Yesterday's Operational Silos Don't Support Today's Education Systems

With the advent of digital learning and decades of fine-tuning what works well and what doesn’t, school districts across America are making big changes. Some are moving toward competency-based learning and personalized pathways. Some are embracing technology in a big way, setting every student up for mobile learning on personal devices. Others are tackling projects and solving problems in other operational areas beyond instruction, such as transportation or food service or maintenance. But at some districts, people rarely step outside of their functional silos and interact with other departments or teams, much less work with them on change initiatives. Teachers rarely deal with the IT people, who in turn almost never interact with the transportation team or food service. But without cross-functional input, effective change is far less likely to be achieved. Master Planning for Innovation, or MPI, provides a mechanism to change this paradigm, creating a forum for cross-functional collaboration.