Questions over New York City Teacher Pay Links to Student Performance

On the first day of school in New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg reveals little about questions dealing with dealing with the linking of teacher pay with student performance.

Asking Harvard's Dean of Admissions Anything You'd Like

The New York Times has a great Question and Answer feature with Harvard University's Dean of Admissions William Fitzsimmons/

I think they will run his answers on Wednesday. I will post some of the questions and answers here, to give you some idea of what someone in his position thinks about his role and the direction education is heading in the United States.

What We're Reading on the Web Today

What kind of debt do you have? Is debt healthy?

A new study suggests that if you are an entrepreneur, it's not a really good idea to rack up some credit card debt, many entrepreneurs turn to credit cards to finance their businesses.

School grading system tightening? If so, the New York Times alleges that this change would make it more difficult for schools to pass the test and thereby stay open.

School Grading system tightening in New York City

Life Development Institute on Qatar Competition Short List

Rob Crawford, who blogs on this forum for Life Development Insitute, in Phoenix, Arizona, writes to say that his company has been named to a short-list for the Qatar Foundation's WISE Awards

The WISE Awards:

WISE is a unique global event whose ambition is to create a new international multi-disciplinary platform to shape education models of the 21st century. Opinion leaders and decision makers from around the world will come together with education experts to share their visions and actions through open and insightful discussions.

New York Times: What Are You Reading?

Because you can't use mobile phones and internet devices in the subway (thank goodness) in New York, the local newspaper wants to know what are you reading when you are down there, hurtling through the rat-infested, trash-strewn tunnels that weave amongst themselves under New York City?

Tell the New York Times what you are reading in the subway.

Resource for Indian Education Market

You want a little more information on the Indian education industry, you say?

You should really talk to Rahul Choudaha, who wrote this dissertation (click on the link) about finding a core competency curriculum in international education.

Rahul will be joining us on this blog, where he will be writing from time to time about the intersections and differences in the India-United States for-profit education industry relationship.

Rahul also writes the Dr. Education: Diagnosing Indian Education blog.

Teaching Young Girls, Spiting the Taliban

An article on what it means to teach young children in the Forever War, the name given to the war in Afghanistan, popularized by reporter Dexter Filkins.

An excerpt from the article, where the protagonist is stopped by an extremist and sprayed with battery acid for, among other things, having the audacity to go to school a few miles away from the hometown of Mullah Muhammed Omar, the leader of the Taliban:

Shamsia Husseini and her sister, Atifa, were walking along the highway when they spotted the men on the motorbikes. Shamsia, then 17, was old enough to be married; she was wearing a black scarf that covered most of her face. Shamsia had seen Taliban gunmen before and figured the men on the motorcycles would pass. Then one of the bikes pulled alongside her, and the man on back jumped off. Through the mask, he asked Shamsia what seemed like a strange question.

“Are you going to school?”

The masked man pulled the scarf away from Shamsia’s face and, with his other hand, pumped the trigger on his spray gun. Shamsia felt as if her face and eyes were on fire. As she screamed, the masked man reached for Atifa, who was already running. He pulled at her and tore her scarf away and pumped the spray into her back. The men sped off toward another group of girls. Shamsia lay in the street holding her burning face.

How to Become a Tutor In Hong Kong

The new scandal de jeur in Hong Kong is the rise of very wealthy tutors for public school students in the island territory just off the coast of China.

Hong Kong private tutor centers are cashing in on changes the public school system curriculum, but long before that, famous and sometimes notorious private tutors have been earning millions teaching students how to be successful at what is, very broadly speaking, a by rote and memorization school system in Hong Kong.

This is a touchy subject in Hong Kong. When vacationing students offer to help other students with summer school homework for money, people tend to get skittish and all sorts of moral volleys are lobbed each way and that.

But private forms of education, like many forms of business in Hong Kong, offer topographies for success in a purely capitalist system.

I was a private tutor once, and let me just demonstrate how easy it was to start up my own mini business while I went to grad school in the territory.

