Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained
Entrepreneurs Looking For a Real Challenge Find It – At School
Like a lot of entrepreneurs, Michael Milkie has big dreams. Like the innovators at Yahoo and Microsoft who’ve revolutionized information technology and software development, Milkie, too, would like to take a huge industry in a completely new direction. But there’s a big difference: Milkie is a former public school teacher and co-founder of the Noble Network of Charter Schools in Chicago. He wants to revamp the way kids – particularly those in the toughest neighborhoods with the worst-performing schools – are educated.
Nonprofit Real Estate Trusts: Viable Solutions to the Charter School Facilities Challenge
One of the most persistent challenges that charter school entrepreneurs face is in finding, developing and paying for school facilities. Charter school operators and systems are forced to excel in two businesses simultaneously: the business of educating our nation’s most underserved children, and the business of real estate development.
Entrepreneurs’ Ideas for Improving No Child Left Behind: Recommendations From a ‘Town Hall’ Session
The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act created myriad opportunities for education entrepreneurs, particularly those creating new public schools or helping to turn around low-performing schools. However, while some of the act’s provisions encourage innovation by entrepreneurs, other aspects of the law’s current structure may stymie these efforts.
Linking Entrepreneurial Innovation and Systemic Change in Public Education: A Report on the Seventh Annual NewSchools Summit
On May 4, 2006, NewSchools Venture Fund convened its seventh annual Summit. Each year, the Summit brings together an incredibly talented and passionate group of leaders who are committed to ensuring that all students receive high-quality educational opportunities. This year, nearly 400 entrepreneurs, educators, business and community leaders, policymakers and philanthropists gathered in Northern California to explore new approaches to change, and to reflect on the work that still needs to be done to transform our nation’s public schools.
What Are Education Entrepreneurs?
This chapter was written for Educational Entrepreneurship: Realities, Challenges, and Possibilities, a volume edited by Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute and published by Harvard Education Press.
Cycle of Instructional Improvement: Self-Assessment Tool
This self-assessment tool was developed to help educators examine their use of data-driven decision making and understand how to implement the cycle of instructional improvement.
Venture Capitalists Are Investing in Educational Reform
Venture capitalists of Silicon Valley, who have backed hundreds of high-technology entrepreneurs, are eagerly financing a new group these days: schoolmasters.
“We give education entrepreneurs money to start or to speed up building their companies,” said L. John Doerr, who over 26 years has helped start dozens of ventures, including Sun Microsystems, Amazon.com and Google. He helped found NewSchools Venture Fund in San Francisco six years ago for a new breed of entrepreneur – the kind who doesn’t have to produce a profit.
First Annual Gathering of Education Entrepreneurs: Creating the Vision for 2030
In August 2005, NewSchools Venture Fund and the Aspen Institute invited a group of about 50 leaders in educational entrepreneurship, philanthropy, policy making and research for the first Annual Gathering of Education Entrepreneurs in Aspen, Colorado. The goals of these annual convenings are to rejuvenate these entrepreneurial change agents to sustain their efforts, to connect them on a human and professional level, to define new ways to make sure the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and to create the long term agenda for change.
Education Entrepreneurs Seen as Facing Uphill Climb in U.S. Schools
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Experts who gathered here recently to discuss educational entrepreneurship pointed to what they see as barriers to expanding its influence in the K-12 arena: federal and state policies, district bureaucracies, a climate that resists change, and outright political opposition.
NewSchools Performance Roundtable: Reflections and Next Steps
This paper synthesizes themes from a conversation NewSchools Venture Fund convened in May 2005 about public school systems’ shift toward becoming “performance-driven systems.”