The Case for Educational Entrepreneurship: Hard Truths about Risk, Reform, and Reinvention

Entrepreneurial ventures always carry the risk of failure. But Mr. Hess believes that our education system is far more endangered by conventional approaches to school reform that have merely preserved the status quo. TO AN unprecedented degree, this is the era of educational entrepreneurship. Unconventional thinkers have waded into the world of K-12 education, founded influential organizations, and upended conventions. They have developed new models for delivering instruction or recruiting teachers and have applied old-fashioned practices with inspired fidelity. While their efforts constitute a still-minuscule portion of schooling, they are responsible for many of the most exciting developments in 21st-century education. Is this a good thing? What does it really mean? And what does it imply for policy and school improvement? Consider Wireless Generation, a New York-based firm that provides schools with diagnostic software. The system operates on handheld computers, allowing teachers to diagnose student needs and chart progress while circling their classrooms. Growing Stars is a California-based firm that provides tutoring for American stu * FREDERICKM. HESS, a former high school teacher and professor of education, is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D. C. He is the editor of Educational Entrepreneurship: Realities, Challenges, Possibilities (Harvard Education Press, 2006). E-mail: rhess@aei.org. dents using dozens of instructors based in Cochin, India. Able to hire educated Indians at a steep discount, Growing Stars and its competitors are charging Americans $20 an hour for personal tutoring, less than half of the prevailing rate in much of the U.S. Ventures such as these are among the most discussed in contemporary school reform--many are also among the most respected or most controversial. They include the KIPP Academies, K12 Inc., Teach for America, the Edison Schools, New Leaders for New Schools, Catapult Learning, Aspire Public Schools, and the New Teacher Project. Entrepreneurship is a slippery notion. There is no universal agreement on how it should be defined. Jean-Baptiste Say, the French economist, explained two centuries ago that "the entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield. " (1) Here, with due credit to Peter Drucker, author of the seminal Innovation and Entrepreneurship, it may be most useful to think of educational entrepreneurship as a process of purposeful innovation aimed at improving productivity or quality. Rather than accept familiar arrangements as given, entrepreneurs question fundamental assumptions about what is possible. (2) This might mean harnessing a new innovation or employing overlooked and underused tools, ideas, or approaches. Some of today's most prominent ventures, like the National Heritage Academies and the KIPP Academies, are resolutely "old-school" in their program design, emphasizing high expectations, respect, and discipline. WHY ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS IMPORTANT IN EDUCATION Today, our schools confront challenges that our education system was not designed, and may not be equipped, to handle. Arrangements that may have worked passably well 50 years ago no longer suffice. Developed haphazardly over the course of two centuries, the status quo is unequal to the requirements of contemporary citizenship, higher education, or employment. Decades of earnest efforts to reform public schools have shown remarkably little ability to substantively alter either routines or results, even when confronted with changing student demographics and needs. Tides of reform have rolled out and in and out again, with little attention paid to actually implementing new proposals or ensuring that schools and school systems are serious about them. A body of research, including my own volume Spinning Wheels, has critiqued the endless reform initiatives that sweep over education. …