Blog premise (or a TOC if you will)

With over 300 posting, I think I‘m getting closer to figured out what this blog is about.  Here’s a summary of the logic chain (or as my friends at Bridgespan would say, my theory of change):

1. Excellence and equity in education is the most important issue for the America economy and society; even more so for developing economies.
2. Expanding access to high quality learning experiences requires innovation particularly new learning tools and formats.
3. Learning online holds great promise for improved productivity and expanded access; new school formats that blend online learning and onsite support and application have the potential to address the global secondary gap (i.e., limited access to college/careers for low income students).
4. Producing and scaling innovation requires focused investment suggesting an important and complementary role for the private sector; most important advances will be the result of public-private partnerships.
5. Expanding opportunities for education entrepreneurs and the ability to approach old problems in new ways requires more sophisticated advocacy, particularly the use of new media.
6. Occasionally, other sources of media provide analogy, insight or inspiration (i.e., random musings).

How to close the gap?

The National Journal’s question of the week was ‘How can we close the achievement gap?’

The most important thing we can do to narrow the persistent gaps in achievement and attainment is make good on the good school promise: every American family deserves access to at least one good public school and every student deserves a good teacher.

NCLB had these intentions but fell short in large part because states failed to make the promise real; thousands of struggling schools have received only limited improvement efforts and chronic failure has been accepted far too long. Duncan’s encouragement to replace or transform the worst 5% of American schools is a step in the right direction. State leaders like Paul Pastorek have worked aggressively to fix or replace the lowest performing schools. Perhaps a push and a check from Duncan will encourage more state leaders to follow Pastorek’s lead.

To make real the good school promise we need vigilant advocacy. EdTrust, the historical leader in gap advocacy, has been joined by the Education Equality Project and state groups like ConnCAN. These groups are sweating the technical issue of standards, resource allocation, and equitable choice. But more importantly, advocacy connects policy to community. EEP, ConnCAN, and Parent Revolution are mobilizing historically underserved communities to demand that the ‘good school promise’ be made real in every neighborhood. As Kevin Chavous says, we need to make the promise real “by all means necessary.”

Pearson invests in Revolution Learning

I invest in and advocate for education entrepreneurs.  The first half of that equation is Revolution Learning, an education incubator and venture fund.  We form and invest in companies committed to improving learning and with the potential to make a big impact.

The revolution started on Larry Rosenstock’s back deck early in 2008.  Larry introduced me to Greg Mauro and Rob Hutter, partners in Revolution Ventures, a fund with a track record of success in information technology.  Almost half of the deals they’ve done in the last 10 years are companies that one or both were involved in forming,

Greg has been on the High Tech High foundation board since shortly after I made a grant to Larry in 1999.  He and Rob formed a New Market Tax Credit vehicle, Revolution Community Ventures, to help fund that last two HTH facilities.  Larry serves on the Board of Gazillion, an exciting youth media company that Rob leads.

Bringing this kind of talent and entrepreneurial experience to the world of learning is exciting, but unfortunately rare. Here’s how my partner Greg sees it:

Revolution Learning is the sector’s only education pure-play global private equity firm that focuses on early stage venture investments and incubatory efforts in addition to later stage growth equity.  There is no lack of traditional private equity money for large, established education deals.  However, there are very few venture firms that focus on early to mid stage education deals, mostly due to a lack of domain expertise and misconceptions about where private capital can play a role.  Given the size of education in the economy in relation to other venture sectors, such as clean tech, the early to mid stage education market is strikingly underserved.

We have great investors—people looking for market returns and committed to improving learning. We think the incentives for speed, scale and quality inherent in private capital must play an important role in expanding access to excellence and equity in learning. The full rationale for private equity in public education can be found in my recent AEI paper.

Today, we announced the formation of a new fund with Pearson. In a joint statement Steve Dowling outlines how the partnership is part of their commitment to making the transition from print to personal digital learning services. We’re excited about this relationship and will begin making investments together this week. Let the revolution begin!

Great op-ed from great edu-govs

The two most effective education governors in recent memory, Govs Jeb Bush & Jim Hunt, teamed up for a great op-ed today on the $5B innovation fund.  I made some similar points recently on HuffPost.

Groups making a difference

DFER:  Joe Williams and a strong board continue to push the Ds to support real accountability and real choice. 

CA Charter Assoc:   Jeb Wallace has kicked CCSA advocacy into high gear—both CA and national.

