One reason, according to the book Disrupting Class, is that the way we learn doesn’t always match up with the way we are taught.

But if we hope to stay competitive – academically, economically, and technologically – we need to rethink our understanding of intelligence, reevaluate our educational system, and reinvigorate our commitment to learning. In other words, we need “disruptive innovation.”

At the Boston College Center’s recent business-education summit, co-author Curtis Johnson presented the now-famous “disruption” theories and how those theories might better equip schools to meet the needs of students in the 21^st century.

Johnson explained how disruption theory can be applied to education, and suggested that we look outside the system to see how advances in technology can help transform schools into 21^st century learning environments.

He began by explaining two forms of innovation:

• Sustaining innovation is the kind of innovation that makes a product better but sometimes outpaces the need of the customer. For example, cars can reach speeds of 160 miles per hour, but do we actually need cars to go that fast? In general the companies that lead in sustaining innovation are usually industry leaders.
• Innovation from outside – disruptive innovation – begins small, typically from a set of customers not well-served, and has the potential to transform an industry. These are often simpler, cheaper products that aren’t targeting the main customer.

The personal computer industry is a prime example of disruptive innovation. By focusing only on the needs of their best customers, giants like Digital Equipment Corporation became obsolete as a revolution in personal computing took over the market.

In fairness to schools, they were initially founded on the premise that that knowledge is scarce, and only a few students needed a certain set of skills. In this scenario, it is assumed that knowledge can be organized into well structured courses, that a person at the front of the room could impart that knowledge, and that all students can learn at the same pace, in the same way, in the same hour.

Schools have performed to the best of their ability. They added school lunch, desegregated, added testing to improve accountability – tried to adjust to each new demand for improvement.

But society keeps moving the goalposts for schools, and now we are demanding that a majority of students be prepared for the 21^st century.

For example, businesses have spent more than $60 billion providing computers for schools, but traditional teaching methods have not changed and schools are using computers as a tool, not a method for providing primary content and instruction.

Our schools listen to their best customers, said Johnson – those who can sit, listen and absorb information from a teacher at the front of the class. But many students today are wired differently. They are digitized and they approach learning differently. They multi-task and motivation is key to their success.

Charter schools were innovative. They came from the outside. Although not a panacea, they have provided an opportunity for students, parents and teachers to change the learning environment. They gave teachers an opportunity to be more professional, and they allowed American businesses to play a greater role in school policy and curriculum.

Innovative technology and sophisticated software will have a huge impact on the role of the teacher going forward. Some predict that in less than a decade the majority of learning will take place on line. In the future schools students and teachers will have to access information from varied content providers, collaborate, work in teams, and learn how to work with people who are different from themselves. No longer the sole director of content, teachers will need to take on the role of coach/facilitator.

American business leaders are frustrated by their failure to impact our nation’s education system, but they need to better understand the system they are trying to change. One of the biggest barriers to changing our education system, said Johnson, is that schools are conservative environments layered with politics, and change happens slowly.

Change also comes slowly because the people who are making the changes did well in the old system, and as such they are invested in keeping that system alive

Change will occur as new innovative systems improve, while schools and teachers adjust and prepare for the demands for engaging, relevant individualized learning environments.

I have known Karen for more than a decade, in her former role at the National Basketball Association, more recently at Scholastic, and as a Center board member. But it was the Karen here in New Orleans that for me embodied the best of what an individual engaged in corporate citizenship can achieve, as she displayed a passion that was converted into action.

One of the unique aspects of this meeting was that it took place in New Orleans, a community that has faced the unthinkable and whose path forward is being invented and created in real time. As part of this experience, Karen led a group of about 15 of us to the A. P. Tureaud School, located in one of the many devastated neighborhoods trying to cope and recover since Katrina.

Scholastic has been heavily engaged with the schools of New Orleans, trying to use its assets and bring its care to build capacity in a school and a community bravely trying to climb back from disaster. By any measure we were seeing a highly traumatized community where 70 percent have lost their homes, facing an infrastructure that needs building from the ground up, and sitting with a range of social and economic issues that would drive most of us into deep depression: 15-year-olds in fourth grade, no physical education so kids have little time to be outdoors, and minimal parental involvement, in large part because parents live across the river trying to mend their lives back together. But on another level, if you spend a little time there you can immediately see the spirit of rebuilding and can-do. On walking into the school, you can’t help but be struck by the many symbols throughout the building. In the classroom I visited, boldly splayed across the top of the blackboard was “Storms Come, Love Remains, Hope Blossoms”; on another wall, “Enter to Learn, Depart to Serve.”

It is into this context that Karen and her team have thrown themselves to create a difference in reading and literacy – with amazing energy and, perhaps more importantly, results. Working with 32 schools and 95 classrooms, Scholastic is creating perceptible progress, student by student.

One of the highlights of my visit was meeting Karen’s father-in-law, a lifelong New Orleans resident who has been working as an educator in the city for over five decades. He also had been a student at the A. P. Tureaud School two generations earlier. A truly amazing difference maker, he led us to his house in the flooded area and, carefully removing the lock and chain which wrapped around the front door, led us into his gutted house, which he and his wife had to flee and which now remains a shell of its proud former self. I felt a profound sadness standing in the stripped-down shell, listening to Mr. Proctor’s joyful memories, and felt the loss of precious photographs and joyful family times.

