrapped neatly by J.K. Rowling's books and movies. Peter is a young man and will only be living with us for a few more months. Our children literally came of age to this iconic coming of age literature. There are millions like us.

I remember reading the first books to our boys when they were still wearing footed jammies. 7 was the magic age at our house when Harry was introduced. When I was home we'd settle in on the couch in front of the fire. When I was traveling I used first generation video chat to read to them from afar. They'd be snuggled up in one of their beds with a laptop before them and I'd be in some bleak Westin. The distance didn't matter, magic happened as the words flowed.

A couple of months after the first movie came out Leslie was walking into the supermarket with our two redheads. A five year old girl stared in awe and whispered to her mother that the Weasley brothers were there. Some days of mischief proved the wisdom of her words.

Having friends at Scholastic made me a hero - we were guaranteed copies of the books as soon as they were available. Thank you Jean.

Our sons were roughly the same age as the main characters as the series unfolded. The personal struggles of Harry, Ron, and Hermione bumbling through puberty were the same ones our boys encountered. Not the dark magic part though, thank goodness.*

The Potter series created opportunities to discuss the role of good and evil, the nature of friendship, the power of learning, and human sources of danger in the real world. The fantasy context made these conversations safer, but there were valuable lessons embedded throughout. Only one other series rivaled Harry for the depth and complexity of the issues presented - Lord of the Rings.

These stories will resonate for future generations; the long tail of cultural influence is just beginning. But there will never again be a generation that grows up alongside the unfolding saga, first in print and then in the movies.

It was the languorous unwinding of the story over years that was part of the magic. Too often in our "everything, all the time" culture when something captures our fancy we swallow it in one large gulp.

With Potter you had to wait, you had to remember, you had to savor. Just as we have with the story of our own boys growing into men. It was that echo that gobsmacked me.

The good news is that unlike stories with tidy endings life just goes on. Our children transition into young adults, their adventure continues to unfold (but the stakes get higher). I hope that the lessons from the books and our discussions come in handy.

The art of storytelling is not a natural act for education media companies, but as we move to transmedia it becomes essential to holding an audience. The craft of narrative has a long and healthy future ahead of it in education, but we need to be recruiting for this outside of our normal orbit today.

Thank you Ms. Rowling - your story was a lovely frame for the childhood of our sons.

OPOL

* Spoiler alert - I'm pretty certain that had Bellatrix LeStrange ever come between Leslie and the boys that she would dispatch Bellatrix with the same gleeful ferocity as Mrs. Weasley.

Data visualization is a tough thing to do really well - in fact this is one of the essential 21st Century Skills in extremely short supply today.

But the world is slowly becoming a much better place to live and this outstanding video by Hans Rosling shows it clearly and with a great narrative.

Take a couple of minutes and you will get a measure of hope that over the long haul life continues to improve for the vast majority of humanity.

This kind of story telling is what great teachers do well. I hope a few pick this up and have some interesting discussions with their students in the new year. I know I'm going to watch this with my own kids who are home for the holidays. Topics will include their role in continuing this trend and potential threats to it.

I just finished reading Bill Bryson's sprawling account of how our homes have evolved over time - At Home A Short History of Private Life - and it made this story resonate even more for me. So much of what makes our lives healthy today has only been discovered in the last 150 years, and most of it in the last 90.

In one sense the world is as old as dirt. But in many others people are toddlers - just figuring out our way around this place. That is what gives me hope. This video makes that hope real and concrete.

OPOL

Today's walkabout focuses on a fundamental shift in the instructional materials industry away from the scale economics of the big textbook publishers to the value of niche focused expertise. I believe this is the future of our business.

In a world where Home Depot crushes the local hardware store only themselves to be crushed by Lowes this probably sounds foolish. Why shouldn't Pearson and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt do the same in education? In their business model everything becomes a commodity and low prices rule. Indeed - that is precisely what has happened over the past couple of decades in education.

But there are fundamental and intersecting trends that are leading us away from this model and in a fresh new direction.

An Era of Disruptive Change

There are three extrinsic forces reshaping the larger world around textbook publishing which are starting to exert counter pressure to the trend to gigantism.

1. The analog to digital transition that has upended one intellectual property based industry after another is finally laying siege to the textbook citadel.
2. Globalization is both opening up new markets on the revenue side and new suppliers on the cost side
3. At the same time all of us are suffering from overload as the net has exploded access to information, knowing what is important is harder than ever.

All three of these forces were unleashed by the web over the last fifteen years.

In this new environment the very things that make the large publishers strong work against them. I've written about them in the past couple of years (links above) - but I realized recently that the synergies between them are accelerating and amplifying change in education publishing.

Digitization - It's Our Turn

Music, television, newspapers, trade books, and even the family snapshot have all been turned on their heads by digitization. Despite significant investments in educational technology over the last 30 years textbooks have been largely immune until very recently. Ingrained statutes, classroom practices, and cultural expectations about school have all contributed the delayed transition.

Economics also played a role - equipping every child with a mobile access device with enough bandwidth and battery life to deliver content digitally is still a mountain too high.

But cracks in the foundation have appeared - Texas, California, Indiana, and several other states are leading the way towards using textbook dollars for technology substitutes.

For the major publishers the problem is the same faced by the music industry. It turns out most people don't want to buy the whole damn album - just the 2-3 songs they like. Self-publishing undercuts the monolithic products built by the mainstream publishers.

Consider that many of us now:

• Publish our own "newspaper" via blogs, RSS feeds, and social media.
• Master our own music albums by creating mixes on our iPods.
• Schedule our personal TV network with our PVR.
• Print our own photos.