It took a few things:

1. Connections -- First and foremost, this is really how many people get anywhere in China and Hong Kong. I knew the wife of a pretty well-known Goldman Sachs director, who, after discussing with me my career options for funding my journalism degree at the local university, put in a polite word or two to six well-connected and wealthy business people near the Southern district of the island, where I lived at the time.

2. Credentials -- In addition to pursuing a second masters' degree, I had one master's degree in creative writing and a B.A in English literature from American universities. I also used to be a teacher. I spoke well, with a Midwestern accent. These really were all the credentials anyone needed. Just show off the degree.

3. Work Cheaply -- I started rates at only HK$400 an hour. That's about US$60 an hour. That is actually relatively cheap for a private English tutor in Hong Kong, someone who visits the home for one hour to one and a half hours a week.

In addition to providing my own transportation -- bus, taxi, or subway -- my other fixed costs were writing tablets to demonstrate handwriting and spelling techniques, novels and textbooks to provide lessons, and pencils and pens.

Really low overhead. I didn't have facilities I needed to maintain. I didn't have to register my name anywhere, or pay a licensing fee.

I am not sure if the same is true for the island's tuition centers, which line the streets of Wan Chai and offer everything from basic math and science tutorials to the big cash cow, English lessons. They even get their photo spreads on city buses.

Free market capitalism never had a greater market to generate profits. A tutor is portable, self-sufficient, and brand recognition all in one.

And it doesn't hurt that the Chinese value education and use it as a means to advance their life and career.

Outside Operators Eye 250 L.A. Unified School District Schools

The views expressed in the following post come from guest blogger Rob Crawford, CEO of The Life Development Institute in Phoenix, Arizona.

The Los Angeles City Board of Education's vote to allow outside private school providers help turn around the district's education system looks like an opening for those entities willing to do the proverbial "dance with the devil", as this move represents a complete 180 degree turn in how children will be educated in the nation's second largest school district.

This could mean several things, among them: more public financing for privately held companies offering educational services to school districts, as well as a surge of interest in VC and private equity funding of ancillary products and services to education in the public realm.

Bidding for contracts could begin as soon as January 2010. With as many as 250 schools or nearly one third of the district's almost 700,000 students impacted by this decision, the ensuing chaos will create at minimum, short term disruption and displacement.

There are great story lines in this drama- a powerful and connected political bureaucracy, the lure of "school choice", as well as a strong entrenched teacher's union. Popular opinion against political establishment with kids/parents in the middle- a juicy story....stay tuned!

Fewer Limits on VCs, Now is the Time for Expansion

This op-ed in the New York Times contends that now is not the time to put pressures on venture capital and limited partners in a constrained economic environment.

The article touches off a little brainteaser for me that I have puzzled over in preparing the investor panels for the Education Industry Investment forum in Phoenix, Arizona in March.

It would be a shame to impose any new limits now, when venture capital is the asset class that can best help build and nurture the companies that bring about growth and job creation. The figures are compelling. In 2008, venture-backed companies that went public in previous years accounted for 12.1 million jobs and $2.9 trillion in revenues for the United States Treasury.

It's not hard to define how healthy the education market is right now. While investors are troubled by bank conditions, deals are still being done and growth prospects are high. Investors are even talking about how crowded the market is beginning to look and they are looking for windfalls and opportunity gaps outside of the traditional investing hot spots.

All signs point towards the idea that there is more of an opportunity right now for venture capital and private pools of capital to invest in education.

Howard Levy at Kaplan promotes the idea of global investment opportunities in for-profit education. (pdf)

This is certainly true for Indian companies and Indian investors in one of the two largest markets in the world for education investment.

The other giant market for education, by pure population numbers, is China.

Chinacast, based in Beijing, is a is a leading for-profit, post-secondary
education and e-learning services provider in China. They look poised to take advantage of a worldwide need for distance learning and vocational training services.

Hachette Chief Aghast at Google - Amazon eBook Dealings

Arnoud Nourry, chief of Hachette, has lashed out at e-distributors like Amazon and Google for undercutting publishers of paperbacks and hardcover books.

