Our school systems fail in very predictable and repetitive ways. The same schools have been failing the same demographics of students for generations. And yet when something even slightly different is suggested to improve learning outcomes, we ask for a deep evidence base that proves this new strategy has worked before.

Alex Hernandez, of Charter School Growth Fund, proposes a FabLab for school – a place where educators and wannabe educators can try out their new models of schooling in a risk-tolerant and safe environment (after school and summers).

More summer programs should be tinkering in this same way. At SMASH Academy, Level Playing Field Institute is doing just that. While students are still attending classes, each student has a laptop and works through a tech-enabled, project-based curriculum for 5 weeks. Instructors, mostly local high school teachers, are encouraged to try things that they are not trying at their regular school, particularly things using technology. The hope is that these practices are workshopped over the summer and then imported into their year-round classrooms.

Online Learning 2

The more celebrated and highly utilized online learning experiences provide short videos and text followed by multiple-choice or similar assessments. Teachers then get analytics about their classes and students. Some see this as an improved instructional model. For me, it is a more efficient instructional model if what we are trying to do is ensure students receive a compulsory education as evaluated by statewide mandated assessments. What if we want students to thrive in a 21^st century economy?

This is another place SMASH is innovating. Piloting a new platform, called MySciHigh, teachers and students will be immersed in a project-based, blended learning environment where students complete interactive tasks online and in the classroom. Once students prove proficiency of the standards, they unlock an online, cooperative project that requires them to apply everything they learned throughout the unit by creating something original and new. While online education and project-based learning are not new, the marriage of the two on a scalable platform is.

We need to stop pandering to our “digital native” students and provide structures and platforms that better enable their success – and success not just on statewide measures of assessment, but on outcomes related to college and career readiness. Through MySciHigh, we hope to tap into what motivates students to learn at the highest levels and see technology as part of the means to get there. While we have some big hypotheses based on years of research and practice, we are going to listen to our student and teacher users, apply real-time data and feedback, and keep improving through a nonstop process of inquiry.

Could this change schools for the better? Possibly. But if we do not take risks and apply the Lean Startup methodology to schools, we’ll fail generations more of the same students – and that is just not OK.

Robert Schwartz is the Executive Director of the Level Playing Field Institute. He spent three years as Chief Academic Officer for ICEF Public Schools in South Los Angeles, leading the strategic expansion of the academic program. As the founding principal at ICEF’s flagship high school, the first three classes achieved a 100 percent graduation rate, with 97 percent accepted to four-year universities. Prior to that, Robert taught middle school science in East and South Los Angeles. He graduated from Binghamton University with degrees in Biology and Classics, and earned his MA in Urban Education Policy and EdD in Urban Educational Leadership from USC.