In all these cases it was not an industry insider who created the platform for the remixing. The big companies have all tried to control their customers only to learn the hard way that their customers want something more open than what they are willing to offer. Apple not Sony drives the music business these days. Walled gardens simply don't last (take note Apple...).

The big publishers would survive this alone - there is enough value in the professional creative and production processes that they continue to meet customer needs even when their products are broken up into small chunks. People want curated and professionally produced content.

But unbundling will have an impact on revenues. Consider - total recorded music sales (which includes digital downloads) decreased by 25% between 1999 and 2008 (IFPI) and may fall another 10% by 2013 (Forrester). It is still a $10.4 billion business, but it is continuing to contract.

Globalization

Globalization both helps and hinders the big guys. On the help side it allows them to spread their investments in underlying platforms across more markets. At least in theory.

From a content standpoint the problem is that when it comes to learning culture matters - A LOT. This is an area where educational publishing is radically different from trade publishing. A good novel travels well - witness the orchestrated global release of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

But in education even a math textbook can stumble when the examples given on one culture make no sense in another. Why would I care about driving from Detroit to Cleveland in Australia? The cultural problems are far worse in Social Studies and other soft subjects.

So size doesn't necessarily give you a leg up here. As I write this I'm on the train to Frankfurt for the Buchmesse (Book Fair) - the largest gathering of publishers in the world. I'm hoping to find other like-minded small to mid-sized publishers who have materials we can use in the US or who are interested in localizing our materials for their culture.

Yes - the big guys can do this internally, which nominally makes it easier. But as someone who has witnessed the political wrangles that come with such attempts I can't honestly say it truly isn't much easier in the end.

Another no less important aspect of globalization that plays against the big publishers' model is that it is now much easier to outsource industrial scale in Bangalore (pre-press) or Chicago (warehousing). Internally generated industrial scale does produce savings, but with a huge increase in inflexibility. Inflexibility in a dynamic environment is a recipe for disaster (see my post from a few days ago.

The Attention Economy

Digitization and globalization are problems for big publishers - but they are not potentially fatal. What the conglomerates may not survive is the attention economy.

The "law" of supply and demand is simple enough - what is in short supply and high demand has more economic value than the opposite. With information doubling and doubling again every 2-3 years what used to be the purview of monks huddled in monasteries is now scattered around like motes of dust.

In this new environment our time and our attention are the finite resource strained by the flood of information. The economy may be rebuilding itself around helping us navigate to what matters quickly.

When it comes to buying behavior this isn't too noticeable with small low cost purchases. But the consequences of mistakes multiply as decisions become more complex and the impact on your life becomes larger. Circle back to accountability and the pressure this is putting on school administrators. If they buy the wrong curriculum they may not have time to fix the error before they lose their job.

In this context access to expertise becomes very valuable and companies that can help their customers make informed, relevant, and effective decisions will thrive.

One Sales Force to Rule Them All (or not...)

Under pressure to deliver ever more efficiency the major publishers have gone in exactly the opposite direction of expertise. They have collapsed and consolidated their sales teams into one-size-fits-all models that are somehow supposed to sell thousands of products in dozens of niches. It may have made sense to someone on Wall Street, but it is absolutely no help to decision makers in schools making consequential decisions.

In other words – they can’t effectively sell that many products. While small to medium supplemental publishers see their business struggling with the economy the major publishers have sent their supplemental lines implode from neglect.

Anecdotally I’ve heard that the same dance is playing itself out in trade publishing – the big guys can’t compete in the niches anymore and are falling back into the blockbuster novels and memoirs where their distribution and marketing muscle make a real difference.

If all the major publishers are left with is a shrinking set of textbook adoptions under siege from software and open source solutions profitability even with their scale economics is going to be tough.

Focus Focus Focus

In the attention economy the game belongs to the specialist, those focused on going deep and narrow, those who exhibit what the Japanese derisively call "otaku." Obsessively developed expertise.

By directing people to the most important information quickly companies can create value and build share. In the attention economy I suspect that expertise is going to replace industrial scale as the primary driver of our business. In this climate small companies will thrive and large companies will find their industrial scale and scope playing against them.

Summary

To recap this series.

1. In epochal shifts large organisms (organizations) usually don't survive. Smaller more nimble organizations do and go on to become tomorrow's giants.
2. The major publishers ballooned in size over the past couple of decades in response to the standards movement and increased accountability. This simultaneously made textbooks commodities and played to the publishers high end sales forces that could reach district offices.
3. Digitization, globalization, and the attention economy are combining to undercut the value proposition of the major publishers and drive demand for expertise rather than scale. (this post)

Am I predicting the end of the major publishers? Probably not. But their job is about to get a whole lot harder and growth in the industry is going to center around companies that can digitize, globalize, and still deliver deep expertise.

Big companies can do this, but it remains to be seen if they will.

Posted by Lee Wilson | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (0)

Posted In: Education Technology , K12 Publishing , Meta

Over the past couple of decades education publishing has been characterized by waves of consolidation into a handful of giant conglomerates. This is a typical pattern in an industry as products commoditize.

If products are effectively interchangeable (commodities) competitors gain competitive advantage through industrial scale cost management (economies of scale). Bigger warehouses, off-shoring production, distribution networks built on fleets of professional salespeople, and access to capital drove smaller players into the arms of Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin (Harcourt), and Scholastic.

We can see that they became huge - but what were the market forces that drove them to do this?

To understand how things are changing we first need to see how the current structure came to be. I believe standards and accountability were the primary causes.

Impact of Standards - Commoditization

As publishers all wrote to the standards for the same 3 states (CA, FL, TX) the books became interchangeable. I've worked for two of them - but take the logo off and I couldn't tell you a Harcourt book from a Pearson tome. Since prices are relatively inelastic (states after all set the budget in advance) companies competed via the “free with order” (FWO) giveaways rather than through the core products.

