In this interview, education futurist Michael Horn—author, Harvard Graduate School of Education lecturer, and founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute—explores the rapid rise of unconventional K‑12 schooling (homeschooling, unschooling, virtual schools, microschools). He argues that within 20‑30 years such models could serve the majority of students, fundamentally reshaping lifelong‑learning mindsets. Horn identifies three primary catalysts: the COVID‑19 pandemic’s exposure of traditional school shortcomings, policy shifts like education savings accounts that give families direct funding choice, and advances in technology, especially AI, which lower barriers to creating new school models. He stresses that AI alone is insufficient; its impact depends on innovative, child‑centric schooling structures rather than merely digitizing existing ones. Drawing from his experience as a parent of 11‑year‑old identical twin girls enrolled in a Montessori program, Horn illustrates how personalization, flexible curricula, and tools like Khan Academy enable students to progress at their own pace, produce independent work, and achieve recognitions without parental gatekeeping. He expresses a strong desire for a broader ecosystem of viable school options to support diverse family needs.
Chapters
My name's Michael Horn. I'm an author on the future of education, K-12, higher education, and workforce. I teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and I was the founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, a nonprofit think tank.
Great. And we're going to talk about every single one of those things. So first up, where does unconventional K-12 education, which I'm kind of defining to mean homeschooling, unschooling, virtual schooling, microschooling, you name it, everything that's outside the traditional classroom, Where does that fit in with the whole range of changes that you're seeing happening across education and into the world of work?
I think the rise of unconventional forms of schooling in K-12 may be in the suite of the most important developments right now anywhere in terms of how education is changing. So much so that I think unconventional education in 20, 30 years might actually be the norm, or at least you know, well over half the population going to schools and forms of education like that for their K-12 schooling. I think it's that important and that big a deal in terms of changing mindsets about lifelong learning in this time.
And if I can ask a quick follow-up question on that, what do you consider the main driver of that move of families into unconventional education?
Only one main driver? I think it's—
Oh, go ahead and pick 2 or 3 if you want.
All right, I think it's a few things. I think one, people during the pandemic in particular saw what schooling looked like, and they couldn't believe it, and they wanted something different, and dissatisfaction grew, and ties to how it's always been done diminished. And so all of a sudden, the way it's always been done felt like, Oh, that's one way it's been done, but we could do it differently, in a way that was much more socially acceptable than ever before. I think the second big thing is that the policy state has changed significantly. So the rise of education savings accounts specifically, that put dollars in families' pockets to make the choice that's right for their kid, and different kids to have different choices, has been— just really changed the equation and made disruptive innovation actually possible. in U.S. schooling for the first time ever, I would argue, uh, in, in, you know, at least 100 years. Um, and then third, obviously technology coupled with those 2 developments has made it easier along a variety of fronts for educators or parents to stand up a variety of choices, uh, in communities to meet different needs. Well,
let's come back to technology for a second. Um, you and I first met back in the early 2000s, um, when you were just a small child. Um, but you're, You know, your first book really focused on online learning as a disruptive innovation in education. What would you say if you had to pick just one thing as a disruptive innovation today, what would it be?
I think obviously AI is that technology enabler that's undergirding all these. I think the modification I would make is that it's AI plus these new models of schooling, right? So AI is the tech enabler. But more important than the technology is actually the models that come around it. And I think that's frankly what far too many people that focused on online or digital learning missed with it, was that it's the models of schooling that will make the technology useful or not. And in my book, most of online learning was crammed into the traditional school model, and therefore, has had very little impact, or frankly, in many cases, negative impact. And so it's the combination of, yes, there's AI that lowers barriers to entry to create new schooling models, to coordinate schedules and allow kids to do unbundled activities and have education from lots of different places, et cetera, et cetera. Great. But that's only effective if we have it in new models that have the interests of each kid at the heart and are coherent within that structure.
So that leads me to my last question, because you're not only a thinker and visionary in the field, you're also a parent. A couple of school-aged kids. Are these girls in college yet? I can always lose track of how old they are.
They're 11 years old. Yeah. 11 years old. They think they are though. They think they're in college.
I bet they do. I bet they do. So what has being a parent of school-aged kids done to your outlook on all of this and how you feel about disruptive innovation now that you're a customer of it in a different way than you were before?
I've become a stronger advocate for the personalization for each child. I, as you know, have identical twin girls. They present very similarly and the differences are very real, and I want them to be able to have different pathways. And to be able to express who they're going to become as adults and find those pathways and not have to go through the conventional model. So I'm more passionate than ever before on that one. I would say the second one is I'm more passionate than ever before by a long shot on having many different options for families to choose from. We live in Massachusetts. We do not go to the public school. We do not send our kids to the public school. It's a choice we have made because we believe in personalisation, and they go to a Montessori education. But I will be very honest, I wish that there were like 5 to 10 more viable options that we could be choosing from. I think that would be very healthy for the families around me, the communities, and my kids. And then the third one is, I think what I'm surprised by is we don't use technology all that often with them, but it is an important tool that is also out there. And so, I'll humble brag a little bit around them, I guess, a little bit, but I am amazed at when they do use it and how they use it in this coherent, thoughtful, personalized structure of Montessori education, where in 4th grade, they had already gone through the 6th grade math curriculum. Wow. This year they're a little bit stuck in 5th grade, and Khan Academy was there as an option, right? And like, they can drive that. They know how they learn. They love setting goals. They can do that. They, for writing, they've written entire books modeling, I guess, people like you and me with the technology. And like, they're pretty good, right? And they, but again, in a structure where they know how to work with peers, set goals, give each other feedback. And so they get editing. And my proudest moment as a parent parent recently. I have many of them, but one of my daughters won an award at the State House for a letter she had written to an author. And the coolest thing was I had not read the letter before she won it. I had no hand in it, you know? And that was not my experience as a kid growing up with my education. Parents definitely would've been involved in any winning submission that came out of any of my schools. This is like very kid-driven. And so yes, was technology part of that? Yeah, wiped it up and so forth. And they know how to learn. And so technology's in service of that.
