Questions to Guide Break-Out Session

Small group brainstorming and discussion about future research opportunities in the newly emerging realm of educational/social entrepreneurship

1. What types of research in the general area of educational entrepreneurship would prove most beneficial for informing future policy makers in education, business, and government? (pre and K-12 areas)

2. What types of research in the general area of educational entrepreneurship would prove most beneficial for informing future policy makers in education, business, and government? (in Higher Education)

Group Members

Facilitator: Rhonda Holman
Presenter: Kathryn Downing
Participants:
Andrew Burke
Eileen Horng
Kris Kim
Ted Kolderie
Marilyn Kourilsky
Hank Levin
Kim Smith
Bill Walstad
Merl Wittrock

Suggestions

1. Survey the landscape of educational entrepreneurship by level of innovation.

We need to know where we are in order to decide where we want to go. We need to identify and define the different kinds of educational institutions which currently exist from the very traditional board-controlled, teacher-union structured institution to very entrepreneurial innovations such as charter schools and voucher programs. We should describe the whole array of possible models and to what extent they are currently being implemented. We could start by asking how many charter schools there are in the United States and what percentage of students they enroll. The greatest challenge with this form of research will be defining innovation and measures of success.

2. The decision to buy educational services (criteria & process).

Most of the attention about entrepreneurship naturally focuses on the entrepreneurs, but the willingness to buy and the quality of the decision to buy are equally important to the success of any entrepreneurial venture. We need to ask the following questions: Who are the buyers? How skilled are they in their decisions to buy? What are the procedures they use? How would you assess the quality of their decisions? Do they get any training on how to "buy smart"?

3. Influence of political environments and financial structures as enablers/barriers to educational entrepreneurship.

The economic structure of education has a lot to do with the political environment. The political environment determines how much variation there can be in financial structure, in terms of how much funding there is, where the funding goes, and how much is allocated for privatization or entrepreneurship. This research question is neither too broad nor too narrow to have useful outcomes. We could begin by looking at data from different districts and states and ask who were the political actors when they had their first charter laws passed or when they allowed their first voucher system.

4. Measurement systems for performance-based accountability.

The general goal of educational entrepreneurship is to create new environments for greater student achievement, but there is no consensus on an acceptable measurement system for determining whether entrepreneurial efforts are successful. Consequently, the situation we find ourselves in is that there is a lot of money and resources being poured into educational entrepreneurship but we have no idea if we are making any difference. A critical subset of the research on performance-based accountability is performance-based compensation in educational settings. The culture of education is very different from business, so performance-based compensation cannot simply be transferred from the latter to the former. Another issue is that many people do not understand the current measurement systems such as standardized tests. For example, many do not understand why we cannot have more than 50 percent of the students above average. Another example is that California now has criterion-referenced tests which are standardized.

5. Case studies of evolving models of educational management systems and practices.

Case studies can serve as effective teaching tools to highlight existing examples of educational entrepreneurship which can be models for future efforts.

6. How do entrepreneurial ideas related to education emerge and get implemented?

There are generally two types of research: one is to describe and evaluate something that exists; and the other is to discover something new. The former is confined to the universe of what already exists and is typical for most educational research. The latter has to do with design work and development, usually through a trial-and-error process. We need to begin doing more of this kind of research in education. We can begin by scanning the country to find out what designers and developers are doing so that we can encourage this trial-and-error process. We also need to examine how innovative ideas are implemented.