This meant that the company with the lowest cost basis could afford to give the most away and increase their odds of winning the race. It also meant they needed a lot of stuff to give away. They got big to reduce costs and bought a lot of supplemental print and tech to differentiate themselves around the edges.

Impact of Accountability - Distribution Footprint

At the same time NCLB brought a new level of accountability across the chain of command in school districts. The result was a move to district level decision making. With their job on the line an Assistant Superintendent for Instruction is going to want control over the purchases that Teachers and Principals used to make.

Selling at the district level is a completely different game than going classroom to classroom. Reps who used to swing by a school and stuff mailboxes with catalogs were being asked to sit down with Superintendents and engage in solution selling. Companies that relied on teacher networks or direct mail found themselves losing share to companies that could sell at the high end.

This also played to the scale the larger publishers operated under. They already had national sales infrastructures with a broad pool of talent to insure coverage anywhere opportunity beckoned. Because they were already playing the adoption game at the state and district level they were able to leverage this presence into other segments (technology, supplemental materials, etc.).

As long as a relatively stable basal textbook business was the heart of the industry this model perpetuated itself.

Adoption Interurptus - Rot at the Core

The textbook adoption market is no longer stable - the patient has an irregular heartbeat. California and Florida have delayed or simply cancelled major adoptions. Texas is opening the process up to technology based products, and many other states are experimenting with ditching the whole structure.

The complex network that these massive companies built around themselves is crumbling. This is why I used the rather uncharitable metaphor of large dinosaurs last week. Their ecosystem is suffering multiple shocks and in biology when that happens the big beasts go first.

Next – we look at the impact of digitization, globalization, and the attention economy on the competitive landscape in education. Hint – the big guys have problems with all three.
Related Posts:

Big Textbook Publishers = Dinosaurs?

An understatement - education publishing is changing.

Heck, publishing writ large (trade books, music, movies, news, etc.) is shifting in dramatic and unpredictable ways. Textbooks are one of the last little corners of the intellectual property world to enter this new era.

Today's post is a teaser for a longer piece I'm going to publish in the next few days. Mark Sumner's "The Evolution of Everything" got me thinking about our industry in biological terms as we enter this era of rapid change.

I believe that two forces, one blindingly obvious and one subtle, are causing an huge shift in the source of value and differentiation in the instructional materials market.

First - the analog to digital transition is upon us and will shuffle the deck the same way it has in music, television, and the news business.

Second - we are also seeing a quieter revolution in buying behavior as a deluge of information swamps inboxes. In the attention economy time is more important than money. The value of expertise is increasing at the same rate as the flow of information.

These forces indicate that the primary value drivers of our industry, which has witnessed several waves of consolidation, are going to reverse direction - more value creation will be found in smaller entities in the coming years. I address the first issue today.

In Epochal Shifts Big Dies, Small Survives

Why were some dinosaurs so big?

"Big animals pack around a big gut, and big guts on average are more efficient at extracting nutrition from food. As sauropods expanded their diet to include less and less nutritious sources, they needed to pack around bigger and bigger stomachs—a kind of arms race of limited calories and vitamins as these creatures attempted to nab every source of food possible." Mark Sumner - The Evolution of Everything

Sound familiar?

For the past several decades the big education publishers have been building their businesses on a base of scale efficiencies. Ever bigger warehouses, vast conglomerations of imprints, printing in Asia, and political influence that only employing tens of thousands can earn. At Harcourt Achieve we had over 27,000 SKU's - and that was before it was merged with Great Source.

"The end of the Cretaceous was a nasty time. Lots, and lots, and lots of things died off that weren’t dinosaurs. Overall, about half of all genera and three-quarters of all species failed to make it from one side to the other, from one period to the next.

There was no single characteristic that seems to have been a good predictor of surviving past that ugly line of iridium enhanced clay in the geologic record, but there was certainly one that was a good indicator of not making it: large size. Many small animals died at that time, but every land animal bigger than a standard poodle was a goner." Mark Sumner - The Evolution of Everything

The reason is straightforward - any large organism lives at the center of a complicated web of dependencies that build up slowly over a long time. Fatal disruption of an interdependent network like this can come from any node. Smaller organisms can be more nimble at finding niches in what remains - and will grow into tomorrow's giants.

Summary

If the biological metaphor holds the changes we will experience in publishing over the next several years will play to the advantage of small to mid-sized companies at the expense of the major publishers.

I don't believe this will be an era of extinction - just that the conditions of rapid and disruptive change will create more opportunities for smaller more nimble companies. The big guys will survive - but like TV or music their share of the business will shrink.

In my next post I will explore the impact of the attention economy, why this is happening, and some ruminations on how it will play out.

Related Blog Posts

The Web Broke the Big Publishers Business Model (coming)
Information Overload
Getting the Units Right
Instructional Monocultures

Funny and scary at the same time.

J.A. Konrath on the end of print.

HT to Bob Carlton

Federal ARRA stimulus funding has been keeping schools around the country on life support for the past year. Despite significant layoffs around the country it headed off catastrophe in many states. That era is coming to an end later this year or early next year.

It was heartening to see Secretary Duncan take up the cause in a statement issued today. Unless Congress acts and provides a second round the deteriorating tax climate at the state and local level is going to cause massive disruption to the education system in 2011 and beyond.

“We are gravely concerned that the kind of state and local budget threats our schools face today will put our hard-earned reforms at risk,” he stated. “Every day brings reports of layoffs, program cuts, class time reductions, and class size increases.”

