Book • September 2010 • By Curtis Johnson, Clayton Christensen, Michael Horn

Update: A revised, second edition of Disrupting Class has been published! We have made a new chapter available for download.

Disrupting anything seems scary, but the disruption now taking place in the schooling industry will end up as a success story. Here’s a book rooted in years of research on why well managed enterprises – even whole industries – fail and find themselves disrupted by upstart innovations. Right away you will see that what disruption means is new organizations using different technologies and different business models to do what established organizations either cannot or do not want to do.

If the best managed and financed businesses in major industries inevitably face disruption, how would anyone expect it won’t happen in education?

For business and civic leaders, teachers and school administrators, and especially parents, this book goes to the heart of your deepest worries – and your highest hopes.

Consider the real customers – today’s youth who are more different from each other and from previous generations than at any time in history. The nation’s still standardized model of learning isn’t working for nearly half of them. Customizing learning opportunities will. And today’s fast-changing technology platform already shows how effective on-line and computer-centric learning can be – and how it changes the role of educators in amazing ways.

Disrupting Class makes a solid case for creating the space for this innovation. It is already happening outside traditional school districts. It could happen on the inside as well.