School improvement providers who hope to become embedded in a school's or district’s “teaching and learning” value chain are generally prepared to incur substantial marketing expenses to land new clients. An Education Management Organization (EMO) hoping to manage a large number of schools over many years, or a curriculum provider offering digital content by subscription, expects to spend years courting many potential clients, yielding only a fraction as new clients each year.  

Customer acquisition costs are the total amount of expenditures incurred each year finding clients, divided by the number of clients actually signed up by the end of that year. In many cases, they may take several years to recoup from each new client. So it is not enough to sign up new clients, each must remain on long enough to recoup those costs and then earn a profit over and above those expenses, after paying the ongoing costs incurred providing the contracted products and services.

For the most part, the big-ticket sales that require management to think about recouping marketing costs over several years are also the high profile program choices superintendents like to make. Where the program has extraordinarily high “switching costs” - for example, information and testing systems, that are very hard to rip-out and replace – it may be enough to convince a superintendent to make the buy. But where the program is harder to embed in day-to-day operations – professional development and curriculum programs come to mind, the provider needs to 1) remain in the good graces of the superintendent and hope he or she stays in place and on the right side of their school board long enough to turn a profit, 2) use their initial entre to convince the staff using the product that there is nothing better as insurance against a change in leadership, or 3) charge a higher price to recoup customer acquisition costs faster.

For the school improvement industry, the maverick “change agent” superintendent is often the best hope for breaking into a new district market. The maverick is disrupting old sales relationships as he or she breaks up old operating practices. The new providers offer not only a new way of doing business but a loyal constituency. The down side for the new providers is that they are expendable should the superintendent find dropping them politically useful, and perceived as outsiders by the existing workforce and the old power structure. On top of this, consider that a firm is unlikely to begin work until the start of the new superintendent’s second year, that mavericks may not last long, and that  even a loyal maverick's ability to support their new contractors will diminish at least a year before they are forced out of office.

Providers might reflect on the above after reading Susan Snyder’s June 17 article in the Philadephia Inquirer on the tenure of Paul Vallas. He spent six years in Chicago, five in Philadelphia and plans on staying no longer than three in New Orleans. Was three years long enough for EMOs Edison or Victory Schools to make the kind of profits in Philadephia that attract investors? To make any profit? Was Vallas loyal to his new contractors? Did he provide the stability they needed to do their jobs? Will any of the new school improvement providers be staying on after the maverick has left? Who will be booted out of the district altogether? Will the living envy the dead?

Your editor doesn’t know.  But if Vallas is planning on just three years in New Orleans, unless a provider has a strategy to win the hearts and minds of the rank and file, is offering something that’s impossible to remove after its been installed, or has the heart and ability to charge a desperate charity-case district a premium, it is not be worth following him. As Chris Whittle might say, "something to think about."