Potentially hundreds of thousands of educators and other personnel could be laid off if action is not taken quickly to help states and districts cover shortfalls...Literally, tens of millions of students will experience budget cuts in one way or another.” Moreover, schools, districts and states that are working so hard to improve—will see their reforms undermined by these budget problems.

The Secretary urged members to consider another round of emergency support for America’s schools, similar to the aid provided to states through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). “If we do not help avert this state and local budget crisis,” he warned, “we could impede reform and fail another generation of children.” (emphasis added)

Richard Sims, Chief Economist at the NEA, has spoken clearly on the connection between property values and state and local tax receipts. It takes three years for the funding impact from a change in home values to affect school budgets. In other words - we are just starting to see the most serious impact from the decline that started in 2007. If prices bottom out this summer - which is iffy given a potential wave of foreclosures ahead due to ARMs resetting - it will be 2014 before budgets START to recover.

States can not engage in deficit spending and will balance their budgets on the back of massive teacher layoffs, school closures, etc. In most states education is the single biggest line item and accounts for 50% of the budget. While it is always the last thing Governors want to cut they simply won't have an option in the years to come.

The only cavalry that can save the day here is the Federal Government stepping in with additional deficit spending to prop up education budgets.

• Is the political will there to step and engage in additional deficit spending?
• Will advocates for privatization use this as a political opportunity to destroy public education? Many of these folks are also strongly anti-deficit.
• Will reform efforts be set back decades by draconian cuts?

These are not idle questions as we head into 2011-2014.

This battle will largely be fought in the next 12 months and those of us who serve schools should get shoulder to shoulder with any educational association we have a stake in supporting. Join in this fight!

One of the annoying parts of running a blog are the spam comments from people who want to surreptitiously sneak a back-link to their site on your blog. Askimet handles most of this automatically (thank you - thank you - thank you) but every day one or two servings of spam get past the filters.

Normally the posts are pretty lame "Great post - please write more...blah blah blah" hoping that your ego gets in front of your ability to see that the website link is "buy-cheap-crap.com."

Today was different. Whoever was at the other end of the intertubes was clearly making an effort to at least amuse themselves. While I won't post the link I will share the content of the comment for your amusement.

This post reminds me of when I was a boy growing up in Louisville. My grandfather used to say "When life give you lemons, make lemonade". But he was a hopeless alcoholic who never made much sense so I never paid much attention to him. Have a great day!

Not only did they make me smile - they wished me a nice day - with an exclamation point!

This just goes to show that ANY job, no matter how meaningless and annoying to other people, can be done with panache. We all end up in career cul-de-sacs during our lives - when you are there take heart from this example. The bad job will end one way or another - but self-worth can be wiped out if you let it get to you. Resist!

My hope for the poster is that he/she can find a more productive use of their talents - word problems for on-line math homework helpers perhaps?

While we hash out what ARRA Stimulus funds mean for education there are larger issues at play in how we allocate public spending on children.

The New York Times has a good piece today that links to several good resources on this topic.

In a nutshell - 2.2% of GDP declining to 1.9% by 2019.

literacy n. The condition or quality of being literate, especially the ability to read and write.

Surpise! It turns out that the generation in school today is writing more and reading more. Several recent reports provide evidence to support this startling claim. The internet - a time pig that has consumed us with new ways of doing things - has wings.

This trend is global - according to the CIA literacy rates went from 50-60% in the 1970's to over 80% by 2005. Teens are leading the way. TV is for geezers.

If you are an education publisher are you stuck in the paradigm that kids are reading less? Are you aware of the kinds of writing they are doing and are you building it into your products?

Reading

Publisher's Weekly reported last week that the lone bright spot in trade book publishing is the teen market.

"In an industry without a lot of good news to report, the one consistent bright spot has been publishing for teens. While adult trade sales are expected to fall 4% this year, juvenile and young adult sales are expected to increase 5.1%, according to the PW/IPR Book Sales Index."

Lest you think that this trend is being driven by e-books a survey of teenaged uber-readers at teenreads.com revealed that:

"When asked what formats they prefer, 79% noted paperback while 74% said hardcovers. Audiobooks were favored by 6%, while e-books were noted only by 6% and 13% had no preference as to format."

Got that? They are reading more and they love carbon fiber technology.

New technologies are driving up the reading habit.

Libraries that have instituted game nights have seen teen circulation of books soar.

"...once teens come to library because of gaming, they also find time to study, to check out books. Most importantly, they also find time to learn. They learn about information technology, they develop research skills that will serve their life-long learning needs."

"Gaming in libraries? You bet! with an investment of about $900, (less than 1 tenth of 1% of budget) we have over 3,000 new young adult library users."

Research has shown that Dance Dance Revolution can improve reading comprehension among students with ADHD. The students who played the game showed improvements in:

"...receptive coding skills, the ability to immediately recall a word or series of numbers. This type of testing indicates greater focus and attention, a key issue for children with ADHD. The more times the kids played the game, the better they did."

There was a study a couple of years ago that showed that video game players (particularly MMOs) spent an hour reading for every 2-3 hours of playing. This is certainly consistent with my family's experience. If you have the link to the that study please leave it in comments.

The evidence shows that todays kids are reading more and that new technologies can have a positive impact on old habits.

Writing

In September I shared an article from Wired about the revival of the written word in the age of social media. An excerpt is here:

Work done at Stanford shows that todays students are writing more than their parents - in fact 38% of their writing is has nothing to do with school. Better yet - they are writing for an audience - or at least an audience wider than a single Professor.

Here are a couple of key quotes (emphasis added):

"...young people today write far more than any generation before them. That's because so much socializing takes place online, and it almost always involves text."

"It's almost hard to remember how big a paradigm shift this is. Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn't a school assignment."

"The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing. In interviews, they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world."

