Marc Dean Millot was educated as a lawyer, trained as a strategic analyst, and became a manager, investor and entrepreneur in k-12 education. He has participated in the development of the school improvement industry in a variety of roles since the early 1990s. Dean was a Senior Social Scientist at the RAND Corporation (publications here and here), a contributor to the Center on Reinventing Public Education (publications here), a grant officer and later Chief Operating Officer at New American Schools (see a history here, videos here) and the founding President of its small ($15 million) equity and lending investment arm, the Education Entrepreneurs Fund (read about that experience in chapter 16 here). He briefly served as the CEO of the only (and sadly, failed) effort to create a membership-based national association of state-based grassroots charter school organizations (stories here, here and here.)

Millot's personal mission is harnessing business concepts to social purpose in pursuit of quality, scale and sustainability in public education. He formed New Education Economy LLC in 2004 to provide the emerging school improvement market with independent market research information and strategic perspectives. The firm’s business strategy is based on low-priced site licenses ($1500 and less) so that revenues generated from no one client or group of clients have a material impact on the firm's independence. The firm favors a market in public school improvement, but its economic self-interest lies with no particular market sector or participant.

This website, Edbizbuzz.com offers free daily news and independent commentary on events shaping the school improvement market. All of our services can be reached from here. News items are excerpted and linked to their home site. Your editor writes to incite thinking. There are no sacred cows.  Comments are a deliberate mix of one-liners, paragraphs, and brief essays. We call them as we see them. Reactions are encouraged and - except for obscenities - will not be edited.

K-12Leads and Youth Services Market Report fills the need for an approach to grant and contract RFP identification based on an understanding that when it comes to students and teachers learning needs - schools are not asking for commodities. That’s why we employ people to review all of the relevant federal state and local agency procurement websites. Computer word search systems are great at locating commodities like chicken parts for the cafeteria, but not school improvement programs.  Moreover, most school improvement firms could meet educational needs maketing and sales staff aren’t necessarily looking for – in a world that is not really saturated with RFPs.  There is also the real prospect of grants for product development, evaluation and capacity building - non-dilutive capital that firms have no business neglecting in an industry starved of investment capital. That’s why we present all of the 1-200 new RFPs available every week in one simple report, with every item hotlinked to its source. Review an issue from the recent past.

New Education Economy® is a weekly electronic newsletter offering busy professionals easy access to essential business reading.  Each of its six pages covers a single topic. NEE begins with a rotating guest column written by professionals from different parts of the market. Four pages excerpt the key points of law or regulation, the market data other firms repackage and serve up for huge fees, important studies and reports, and the evaluation of an educational program.  Every item is hotlinked to its source. The weekly report concludes with a “Letter from the Editor” examining issues of industry strategy. At present that space is devoted to a provision-by-provision review of NCLB from the perspective of the school improvement industry. Review a recent issue.

Every “Letter from the Editor” since April of 2005 is available at no cost at SII • The Podcast.  New letters are posted every Wednesday. We are gradually backfilling the archive to our first letter of January 2004.  Because this series is intended to educate as well as editorialize, most letters remain relevant to anyone interested in the school improvement market as a strategic arena. In fact, every Letter has been downloaded at least once every day since it was first posted. Listen here.

School Improvement Industry Announcements consists of three separate monthly publications listing news and events from policy and politics, providers, and research and evaluation. It is the fastest possible way to see if you’ve missed something important in the last 30 days. Again, every item is hotlinked to its source.  Every organization we cover is listed in every report. If there is an organization we should be covering, let us know. Review politics here, providers here and research here.

K-12Leads, NEE and SII Announcements are fee-based services and can be purchased via secure PayPal transaction at our corporate website. NEE and SII Announcements are available for free download at www.edbizbuzz.com until June 1. Our site licenses are less expensive than our competitors’ individual subscriptions, and permit our clients to redistribute our publications to every employee@the purchasersemailaddress.com

If we can't meet your needs, we'll return your fees. Period.