Michael B. Horn: The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning

In classic disruptive fashion, online learning is expanding beyond distance learning. Educators and entrepreneurs are increasingly creating blended-learning environments—where rather than doing the online learning at a distance, students learn online in an adult-supervised school environment for at least part of the time.
At the outset, this occurred in areas of nonconsumption, such as credit-recovery labs and dropout-recovery schools. A small but growing number of schools, however, are now starting to introduce blended learning into their core programming for mainstream students.
Bleak budgets coupled with looming teacher shortages amidst an increasing demand for results are accelerating the growth of online learning into blended environments. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently described a “new normal,” where schools would have to do more with less. Blended learning is playing a vital role, as school operators begin to rethink the structure and delivery of education with the new realities of public funding.
The growth of online learning in brick-and-mortar schools carries with it a bigger opportunity that has not existed in the past with education technology, which has been treated as an add-on to the current education system and conventional classroom structure. Online learning has the potential to be a disruptive force that will transform the factory-like, monolithic structure that has dominated America’s schools into a new model that is student-centric, highly personalized for each learner, and more productive, as it delivers dramatically better results at the same or lower cost.
In a report that I co-authored, The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning, takes an in-depth look at teaching method of the future that "has the potential to revolutionize K–12 education in terms of quality and cost."
According to Education Week's Digital Directions blog, "While the body of research on online learning has increased exponentially in the last few years one of the first to devoted exclusively to blended learning."
Click here to download the complete report and let us know if you think that blended learning is truly a game changer.