Conclusion

We are seeing the same pattern in literacy that we have seen in other media as they digitize. Increased exposure and access leads to an increase in demand. Movie studios fought HBO tooth and nail - until they realized that more people were going to the theater. The web - with its heavy emphasis on text - is leading a revival of literacy skills.

I can see my generation huddled around a TV watching Dukes of Hazard reruns muttering to ourselves that "three channels of TV were enough for us - why do these damn kids need all these books. Don't even get me started on all that high falutin writing they are doing...."

The younger generation is leading the way as they absorb and reflect the values of the internet culture. Engage, advocate, make, connect, reach out, sift. Read. Write.

Growing up in New England I was taught that it was rude to discuss politics, religion, or money with casual acquaintances. Later, when I entered the business world, I was never one to socialize much with co-workers beyond lunch or meals on the road. It isn't that I have a problem with making friends through work - I often do - but as a matter of preference I like to keep a little distance between my work life and my personal life.

Thus, when I dove headfirst into social media and on-line gaming four to five years ago I tried to establish different outposts for the compartments of my life. LinkedIn was for work, Facebook was for friends. Twitter and World of Warcraft were supposed to be for friends. Plaxo was work related. This blog is my professional on-line persona. I reserved politics and spirituality for other blogs.

FAILURE

Except - it didn't work.

A business associate found me on Facebook and requested official confirmation of our "friendship." I found long-lost college buddies on LinkedIn and reached out to reaffirm treasured bonds. I started writing about videogames for learning - and people at work wanted to play Warcraft together. My politics seeped into Twitter and Facebook and became impossible to partition away. Out of curiosity I looked up campaign contributions from people I respected.

It has all become a hopeless hash.

SURRENDER

I give up. I have discovered that on-line your whole identity will find its way out. It would be flat out rude to tell someone on Facebook you will only be their friend on another network - perhaps one they don't belong to. When you write something political it is there forever and probably hot-linked to Twitter, Facebook, or Plurk. Images and notes from young people's loves and parties will survive on Facebook long past the time my generation pushed those memories to the cranial dustbin.

In a break with my upbringing I have concluded that this is a good thing. It will force us to be more tolerant and accepting of each other in the full complexity of the human condition. If no one can hide, then we have to learn to cut others slack. The golden rule is more needed than ever - treat others on-line as you would like to be treated yourself.

ACCEPTANCE

Like it or not we are all political, spiritual, economic, and sexual beings. If you express thoughts on any of those topics in one of your on-line beachheads it will drift into the others. If you break connections because you can't tolerate the divergent opinions of others then that will be the trail you leave behind.

The new skills needed to navigate this maze are still being worked out. If someone says something we find objectionable we need to parse whether silence or a polite response is called for.

If you manage others there are legal restrictions on acting on some information you may discover. Likewise, if you express opinions on-line in non-work related arenas it would be unfair for others at work to claim you are creating a hostile environment if they disagree with you. On the other hand, if you knuckle-drag it through the office door you have no excuses.

All of this requires a certain decorum, a willingness to clarify fact from opinion, and the use of language appropriate to the venue and topic.

Profanity laced diatribes that lace into others for their opinions have a half-life far beyond your moment of righteous anger. And yet - there are times when a expletive rich screed is precisely what is called for. Learning when and where it is appropriate is an essential 21st Century Skill you won't find on any of the official lists.

MOVE ON

So chill. Be yourself. Let others be themselves. Disagree or agree with them - but do it firmly and politely.

Wade in - the rich rewards of friendship, knowledge, and amusement are worth the effort to learn a new way of being.

My last post on the difficulty of educational reform got me thinking about that other massive system we are trying to reform - healthcare. One way to understand the healthcare system is to compare it to education - where we have had universal single payer access for over 100 years.

In that vein - what would education look like if if it were run like the healthcare system? By transporting our healthcare practices to another environment we can strip away the patina of familiarity and acceptance and see some of the insanity in our system in a harsher light.

Well meaning people can disagree strongly on the specifics of what is needed (and they do). I found as I wrote this that I had to examine my own pre-conceived notions. For example - state funding for education creates some of the same problems the system of private monopolies in medical insurance forces us to wrestle with. The public option in healthcare is the mirror image of charter schools in education - both aim to open up competition and provide alternatives.
There is more than enough idiocy go around here - in what follows we don't spare Doctors/Teachers, Patients/Students/Parents, Politicians, Insurance Companies, and Lawyers.

THE SYSTEM

• We would spend twice as much as any other industrialized country on education and our results would put us at the bottom of the list in learning outcomes. Despite this, many would go around touting that we have the best education system in the world, providing walking talking evidence that we need a better educational system.
• Most people before the age of 65 would not qualify for public education. It would ALL be private schools funded by insurance largely paid for by employers. Parents out of work? See you at the mall kid.
• 18%, or 9.7 million kids, would not qualify for schooling. Enrollment would require evidence of Education Insurance. The uneducated would be encouraged to pull themselves up by their bootstraps by trust fund pundits in the media. Most would have no clue what a bootstrap is (pundits or illiterates).
• Pre-existing ignorance would bar you from receiving affordable education insurance. Failure on any test, quiz, or paper - ever - would be cause for termination of coverage if not disclosed in advance. Students would routinely be subject to recision for ignorance of their own ignorance. This would make sense to people.
• 60% of all bankruptcies would be due to Learning Disabilities and Special Education needs. 60% of these people would have Education Insurance when they discovered their child needed special attention. In order to qualify for subsidized care you would need to go bankrupt, lose your home, or get divorced.
• For uncovered people any learning needs would be covered by intensive personal tutoring provided at "Emergency Learning Rooms." Services in these facilities would cost 10x what regular classroom instruction costs and would be passed on to the insured population as part of their premiums.
• Hordes of 4 year olds getting socialized government education would show up at congressional town halls and throw tantrums about keeping government out of their socialized education....
• While taxes were cut by $1,500 a family per year over the past 10 years private education costs would have risen by over $5,000 per family - a net increase of $3,500. Public subsidized education, which would be a net savings to the average family, would be popular with over 70% of the people. Despite its popularity politicians would refuse to consider it. The profits of their major donors in the education industry would be a higher priority for them.
• Schools would be overflowing with supplies. No need - however specific - would go unmet. Meanwhile, patients in hospitals would be encouraged to hold bake sales for things like sheets, syringes, and bedpans.

