In Educational Entrepreneurship Today, Frederick M. Hess and Michael Q. McShane assemble a diverse lineup of high-profile contributors to examine the contexts in which new initiatives in education are taking shape. They inquire into the impact of entrepreneurship on the larger field—including the development and deployment of new technologies—and analyze the incentives, barriers, opportunities, and tensions that support or constrain innovation. Over the past decade, entrepreneurship has moved from the periphery to the center of education reform. Policy measures, philanthropic support, and venture capital increasingly promote initiatives that drive innovation within and outside the traditional education sector. These initiatives have included spectacular successes, like Khan Academy, Teach For America, and Wireless Generation, as well as highly visible failures, like the InBloom data warehouse. Educational Entrepreneurship Today offers critical perspectives on the impact of entrepreneurship and also includes lessons from leading entrepreneurs, in which they use case studies drawn from their own experience to illustrate the realities of leading disruptive change in education and pose guiding questions for the next generation of innovators. In a time of increasing polarization around education policy, this timely, frank, and insightful volume shows how we can begin to create systems in which entrepreneurial ideas and fresh thinking are welcomed, constructively employed, and held accountable for the public good.

The Future of Educational Entrepreneurship examines the challenge of creating innovative and productive entrepreneurial activity in American education. In the course of exploring these challenges, the book considers a number of crucial issues and circumstances: existing “barriers to entry” that prohibit or obstruct entrepreneurial efforts; the availability—and frequent lack—of venture capital for fueling entrepreneurial activities; the effort to sponsor and create a sufficiently large population of talented educational entrepreneurs; and questions about research, development, and quality control in the burgeoning entrepreneurial sector. A field that is likely to grow in size and importance in the years to come, educational entrepreneurship receives much-needed attention, analysis, and elucidation in this lively, wide-ranging book.

In The Future of Educational Entrepreneurship, Hess discovers avenues, challenges, and the wide-ranging benefits of allowing entrepreneurial activity in public schools. This book gives educational entrepreneurship much-needed attention and elucidation.

This lively and provocative book introduces this burgeoning field for readers concerned with K-12 education in the United States--and with efforts to reform and improve it. Entrepreneurship has emerged in recent years as an unprecedented and influential force in U.S. K-12 education. Yet the topic has received surprisingly little serious or systematic attention. Educational Entrepreneurship aims to fill this gap. This timely volume addresses a number of central questions: What is educational entrepreneurship and what does it look like? Who are the educational entrepreneurs and what motivates them? What tools do entrepreneurs need to be successful? What policies or practices enable or impede entrepreneurship? What would it mean to open up the education sector to more entrepreneurial activity? An interesting and admirable range of contributors offers clusters of articles on the nature of educational entrepreneurship; the political, policy, and legal contexts that face educational entrepreneurs; various models of entrepreneurial activity; the role of for-profit organizations in K-12 education; and possible future directions for educational entrepreneurs.

This lively and provocative book introduces this burgeoning field for readers concerned with K-12 education in the United States--and with efforts to reform and improve it. Entrepreneurship has emerged in recent years as an unprecedented and influential force in U.S. K-12 education. Yet the topic has received surprisingly little serious or systematic attention. Educational Entrepreneurship aims to fill this gap. This timely volume addresses a number of central questions: What is educational entrepreneurship and what does it look like? Who are the educational entrepreneurs and what motivates them? What tools do entrepreneurs need to be successful? What policies or practices enable or impede entrepreneurship? What would it mean to open up the education sector to more entrepreneurial activity? An interesting and admirable range of contributors offers clusters of articles on the nature of educational entrepreneurship; the political, policy, and legal contexts that face educational entrepreneurs; various models of entrepreneurial activity; the role of for-profit organizations in K-12 education; and possible future directions for educational entrepreneurs.

The Next Century Schools program was launched by the RJR Nabisco Foundation to fund bold ideas for fundamental change in public education. This is the landmark book about that program and the schools that have participated. Now is the time for action, and this book is about one thing only--solutions.

For nearly two decades, education entrepreneurs have been working to transform the K-12 public education system in the United States. The nineteen cases in this book profile entrepreneurs who are pursuing opportunities to create pattern-breaking social change in our public schools--in particular, by creating high-quality educational opportunities for low-income and minority students who are dramatically underserved by the current public education system. Based on a popular course developed and taught at the Harvard Business School, this casebook is organized into four modules: Understanding the Context of Urban Schooling in the United States Tackling the "People Problem" Focusing on Performance Launching and Growing New Schools. Students are invited to explore four overarching questions: Why are there opportunities for entrepreneurs in a sector that is funded with public dollars and delivered by public agencies? Why is entrepreneurial activity aggregating around certain opportunities? What are the possibilities and constraints faced by entrepreneurs in each opportunity area? How can we evaluate the impact of these entrepreneurs' efforts? "This timely volume provides invaluable insight into the opportunities, challenges, and lessons of entrepreneurial reform. Stacey Childress offers engrossing, up-close looks at acclaimed entrepreneurs like KIPP, Teach For America, and Wireless Generation as well as at cutting-edge districts. This is essential reading for actual and aspiring entrepreneurs and those who work with them." -- Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies, American Enterprise Institute, and author of Education Unbound "For the past decade, Stacey Childress has taught the quintessential course in education entrepreneurship at Harvard. With the release of this incredible case book and the accompanying instructor's guide, she is offering an enormous gift to the field. These volumes provide a powerful intellectual framework for a series of carefully selected cases that illustrate the key strategic, leadership and operating issues, challenges, and opportunities these important change agents face in trying to transform public education. Childress's teaching notes are worth their weight in gold, providing a rich and nuanced context for the work, scaffolded teaching advice, and the insights of a truly gifted instructor on the art of case method questioning and facilitation." -- Kim Smith, founder, NewSchools Venture Fund "A powerful toolkit for understanding social entrepreneurs and the challenges they face. Childress has compiled a rich set of case studies and nested them in the context of education today. This book should be on the shelf of anyone who wants to understand or participate in these ventures." -- Andrew J. Rotherham, cofounder, Education Sector and author of Eduwonk.com "This book of cases is the best source on innovation in K-12 education. No other source makes it so clear that school improvement comes from hard thinking and open-minded problem solving, not ideological warfare." -- Paul T. Hill, John and Marguerite Corbally Professor, and director, Center on Reinventing Public Education, University of Washington Bothell Stacey M. Childress is a senior lecturer in the General Management Unit at Harvard Business School and a cofounder of the Public Education Leadership Project at Harvard University.