Every child is important, but school systems are really designed for most students. If a child falls outside of some comfortable norm, mean or average, most school systems have a hard time meeting their needs. Good business practice argues for leaving the hard to serve customer to providers who can serve them well and efficiently. Many school systems have a hard time doing either with students who have any kind of special needs.   more »

From Your Editor: When the phrase “education industry” arises in conversations among educators, policy analysts, politicians, reporters and even the interested public, it usually said with a tone of skepticism and often in the pejorative. This is soon followed by “privatization,” the label for private firms operating public schools. From here, it is a short leap to “vouchers” and the idea of private firms running private schools with public money outside the accountability regime that applies to public schools. Employed in a few sentences, these phrases invariably create the impression of something unprecedented and amiss in public education. To whit - a monolithic movement of companies taking on the core teaching and learning functions of schools - and earning profits that might otherwise be going to “educate the kids.”   more »

The attached e-mail from Software and Information Industry Education Division VP Karen Billings is the first evidence of any k-12 trade group ("old industry" or "new industry") adressing federal evaluation of k-12 programs as more than a communications challenge. The substance of its premptive comments on the Department of Education's forthcoming study of the value added by technology to student achievement is less important than the decision to comment.   more »

Prof. Richard Allington of the University of Tennesse at Knoxville, a Reading Recovery defender and former President of the International Reading Association asks the most important question in his remarks to Education Week on the program's postive rating by the Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse: “[A]re we going to take all the interventions off the Reading First Web sites that don’t meet the What Works criteria?... I don’t have a lot of confidence that anyone in Washington actually cares about the evidence.”... This is the point Cong. Miller needs to keep foremost in mind during the House education committee's upcoming hearings on Reading First.... And in the end, this question is the key issue for those betting on the school improvement industry as a good investment. The What Works' bar is pretty low, and if its results don't matter to the use of federal funds, the new firms can't compete against the established players or the unfettered discretion of department officials. Meaningful standards of performance are the only basis of their competive advantage. Remarkably, the research-driven providers have not organized themselves to bring their expertise to bear on this question.   more »

Every school improvement provider is not automatically viewed with scepticism by the press. The determining factor seems to be whether the firm is perceived to work within the system or against its constituencies.... It also helps when the firm is seen to have roots in education and research rather than business and finance. It also helps if the firm has made ongoing evaluation a priority.... If you are the CEO of a school improvement provider, or an investor, or a communications firm with these clients, the pattern deserves close study.   more »

Every district that goes all-digital takes an important step in separating substance from media (i.e., educational content from paper) and breaking up a market controlled by a handful of publishers.... Now all we need to do is figure out how to identify quality content in a market of unlimited providers.... Something the "new publishers" need to figure out.   more »