EDUCATION INSURANCE

• Education Insurance would consume 25% of the money spent on education for administrative overhead and profits. Free market zombies would earnestly argue that this is efficient. By comparison, administrative costs for socialized education take an average of 5% [as true for Medicare as it is for Education].
• If you needed access to an expert on a particular subject (economics?) you would need permission from your Education Insurance company. This permission would be routinely and randomly denied by insurance company "Ignorance Panels" even if your Homeroom Teacher thought you really needed the information. The bureaucrats making these decisions would fund fierce lobbying efforts to keep more efficient government bureaucrats out of their turf.
• Education Insurance CEO's would each make enough to fund an entire school district every year. Despite the gross inefficiency of their companies [see above], any attempt to challenge this allocation of resources would be met with resistance.
• Education Insurance Companies would operate as monopolies within large sections of the country. Over 90% of the coverage in many states would come from one "provider." Due to strong lobbying efforts congress would exempt these companies would from anti-trust laws.

STUDENTS

• 70% of the money spent on education would occur in the last year of life. Heroic efforts would be made to teach doddering seniors philosophy and particle physics in their waning days. Family savings would routinely be wiped out by intensive technology based instruction over the last couple of weeks of life.
• Efforts to get families to think about spending money at more appropriate developmental stages would be decried as "Ignorance Panels" and would be stripped from any legislation. Grandparents would beg their heirs to keep them from memorizing the state capitals in their final hours.
• There would be no incentives for people with access to insurance to make good educational choices. If you have education insurance there would be no difference in cost regardless of the lifestyle choices you make. Reality show addicts who avoid anything involving the written word would pay the same as those who watch PBS or do crosswords. Ignorance would be bliss.
• The concept of preventive learning to help people better themselves would be seen as an non-reimburseable personal choice under most Education Insurance plans. Electives would only be available to the economic elite.
• Many of the wealthy would purchase cosmetic learning - fooling no one but themselves.

TEACHERS

• Teachers Unions would be some of the strongest advocates for reform. They would beg for more accountability and a rigorous focus on outcomes.
• Teachers would charge by the learning objective and would make commissions from the testing and textbook companies. The faster they rush through lessons and the more tests and materials they could order during the process the more money they would make.
• It would take 8 years to become a teacher, including a couple of years of 24 hour teaching shifts.
• Teachers would not receive a tenured position after 2-5 years on the job. They would be subject to the labor market fluctuations just like everyone else.
• But - as licensed professionals - teachers would be paid 2-3 times what they make today.
• Society would accept a system of Educational Malpractice suits against teachers. "We'd signed him up for Chemistry but it conflicted with Calculus" complained a typical set of parents. "So they slotted him into English Literature and now he wants to be a Romantic Poet. The lifetime costs of this tragic shift in interest are in the millions of dollars - its only fair that we get some help with this."

IN CLOSING

I hope this attempt to examine this question with a little humor has opened some eyes. It could have gone on much longer - but I hope this makes my point. Universal access to education has on the whole been a huge success in our society. We should have universal access to healthcare as well for many of the same reasons. But the most fundamental reason to reform healthcare is that it is a moral challenge to our culture, in the same way education is.

Analogy is an effective educational strategy - with the ability to speed comprehension in the same way a power drill speeds home repair work. But it also has its limits. This has been a fun post to write - but I have no doubt it offended some people I hold near and dear. If I have - my apologies.

Education has its own share of thorny issues - and the pressure there is in the opposite direction of healthcare - towards more privatization. But given the out of control costs, gross inequality, and life and death impact, healthcare is the higher priority. It is good that we are tackling it first.
The fight over education reform will come up next year when the education act is up for renewal. Perhaps then we'll reverse this lens and see what Healthcare would look like if we ran it like education.

The Superintendent's panel at EdNet this week featured a discussion about education reform that was like a cold bucket of water to the face.

The Supers were teaching us about inertia, the tendency of objects to maintain their current state. As Newton himself put it:

The vis insita, or innate force of matter is a power of resisting, by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavors to preserve in its present state, whether it be of rest, or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line.

The panelists were discussing what will change in the next 5-10 years in education. They were looking globally at the overall system (teacher evaluation, bell schedule, technology, instructional materials, funding flows, etc.). In this context the Superintendent of one of the largest districts in the country (LACOE), in a state (CA) that is experiencing a state of extreme financial distress, stated that she didn't think anything significant would change until we had a "major crisis."

If what we are experiencing right now isn't a major crisis I shudder to think what the hell would fit the definition? National bankruptcy? Nuclear Holocaust?

The Superintendents do expect to see change, but it will be small bore. They believe meaningful reforms will happen on a pioneer basis in a few schools and districts. But the larger issue of systemic education reform will require an even greater crisis than we currently have.

The system is so large and has so much inertia that even those with the will and positions to drive change don't hold out much hope for progress.

Think about that.

PCI Education got a new President & CEO last week. This is a big change across many aspects of my life but I believe it is the right move for the company and for me.

The official announcement is here.

