The first online course
Rita Dove was US Poet Laureate in the early 90’s. The First Book captures the magic of the lightbulb that comes with reading comprehension. This week I asked 1000 friends at iNACOL to imagine the online learning experience that for students yielded the same sensation…and the end of…
Embarrassing profitability
A six year old company with revenue of $120m and more than 10% in operating income (more than 15% EBITDA) has carefully invested capital and efficiently managed growth. They provide innovative services and produce outstanding customer results. The company is worth 15 times what the owners invested. They have…
iNACOL advancing online learning
The Virtual School Symposium, hosted by iNACOL, is Mon-Tues in Austin. I joined the board because 1) we’re within reach of being able to offer quality learning to every student in American and iNACOL will take us over the finish line. Hold out states like NY that don’t…
The blended world
Our kids already live in a blended world. K-12 is starting to catch up with a variety of models that combine the best of online learning and onsite support. Here’s 5 trends signaling a blended singularity: Schools become blended. The biggest growth area for online learning is traditional…
TIF or Promise?
Alyson at EdWeek contrasts the love-but-no-$ for Promise Neighborhoods and the whopping $517m for the Teacher Incentive Fund, which allocates grants to districts to create or bolster performance-pay programs. I’m on the board of MLA Partner Schools in Los Angeles which has developed a great turnaround strategy for…
Urban showdown coming in RttT states
While bloggers were disappointed by a series of blob-friendly compromises, I’m mostly bullish on final RttT language primarily for an important clause that will result in real improvement in the nation’s worst schools. Flypaper said, “It appears high inspiration was tempered by the various and messy forces of…
Leaders & Laggards: a call to action
The Leaders and Laggards report is an important scorecard showing why, how, and where America is losing the education race. We pride ourselves on innovation but this report suggests there isn’t much of that in education. A bipartisan group of think tanks scored states on school management, finance,…
Free higher ed courses not great USED investment
Rick Hess makes a series of good arguments that the $500m ‘online skills laboratory’ isn’t a great investment. In the mixed provider post secondary space, quality content isn’t the top barrier. It’s pricing that reflects the sunk costs of existing institutions. A healthy market will make investment in…
i3 grant opportunities for SES providers
The Invest in Innovation (i3) grant program offers an opportunity for supplemental educational service (SES) providers to support the grant application of a partner school district. The $650 million grant program has three categories; the smallest category–Development Grants–will have awards of up to $5 million that only require a research…
The Chamber of Commerce Party
I had dinner with four Republicans last night. They wonder where their party went. It was a chamber of commerce gala, so I probably had dinner with a couple hundred Republicans and a lot of pro-growth Democrats, but I talked politics with four in particular. The current and former state…