By way of truth in advertising, your editor wrote the first draft of a good part of this report.   more »

Why Didn't the Industry Stay In With the Outs?   more »

The programs that should have been eligible for purchase under Reading First - or not.   more »

It's about the Senate, stupid. And what do you know about "real options?"   more »

Something beats nothing. So the University of Arizona's anti-privatization Education Policy Research Unit puts out the de facto report of record.   more »

School boards and providers: Beware the "one-trick pony"   more »

Baltimore County's Articulated Instruction Model raises the question.   more »

But quality "assurance" isn't.   more »

When the intellectual wing of public education's political right rejects a market-based option, there's a problem.   more »

It's never so black and white. And the details are more interesting than such a portrayal implies.   more »

Deja vu. Declasse. Clauswitz. Will this turn out to be characterized as "all about the fees?" And what do you know about "groupthink" or how to protect against it?   more »

Three, arguably four, of the five risks identified in the summary section of K12's IPO prospectus are political.   more »

The price? The founder is slowly, gently, but probably, eased out, handing management over to people with the investors' confidence.   more »

It's a false choice. The arts contribute to literacy and numeracy, and there's no reason the stuff of math and reading can't be the great works of world culture. School improvement providers that fuse the two worlds can only do well as educators wake up to the possibilities.   more »

Norm-referenced tests aimed at an accountability regime based on average student performance give way to criterion-referenced tests based on every student’s performance. There are industry implications.   more »

Imagine if American hospitals permitted doctors who treat brain injuries by drilling holes in patients' heads to practice alongside those who employ the latest tools of laser surgery.   more »

And a view into the strategic calculus behind these buys.   more »

Starting at the bottom and working our way up, the basic economic unit of tutoring is the class. Look at those gross margins!   more »

What it means for k-12 industry structure, Houghton's investors, and the school improvement provider community. How much do you know about antitrust law?   more »

The number of big publishers shrink, but the big get much, much bigger.   more »

Better late than never, Superintendent Roosevelt decides teachers should be part of curriculum reform. And an interesting admission from Kaplan management.   more »

Regarding the practicability of Charter Management Organizations (CMO).   more »

How smaller school imrovement providers leverage limited assets.   more »

School managers serve a purpose beyond raising achievement; it's not clear whether providers dodged a bullet or took one; it will take more than marginal improvements to current operations to get politically significant improvements in student performance.   more »

In reponse to the press release they sent edbizbuzz.com on RAND's Supplemental Educational Services report. With comments from SES evaluator and University of Memphis Prof. Steve Ross. And a non-responsive last word from Steve Pines.   more »

Pay me now or pay me more later.   more »

Maybe regional oprganization is the way for school improvement providers to organize the new education industry.   more »

The alternative may be Alvarez and Marsal at the back end.   more »

What can school improvement providers learn from their experience with Paul Vallas? Should Edison or Victory Schools follow him to New Orleans?   more »

If you know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide - and have determined a few basic rules of thumb from your own experience - you can start thinking strategically about investments in marketing research.   more »

Here’s where we need to draw the ethical line. It's not the size of the bribe that matters, but breaching the duty of loyalty to students, teachers and taxpayers.   more »

Your editor has no doubt that the academic consultants and Administration officials were engaged in a massive conflict between their duty to carry out NCLB faithfully as office holders or their agents and their personal loyalty to ideology, pedagogy or financial self-interest. Still, when the roles of the officials and the academics are untangled it is possible to see how each might honestly rationalize their actions.   more »