“Successful entrepreneurs have a fascination for a particular kind of intellectual problem and a relentless, unstoppable, endlessly inventive, and improvisational effort to solve that problem.”
-Angel Investor Matt Greenfield
Riddles are impossible, until their answer is simple. Education policy alone presents enough of them with the debates between the institutions of the old and the innovation of the new:
- Districts vs. charters vs. charter districts.
- Tenure vs. merit pay.
- State standards vs. Common Core.
- Assessment vs. standardized tests
- Schools of education vs. alternative certification
At its root, each debate represents a well-established practice against a new bottom-up reform. Therefore, think of education as an industry to understand its debate over bringing in new ideas. Education reformers solve problems in improvisational, entrepreneurial ways: developing human capital, streamlining the measurement of performance, improving return on instructional investment and increasing the supply while reducing the production cost of education. We don’t need market-based education which excludes the least advantaged, but we need a market logic to education based on innovation.
A market logic in education means increasing the capacity and efficiency of existing systems, adapting to changing practices in order to make public education the most competitive service available to American youth. Right now, the achievement of low-income and minority students who most desperately need to be competitive in the 21st-century economy is faltering. Education consumers (students and families) are receiving a low-quality product and would pay to receive a better one. Education consumers ask for controversial reforms such as vouchers, school choice and merit pay when informed about the deficiencies in the product.
If the traditional education industry does not adapt and improve, education startups and high-tech innovations will displace it. A thin line of defense holds up traditional districts and anti-standardized testing movements, but the momentum runs against them. These public education stalwarts must recognize the push for reform comes from consumer demand and innovation which meets that demand. Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen calls this process the Disruptive Innovation Model.
Characteristics of disruptive businesses, at least in their initial stages, can include: lower gross margins, smaller target markets, and simpler products and services that may not appear as attractive as existing solutions when compared against traditional performance metrics.
So how can traditional public education respond to disruptive innovation and survive? Clayton Christensen also discusses resources, processes and priorities as three keys to a successful business. If traditional education adapts and improves these three areas, it can maintain staying power into the next century:
- Resources: Education entrepreneurs don’t have to replace traditional public education if public education policy recognizes their value. In the last two decades, a number of entrepreneurs built in to the existing market by offering their services as contracts. Curriculum design or management systems for school districts are two examples. Investors are very willing to reward effective services for traditional education.
- Processes: Even with high-quality resources entering the education market, the existing “supply chain” of policy and practice in education must be able to adapt and incorporate the innovations. With no system to build infrastructure, train staff and employ enough experts to troubleshoot, a high-tech innovation would be dead on arrival to the market. President Obama’s ConnectED project to increase school internet access puts $2 billion toward this problem. Additionally, policy processes must transfer embryonic ideas and products to consumers starting small/low-margin and scaling up. Georgia’s Innovation Fund is one such example.
- Priorities: Education innovations should reward substance over style, and be judged through the lens of equity. Innovations are worthless if they only serve to enrich an already well-serviced sector of the market. Education reform is a public good, not a private one, even if it has a market logic. More social-good innovation for education could wake up our extravagant tech startup sector and give it more purpose. Socially responsible startups must work for the good of all, especially the least advantaged.
The antidote to education reform debates could begin with a better market logic in traditional education. Entrepreneurship offers the means to that end, but not just any entrepreneurship. South African tech entrepreneurs could teach Americans a lesson in setting priorities for equitable and scalable innovations. Let’s follow their example and turn our education ideas into practical, agreeable reforms. It’s education consumers that should benefit most, not old loyalties to old ideas or excessively risky new reforms.