About PCI Education

PCI is focused on the Special Education and Struggling Learner markets in the US and Canada and is known as the one-stop-shop for SPED solutions. The company has a huge catalog presence in schools and is rapidly growing new channels on-line and in the field. The main office is in San Antonio (Google has the address a couple of blocks off the actual location).

Why I'm Making This Change

I've always done my best work in large long-term change initiatives (Apple, Chancery, Pearson, and Harcourt). When PCI approached me about this opportunity I was working with them as a consultant and I wasn't looking for a new gig. The more I learned about the company and what they needed I realized that PCI is extremely well positioned for growth and that my skills are good fit with what the company needs.

PCI is wrestling with the same structural dislocations affecting every education publisher.

• A move to district decision-making resulting from NCLB which is changing distribution and selling models
• A concomitant move to more comprehensive solutions which is changing product development priorities
• Customer demand for blended technology and print solutions which is creating demand for new blends of expertise in editorial
• A society wide move to on-line purchasing which is affecting how we market and expectations for rapid response

PCI's new comprehensive reading program is building up a head of steam and goes a long way to addressing the first two issues. Much of the consulting work I've done recently has focused on the tech/print blend and PCI's initiatives in this area promise to break new ground. The company also has a well-designed web platform as customers transition from catalogs to on-line purchasing. Regular readers know that this is a subject near and dear to me.

But on top of this we have the economic meltdown. The stimulus which just passed last week has over $12 billion targeted at Special Education and another $13 billion for Title 1. As noted elsewhere on this blog most of this money will go to keeping teachers employed, but it also promises to keep the flow of materials for struggling learners.

Companies that provide products with a one-time purchase that target core subject areas and can be purchased with Title 1 or IDEA funds should do very well indeed.

PCI, because of the students it serves, will get some lift in a tough time.

What Happens To This Blog?

The short answer is nothing right away. I'll continue to post on issues that matter to the education publishing industry. You will probably see more guest bloggers - but I happen to think that is a healthy evolution. Some of the top posts from the past year were by people like Randy Wilhelm and Doug Stein.

Will I be more circumspect in some of my utterances? I hope not. Blogging is an intensely personal medium when it works and I'll continue to state my mind. I will try be clear when I'm speaking for myself and when I'm opining on issues that affect PCI so you can make your own judgments about bias. If you have any question about this don't hesitate to drop a comment in.

What Happens To My Consulting Practice?

Naturally I can't keep consulting if I'm in a full-time role. I've already transitioned most of my clients. I will continue to keep a hand in a couple of coaching projects that I can fit in around my schedule. If you are looking for consultants in the areas I've been serving please contact me and I'll pass along the names of people I respect and trust who do similar kinds of work.

Am I Moving?

Kind of. With two sons in High School we really don't want to move our family. The good news is that San Antonio is only and hour and half from Austin. I'll be getting an apartment in San Antonio and will be spending several nights a week down there. But I can always pop home for a school event or just to plant a big one on Leslie. It isn't like living in Austin and working in Chicago.

New Contact Info

I'm changing both my work email and my personal email. My old emails will continue to work and I'll always get the info@ notes from the blog so there shouldn't be any disruption. I'll be sending the new info out in the next day or so and will be posting it to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Plaxo.

The company mailing address is:

PCI Education
4560 Lockhill Selma, Ste 100
San Antonio TX 78249

Web: www.pcieducation.com

Phone: 210-377-1999
Toll Free: 800-594-4263

Closing Thoughts

I'm looking forward to working with a new team and to exploring a new city. I've always enjoyed San Antonio during conventions and it has been a favorite family outing since we moved to Austin. I'm particularly pleased to be working with a company that serves students with the greatest need.

EdNet turned 20 this year. EdNet 2008 is happening right now in Boston. A huge congratulations goes out to the whole EdNet team for forging one of the required stops for the Educati. Nelson Heller, Vicki Bigham, Anne Wujcik and the rest of the team continue to put on an outstanding event year after year.

I've been attending since the early 90's and it is wonderful to see so many familiar faces and so many new ones every year. It is always a delicious tension to juggle attending sessions and spending time out in the hallway conducting business. More often than not business wins - but either way you come out ahead. You can learn valuable insights in the sessions or you can make valuable connections in the schmoozefest out by the coffee.

Ever since 9/11 EdNet has also been a somber reminder for me of the events that day. We were all in a general session when it happened and we retired en masse to the bar (not open) to watch in horror and sympathy as the grisly events unfolded. We could see the smoke at the Pentagon from our rooms in the hotel. I remember walking in the park a couple of days later and the unsettling silence because there were no planes weaving down the Potomac to National. Every 15 minutes a lone F18 would circle overhead.

No one could leave Washington and no one really wanted to conduct business. Strong bonds of friendship were forged in those days of waiting and grieving. The people who were there that week have a special place in my heart.

I'm hoping I attend in 20 years. I'm optimistic for the future - precisely because I've seen the impact that people like Nelson, Vicki, and Anne can have. Thanks.

Information is expanding exponentially. Applying database concepts to your information diet can mean the difference between overload and sanity, chaos and productivity. Database fluency is mandatory in a digital world. Students and teachers should be practicing and refining this skill so that today's learners can make the most of the sea of data they swim in.

Almost anything you encounter in digital format can be managed using database techniques. At their root Facebook (relationships), iTunes (music, movies, tv, books, etc.), del.icio.us (bookmarks), flickr (photos), Moodle (lesson plans, learning management), and We Are Teachers (referrals) share a common database DNA. Even blogs through their categories and tag clouds are databases.

Email is an example. Treat the sender's address as a data point. Then set up rules (database queries) to have all your boss's emails sent to a high priority folder and Aunt Mabel's political ravings sent straight to the trash. This approach allows you to target the urgent items amidst a sea of dross.

