Trends in educational entrepreneurship
Nichole Dobo –
WASHINGTON, D.C. – There is little doubt that a startup-style culture has bloomed as the latest fashion in many of the nation’s school districts.
And with it comes a need to assess whether these innovations are more than just a fad.
Nine reports on educational entrepreneurship – some with amusing titles – were presented Wednesday at a conference at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning research organization in Washington, D.C. They offer insider perspectives on the last decade of innovation and predictions for what could – or should – come next. The papers were a follow-up to a 2006 book edited by Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the institute.
The conference was live-streamed to the public. Virtual and in-person attendees asked questions and posted quotes from the panel discussions, marked with a Twitter hashtag, #AEIedEntrep. The social media conversation gained enough traction to make it onto Twitter’s “trending topics” list, sandwiched between chatter about entertainer Rick Ross and presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal.
Here’s a list of the report names and a link to the full text of each document.
- “Carrots, Sticks, and Sermons: How Policy Shapes Educational Entrepreneurship,” by Ashley Jochim, Center on Reinventing Public Education, University of Washington.
- “Unleashing Entrepreneurial Energy to Transform Education,” by John Bailey, of Digital Learning Now.
- “Barbarians at the Gate? How Venture Finance Might Evolve to Support Disruptive K-12 Innovation,” by Dmitri Mehlhorn, of Vidinovo.
- “Ten for Ten: Lessons for the Next Decade of Education Entrepreneurship,” by Ross Baird and Daniel Lautzenheiser, of Village Capital and Boston Consulting Group.
- “A Civil Education Marketplace,” by John Katzman, of Noodle.
- “Education Entrepreneurship since the Turn of the Century and Where It Might be Headed Next,” by Stacey Childress, of NewSchools Venture Fund.
- “Entrepreneurship as a Matter of Practice,” by Elizabeth City, of the Doctor of Education Leadership Program, Harvard Graduate School of Education.
- “Go Small or Go Home: Innovation in Schooling,” by Matt Candler of 4.0 Schools.
- “But Does It Work? Evaluating the Fruits of Entrepreneurship,” by Jon Fullerton, of the Center for Education Policy Research at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.