Live Event: Innosight Report on Wichita Public Schools’ Learning Centers

In this live and interactive event with Michael B. Horn and Katherine Mackey of Innosight Institute, they discuss their recently released education case study about an innovative Kansas-based program that demonstrates how hybrid learning can combat the dropout epidemic in the United States. The program has given adults and youth – including teenage mothers and former gang members – who failed to complete high school a second chance to earn diplomas and escape the lasting economic disadvantages of dropping out. It has also prevented students from leaving high school in the first place by allowing them to retake courses they had failed or dropped. The case study is online at: http://www.innosightinstitute.org/media-room/publications/education-publications/wichita-public-schools-learning-centers/

Date:  Thursday, 22 April, 2010
Time: 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 5pm GMT (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tr.im/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event at the event page.

Michael B. Horn is the co-founder and Executive Director, Education of Innosight Institute, a not-for-profit think tank devoted to applying the theories of disruptive innovation to problems in the social sector. He is the coauthor of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (McGraw-Hill: June 2008) with Harvard Business School Professor and bestselling author Clayton M. Christensen and Curtis W. Johnson, president of the Citistates Group. BusinessWeek named the book one of the 10Best Innovation & Design Books of 2008, Strategy + Business awarded it the best human capital book of 2008, Newsweek named it as the 14th book on its list of “Fifty Books for Our Times,” and the National Chamber Foundation named it first among its 10 “Books that Drive the Debate 2009.”

Disrupting Class uses the theories of disruptive innovation to identify the root causes of schools’ struggles and suggests a path forward to customize an education for every child in the way she learns. Horn has been a featured keynote speaker at many conferences including the Virtual School Symposium and Microsoft’s School of the Future World Summit.

Prior to this, Horn worked at America Online during its aol.com re-launch, and before that he served as David Gergen’s research assistant, where he tracked and wrote about politics and public policy. Horn has written articles for numerous publications, including Education Week, Forbes, the Boston Globe, and U.S. News & World Report. In addition, he has contributed research for Charles Ellis’ book, Joe Wilson and the Creation of Xerox (Wiley, 2006) and Barbara Kellerman’s Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters (Harvard Business School Press, 2004).

Horn earned his MBA from Harvard Business School and an AB from Yale University, where he graduated with distinction in History.

Katherine Mackey is a Research Fellow in Innosight Institute’s Education Practice.  Prior to joining Innosight Institute in September 2008, she was an eleventh-grade English teacher at Highland High School, a public high school in Utah.  She worked previously as a designer at Houghton Mifflin Children’s Books.  She is the co-author of a strategic five-year Academic Master Plan for Salt Lake Community College and has assisted with the formation and writing of professional development packets for the Utah State Office of Education.  She has also worked as an intern for Senator Orrin G. Hatch for two summers. Mackey holds a BA in English and French from Wellesley College and an MA in Education from Harvard University.