The Education Need

Educators and educational publishers have a vital role to play in our move to a database driven world. Why?

• Students need to develop database fluency if they are going to get the most out of their digital lives. Learning Management Systems (LMS), social networks, and on-line research are all core tools for 21st Century education. Database fluency should become part of the curriculum along with textual, numerical, and visual fluencies.
• Teachers need access to networks of peers, experts, and content to be able to deliver on the promise of individualized instruction.
• Administrators and Policy Makers need to measure results across groups and efficiently allocate resources.

Every one of these needs is best met by a database and fluent users.

The Goal

The end result should be personal growth, valued relationships, and effective organizations. But in the first flush of widespread adoption we are losing sight of this. Consider the statement "I "friended" 1,000 people on Facebook therefor I have 1,000 friends." Wrong. Many people are confusing the database with their relationships.

A teacher could take the Facebook example above and build an interesting set of discussions around the meaning of friendship, how to find a small network of people who are interested in the same things you are, what you can do to contribute, and how to manage the relationships that emerge. It isn't creating huge numbers of meaningless connections that matters - it is finding the needles in the haystack of humanity that you want to build bonds of friendship with.

Database Fluency

What is database fluency - what are the core skills proficient users need to master?

• Ubiquity - See every digital file you touch as a potential data point. Emails, MP3 files, Word documents, student records, and your photos are all potential data points.
• Searching - Understanding how to craft logical questions that return useful information takes ongoing practice ("and", "or", "greater than", "before", etc.). Learning to to harness the advanced search features almost all applications have is another part of this skill.
• Homing - The ability to find what is meaningful and valuable in large data sets by asking the right questions at the right time. Is this a reliable source? How recent is the data? Does this address the question I set out to answer? Is it usable or a tangled mess? How does it compare with other results?
• Tagging - Users tag data elements to personalize them. This can be through formal taxonomies provided by the database author ("Male, Female") or informal folksonomies created on the fly by users (flickr tag clouds). Since tagging is so open-ended having some basic rules in place can help insure you are able to use the tag cloud later to search the data.
• Cleaning - Any collection of data gets messy after a while - knowing how to clean your data just like you clean your room is an essential part of working with large data sets. Without maintenance your searching and tagging get bogged down.
• Reporting - Creating clear usable reports that make the point you are after is an important part of turning data into information and eventually into wisdom. When is a table better than a bar chart? Should I focus on 5 or 500 names?

None of this involves database programming. That is a skill more akin to auto mechanics - I don't need to know how to tune my engine to drive a car. I also don't need to know SQL to use a social networking site. However, for driving and networking I do need to know the rules of the road and how navigate where I want to go.

How these elements appear in different applications varies widely - understanding the underlying dynamics helps harness their power across many environments.

RSS readers click through to see the full article - 3 detailed examples that bring these concepts to life and some suggestions on where to start.

Continue reading "Database Fluency - Core Skill for the 21st Century" »

Here is some food for thought from Seth Godin on how social networking can help us organize. His main point - the side in an argument that is better organized usually wins. Whether your issue is education reform, textbook and software adoption, privatization, highly qualified teachers, NCLB, or any of the other issues of the day there is a worthy nugget of wisdom in his thinking.

What Happens When We Organize?

As Seth points out these tools upset the power dynamic and if harnessed can lead to positive change.

On caveat - once you engage be prepared to go on forever. These issues are never permanently resolved - and that is probably as it should be. In an arena as complicated and nuanced as learning no one has a monopoly on the truth.

Another caveat - organization is just a tool for change, not necessarily a tool for doing good. Witness email - the spammers are better organized than the rest of us and they are killing it. So - be the change you want to see and find others who want the same things you do.

Here are a couple of places to start:

Classroom 2.0 - For all of us
EduCon - For educators
We Are Teachers - For teachers
AEP and SIIA Education Division - For publishers

Come on - join the conversation!

This meme has been running around the blogosphere. In the spirit of "getting to know your blogger better" here is my version of this fun little collection of random facts.

Four jobs I have had in my life (not including your current job):

Street Musican (Seville, Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, New York, San Francisco, Montreal, well you get the idea)
Planning Synthesist (so much more interesting than analyst)
Pot Boy (no not THAT - I washed pots when the Chef was done with them)
Credit Manager

Four Movies I have watched over and over:

Dr. Strangelove
Lord of the Rings (counts as one really looooong one)
Bladerunner
And Now for Something Completely Different (Monty Python)

Four places I have lived:

Concord MA
Fujinomiya Japan
Albuquerque NM
Bellingham WA
(and 14 other places)

Four Shows I love to watch:

Mythbusters
The Daily Show
Friday Night Lights
Get Smart

Four Places I have been on vacation:

Grindlewald Switzerland
Maui
Whistler BC
Isle Au Haut ME

Four of my favorite foods:

Artichokes
Halibut
Pickles
Sourdough (anything)

Four favorite drinks:

Cafe Americano
Lemon Sparkling Water
Diet Coke (caffiene free)
Guava Juice

Four places I would rather be right now:

Taos
Mt. Baker
San Francisco
New Zealand (ok - I've neven been there but I really want to go)

Four things I know but will never blog about:

Tuning a banjo
Hidden ski trails (that's kind of the point)
Philadelphia
Making Beer

Four Bloggers I Tag:

Richard Carey
John Rice
Chris Keene
Annie Teich

Your turn guys...

This is the new home on the inter-tubes of Headway Strategies. This site has been running in beta mode for about a month and the final switch is taking place today.

We hope you enjoy the new format and welcome any feedback to help us tweak and improve the experience.

Thanks to the entire team at Justia for making this happen.

Lee