ConnCAN: we’d be in a much different place if every state had an Alex Johnston and an advocacy group like ConnCAN

UVSO:  I’ve been visiting community-based organizations providing youth & family services like Unified Vailsburg in Newark, as well as groups in Queens (Sports & Arts, Sunnyside Community Services, SAYA), Bronx (East Side House), and Brooklyn, and continue to be impressed with the caliper of leadership, the commitment to community, and the entrepreneurship despite a funding crisis.  

This video will change LA, then USA

Parent Revolution offers a simple powerful promise—get 51% of parents to sign up and in 3 years you get a transformed school. Wow, that’s a big idea. Easier said than done and only possible:
• in states where parents can vote to convert a school to charter (I’m trying to figure out how many that is) and/or
• where there is a quality charter operator with funding to expand, no charter cap, and a district, city, university, or state willing to authorize

Where there is capacity and opportunity to fulfill this promise it’s a big idea, a very big idea, one that will change the educational landscape. LA Charter operators Green Dot and Alliance are supporting the effort. These operators routinely increase the college completion rate of a neighborhood by a factor of 10, from 5-6% to 50-60%.

It’s worth noting the impossibly difficult conditions under which these networks operate: 90% students in/near poverty, expensive real estate with no facilities funding, and high labor costs, and half the funding of NY/CT/NJ.

Watch the video—it is a wonderfully disruptive idea. This video will change LA, then the USA.
Watch Parent Revolution on YouTube.

Klein/Sharpton echo Obama

If you haven’t joined www.EdEquality.org yet, sign up now!  It’s an exciting bipartisan movement focused on school and teacher quality, and educational options for families.  Here’s the Klein/Sharpton statement following Obama’s edu speech this morning:

“We joined together to convince America that a renewed focus on our schools — and a willingness to challenge the status quo on education — is critically important to our country’s future. Today, President Obama told America that ‘economic progress and educational achievement’ are linked. He urged us to rise above partisanship to hold our schools and educators accountable for results; tie education funding to student outcomes; give schools and educators the data they need to make smart decisions; recruit, prepare, and reward outstanding teachers and remove ineffective teachers; and promote educational innovations such as charter schools to provide parents with choices. These ideas are the ones we must implement in order to transform our schools and prepare our students to succeed in the 21st Century global economy. We are taking the President’s words seriously — and are eager to work with him and other school reformers to back the words up with action.”

Parent Revolution in LA

Ben Austin is launching a parent revolution in LA–a very exciting movement to organize parents to demand better schools.  He’s giving voice and power to parent concerns neighborhood by neighborhood.  This is best thing that’s happened in LA in years.  Become a fan, get his feed, send him a contribution.

Good Com/Bad Com

+ Obama team on meltdown com, but barely, like a B-, especially outside the beltway.  You just can’t do enough communicating in a crisis and we’re not getting enough from the team.

+ MLA Partner Schools has a clean useful web site and produces beautiful collateral on a small budget.  Very cool for a small LA school support .org (I’m a board member).

+ ConnCAN is superb at messaging on the achievement gap (I’m an advisor).

+ Communities In Schools  works really hard at communicating results, results, results.  They wrap youth/family services around schools in a variety of (kind of complicated) ways but they talk about graduates and lives changes (I’m an advisor).

+ Jack is back!  Let’s celebrate over a SW Chicken BBQ salad or maybe the $.99 tacos!

- Bobby Jindal’s State of the Union response.  He’s a hard working idealistic guy—Louisiana is lucky to have him as governor.   But who’d want to follow Obama….in a crisis?  Swing and a miss.

- I hate United Airlines voice recognition—it doesn’t, at least not mine.  Can’t tell you how often I’ve shouted ‘Agent’ into the phone, causing those around me to wonder about my sanity. Try it yourself, 800-824-6200, see what you end up shouting.

- What’s the deal with those G commercials?  My wife just told me it was Gatorade.  Are they just trying a little to hard?

- California: the state is a disaster, the budget is a disaster, the legislature’s communication about the disaster is a disaster.  We have Swedish tax rates and Soviet-style communications. 

The Good School Promise

ConnCan is probably the most effective state-based education advocacy organization.  Education policy is particularly complicated in CT with a legacy of strong local control (e.g., the state provides less than 40% of funding).  But ConnCan has boiled the problem down to a simple and powerful mission:

We will not rest until every child in our state, regardless of race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status, has access to a great public school. 

The Good School Promise should be central to federal, state, and local education policy.  It implies, measurement, accountability, choice, and the capacity to improve or replace failing schools. 

There was a well-deserved reception last night for founder and Chairman, Jon Sackler.  As an early investor in CMO Achievement First, Jon’s philanthropy and advocacy is a great example of a regional philanthropist/activist—creating great new schools and improving public policy. 

Let’s make the ConnCan good school promise a reality.