Which brings me back to Karen, or “General,” as her father-in-law affectionately called her.  It fits: Karen has brought not only a passion to her work and to New Orleans, but a dogged determination, vision and voice that makes you want to get up and join her in her cause. She represents the best of those who labor daily to bring their corporations to communities, and contribute to solving those issues. So I salute “General” Proctor, and depart New Orleans even more inspired by the power of one.

Wagner, co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and author of “The Global Achievement Gap”, said the latest challenge facing education essentially puts it between a rock and a hard place. The “rock” is the new set of skills that all students will need for work, learning and citizenship in a knowledge society. The “hard place” is the fact that the Internet generation is differently motivated and educators do not know how to teach this new breed of student all the new skills they will need to succeed in college, in careers and as citizens.

Wagner explained that conventional teaching that worked in a 19^th and 20^th century society focused on factual recall rather than application of knowledge. Schools rely on multiple choice tests because of a single curriculum approach used in the United States: test preparation. He acknowledged that the accountability these tests seek is fine but lamented that “we try to do it on the cheap,” often at the expense of things like field trips and other more experiential learning. As a result, college professors and employers find their charges woefully unprepared.

“In the 21^st century, more important than what you know is what you can do with what you know,” he said. “Multiple choice tests don’t evaluate by asking you to do or show what you know.”

To address this gap between what students know and what they need to know how to do, Wagner has drafted the 7 Survival Skills for Careers, College and Citizenship:

1. Critical thinking and problem solving
2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence
3. Agility and adaptability
4. Initiative and entrepreneurialism
5. Effective oral and written communication
6. Access and analyze information
7. Curiosity and imagination

Wagner dismisses as a myth the notion that today’s generation of students and young workers are not motivated to work. “They are not unmotivated to work. They are differently motivated.”

He explained that the kids who grew up on the Internet are accustomed to communication that is immediate and always on. The web is something they use for friendships, self-directed learning and self-expression as evidenced by their prolific reporting via Facebook and uploading of videos to YouTube. Everywhere but at school, these young people are constantly connected to create and multitask.

Because they are accustomed to learning on their own and from peers, Wagner noted, this generation has less fear and respect for authority. Specifically they don’t like to be talked down to. But perhaps their most encouraging trait is that they want to make a difference in what they choose as a career and do interesting things.

So how can business help our schools give today’s students what they need so that they enter the work force prepared for what 21^st century society needs? Wagner identified five actions business can take to help provide leadership on education.

• Explain what skills matter most and why. Make it clear that standards should be based on competency over content.
• Lobby for and fund Accountability 2.0 R&D to develop tests that measure the skills that matter most.
• Lobby for higher standards to license and recertify educators so expectations for teachers are those of knowledge workers, not assembly line workers.
• Fund development of model schools where exemplary lessons can be videotaped.
• Ensure that every high school student has a meaningful work internship and adult mentor.

A short video of Wagner’s presentation is available below. Center members can view the full video here (login required).

Judging from our conversations with companies across the spectrum, there is a high degree of frustration. The current approach by business, which resembles a fragmented and piecemeal attempt at finding solutions, has not contributed to any meaningful breakthrough in this enormously complex and challenging task of putting education back on track.

After listening to the growing frustration about finding a role for business that delivers significant impact in the educational arena, we agreed to host the upcoming New Orleans summit April 27-29 Meeting the 21^st Century Challenge: A Summit on How Business Can Help Transform U.S. Education.

By now most everyone inside and outside the business community is well acquainted with the precipitous indicators of American education that continue to slide in a downward spiral. The frustration of companies whose economic success and sustainability is directly impacted by educational achievement here in the United States grows more and more palpable each year. There’s also a sense of futility building as we watch the situation unfold. Despite fairly active involvement by the business community, the depth of the dilemma and the challenge continue to grow. Solutions are in short supply, and the fragmented efforts by corporations and others to address educational issues have reached a stage where even seasoned veterans in this area are feeling fatigue, frustration and failure.

And so the summit is a call to the business community to put aside the narrow interests and preconceptions of the problem and re-examine new approaches and new solutions. New Orleans was chosen very purposely, and serves as a great host for this meeting. Having experienced an unimaginable storm and its aftermath, the region has moved through stages of shock, disbelief and despair. Out of this pain has emerged an opportunity for a rebirth of the city. It seems fitting for New Orleans to host a meeting of the corporate community to come together to discuss different perspectives and approaches and create a new dialogue that resets the corporate approach to education.

In this forum the business community will take stock of its successes and failures and give itself a score card on its impact and effectiveness in achieving education success. The business leaders will need to consider what new collaborations could and should look like, collaborations among and between businesses, and collaborations with other sectors. This will be a time to begin reimagining shared leadership, and to create new pathways for concerned and invested folks from the corporate and non-corporate worlds. It will be a time to look at scalable solutions and break away from business as usual.

The April summit presents a unique and timely opportunity for those in corporate America who are working and leading in addressing the challenges of education in their communities and across the country. They will be part of a remarkable group of leaders combining powers from across the country to create new beginnings and breathe a new spirit of revitalization. There is nothing more energizing than the possibility of new beginnings and exciting breakthroughs to solve one of our most challenging social problems.

Click here to learn more about the Business-Education Summit and to register.