The private sector is no more entitled to waste federal tax dollars than the public schools. When it comes to poor student performance, the defense that that parents feel good about their children’s teachers is no more relevant for SES providers under NCLB than it is for schools or districts. Applying the rule of student performance equally to schools and providers is about “accountability” to the taxpayer, “equal protection under the law” between schools and providers, and, in the end, the credibility of the entire school improvement industry. Is the taxpayer getting real value here?   more »

When the "product" is people, the imposition of uniformity and top-down directives is no way to achieve high quality outcomes consistently. Seattle's Santorno and DC's Reinoso disagree. Is anyone familiar with the fate of East Germany's Kombinats?   more »

The state's announcement and our earlier take on the effects of the move for the Big Easy and the City of Brotherly Love   more »

Your editor is sympathetic to the idea that school districts might prefer to bargain over wages, salaries and working conditions with the representative of a teachers' union rather than set the rules by fiat or negotiate with every individual teacher. But the extension of bargaining to all variety of management decisions, for example, assigning teachers to schools based on their own choices according to seniority, rather than where managers believe they can do the most good, takes too much authority away from the citizens who elect school boards preceisely to make such high-level policy decisions. The proposal is bad public policy.   more »

A company that will lose its contract has a greater institutional incentive to make sure its employees do right by these wards of the state than any agency that monoplizes the function.   more »

The first question for the industry is whether this means the end of Edison in Philadelphia... and maybe time to sell off the company for parts and re-brand what's left. If you were a superintendent, would you propose the firm to your board?   more »

Could private contractors do better than the state in operating juvenile justice detention and education? If there was ever a time to make the proposal for a pilot project, this is it.   more »

The Oregon Department of Education gives a bit more of its story on the dispute with Vantage, and hires nonprofit research organization AIR (American Institutes of Research) for next year's TESA administration.... The corporate website of Vantage Learning lists no press releases on the dispute. To paraphrase George Bush I, that decision "doesnt seem prudent."... Vantage counsel did speak to Education Week Reporter Andrew Trotter, but make note of the reporter's decision to cast the story as Vantage "leaving the state in the lurch" rather than, say, "being denied $4.7 million dollars in payments owed by the state." Both characterizations tend to prejudge what looks to be a legitmate business dispute - complicated by the end of a multi-year contract and Vantage's failure to win the new competition. But the underlying issue is now a matter for the courts. In the American legal system the facts and the law here are not decided but in dispute, and it is a bit unfair for Education Week to permit one of its reporters to pre-judge Vantage as straight reporting. The more legitimate place for this opinion is an Op/Ed page.   more »

It is clear why the California School Boards Assiciation opposes the idea. It hopes to constrain competition with traditional public schools. San Diego has decided that charters are here to stay, and if it hopes to compete, it must focus on running traditional schools better. But why should we believe that multiple chartering authorities prompt a "race to the top" for quality, when in every other sphere of policy they generally start a race to the bottom?   more »

A story we overlooked - Vantage cancels contract in billing dispute but keeps working with state, then its testing system gets overloaded and fails. Bad news for Vantage. Lessons Learned: No good deed goes unpunished? Nobody wins but the lawyers?   more »

State rules governing the adoption of instructional resources favor textbooks. As such, they constitute one of the most important barriers to entry facing school improvement providers who deliver their content by other means. Changing the rules in California will go a long way to level a playing field that artificially favors a handful of huge publishers.   more »

The story is Dallas, but it could be pretty much every district in the country.... The Reading First fiasco illustrates how hard it will be to cut through the instutional glue holding the large publishers close to state and local education agencies. This is a story about how hard it is to break up cozy relationships at the other end of the centrally-managed state enterprise that public education remains. Separating district managers from insider relationships with their local colleagues is no less important to the development of a real school improvement industy. On both ends of the system - top and bottom - it is time to change government procurement law, regulation and practice for school improvement services so that quality trumps marketing.   more »

But is the policy mere rhetoric for Tallahassee, or matched by real reporting systems back at the central office? Is there a "strategy-to-tasks" plan? Are the district's middle managers accountable in a meaningful way? Or is it just another funding presentation? And what happens if the promised performance does not materialize? When Crew promises to resign without severance if his goals are not met, then maybe there's a proposition worth taking at face value..   more »

One down, how many more to go?   more »

When school contracting is based primarily on the political need of a district to demonstrate "reform," the primary risk to the revenue stream is "poltical risk."    more »

The value-added of vitual education makes it an unstoppable force in the school improvement marketplace. Two question: 1) Is that market structurally fragmented or subject to a roll-up - now or ever? 2) Once some of teaching and learning is separated from the public school building, how long before other "outsourcing" of the function will become accepted practice?   more »

Until the matter of governance is solved, expect the nation's second largest school district to be a chaotic market.   more »

Good press for Virtual High and Apex   more »

How many SES Providers can meet this defintion? Does Maryland have the latitude to define "Research-based" in the SES provisions of NCLB under the law's higher standard of "Scientifically-Based Research"? Something to be sorted out in NCLB II?   more »

Moving from 5700 students in Normandy, MO to one big mess.   more »

A bad spin on a reasonable, above-board decision by the School Reform Commission. Not a good story for any Education Management Organization (or Charter Management Organization) when the system is hurting for cash. A good example of the political risk of investing in the school improvement industry.   more »

Taking a stab at the question with four models.   more »

Or how to avoid the 65% solution.   more »

When competetion threatens an established player, constraining competition is a political option it will pursue. This is why nascent industries require political protection.   more »

Can the popular Gov. Elliot Spitzer get authorization for another 100 charters over union opposition? And by the way, the $125,000 advertising campaign is about 25% of the national Education Industry Association's entire budget. As Chris Whittle might say, "Something to think about."   more »

Opposition to distance learning model is an ongoing threat to firms like K12.   more »

Utah Board of Education reasdies voucher plan, but will requirement for roughly three months working capital restrict supply of eligible private schools?   more »