It's not till later down in the story that the beginnings of a non-breaking news story develops. It has something to do with the way European copyright works in different legal jurisdictions. Towards then end of the article there is a brief smoke signal about "rights." I know nothing about what rights they are defending or seeking to preserve. Is it profit? Doesn't market competition have something to say about that?

Nourry basically says this:

“On the one hand, you have millions of books for free where there is no longer an author to pay and, on the other hand, there are very recent books, bestsellers at $9.99, which means that all the rest will have to be sold at between zero and $9.99,” Mr Nourry said.

There was a real and “muscular” debate in the industry in the US, he added. Retailers were paying publishers more than $9.99 for each e-book, so were selling them at a loss: “That cannot last . . . Amazon is not in the business of losing money. So, one day, they are going to come to the publishers and say: by the way, we are cutting the price we pay. If that happens, after paying the authors, there will be nothing left for the publishers.”

Some rival publishers have expressed concern in private at Amazon’s fixed $9.99 per title pricing on its Kindle electronic reader. Others note the minimal costs of distributing books electronically mean they can make higher profit margins even with lower prices than in print.

Where do you fall on this debate? I tend to think that Amazon and Google are fully in their rights to innovate, but so too are the Hachette's of the world.

It's not clear if Hachette is frozen out of negotiations here or if there is something in the business model that just prevents Hachette from ever being able to compete with Amazon or Google over free e-books.

A clue to the issue, though not fully articulated, comes here, same article:

Resistance to the Google books project from European libraries appears to be easing, with the National Library of France confirming this month that it was working with the US internet giant. But European publishers say they are determined to defend their rights.

Is an Amazon platform or a Google platform patently unfair?

Does innovation unfairly bring more profit to technology and distribution providers who innovate?

Is the Google free books project indeed a ransacking of copyright and potential profitability for publishers of authors long dead?

Friday Diversion

Here's something for your Friday diversion. One hundred years of movie special effects in five minutes.

Around the World in 30 Days

I did a little arithmetic. By the time I am done with The Road Trip for Education, I will have traveled a distance nearly equal to the circumference of the earth.

Using a rough bit of calculations from Google Maps, I sketched out each of my destinations and measured the distance between each, factored in the back and forth, a little driving and a few walks up and down the beach and I came up with this.

Distance traveled during Road Trip: 21,500 miles
Circumference of the Earth at the Equator: 24,901 miles

How's that for a Road Trip?

Sony E-Reader to Launch in December

Will it have an education component like the rumored Apple tablet?

The Sony eReader will compete with the Kindle 2.

There are some aspects to this device that may be positive for school districts.

1. The device allows the user to type in a zip code and obtain virtual copies of books from the local library branches.

2. The device is not tethered to one single distribution center like the Kindle 2.

For a review of what one school district is considering, check out this comment from Matt Mello, technology director at Holly Area Schools:

Would be great if the Sony solution permits single point of administration of content for their wireless eBook readers. Its quite apparent that Amazon does not have this capability.

We're evaluating eBook readers as possible replacement for our school district's textbooks. We purchased several of the larger Kindles and though a great reader for individuals / consumer market, Amazon does not have a solution for distributing and controlling a volume of eBooks devices.

It is clear that Amazon doesn't even have a strategy for this, based on experiences of calling their customer support. They had no information to offer, either now or in the long run. Their only solution is to have an individual email account tying each Kindle to an end-user. This is very problematic to manage for several thousand students. Also, you cannot speak directly to a Sales or Technical Acct Exec for Kindles at Amazon. Only someone who has general information.

I hope Sony develops such strategies as central point of administration for managing a volume of wireless eBook readers and have an organizational account structure where there is an individual / team with whom we can speak directly on product features or support.

I think these strategies would be key selling points and allow widespread adoption by educational institutions.

Hottest New EDUpunk Company?

Has anyone been following what I consider to be the hottest new EDUpunk company in our space: Flat World Knowledge?

In addition to making their e-texts free, they can be edited by faculty members, and students can sell their lecture notes to make some extra cash. Also, check out TextBookMedia, as they are knocking it out of the park as well. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Incidentally, Jeff Shelstad at Flat World Knowledge was a speaker at the 2009 Education Industry Investment Forum in Phoenix.