Terry M. Moe and John E. Chubb
Jossey Bass Publishers
April 2009
The long-awaited and very fine new Chubb-Moe book is now out and you surely ought to read it. Written under the aegis of Hoover's Task Force on K-12 Education, it takes the discussion of technology's transformative effect on education to a new level, well beyond Christensen's influential Disrupting Class. The authors aren't just blue-skying about what technology could do if given a chance. What's most interesting in this book is its explanation of how technology will transform the politics of education and thus rewrite the rules by which it is determined what is given a chance. To oversimplify outrageously, they believe that inherent in the new technologies is the capacity to triumph over the usual forces of resistance to reform and renewal in primary-secondary education. They cite half a dozen essential characteristics of technology--geographic dispersion, individualization, transparency, choices, organic evolution, etc.--that will alter power relationships, end-run or weaken traditional barriers, and empower agents of change. You can pick up some of this from their recent debate with Larry Cuban in the pages of Education Next but to get the full benefit--and provocation--of their analysis you'll want to see the book itself. Start here.
