NYC Debates Mayoral Control of Schools

The contest for control of the city's schools is heating up, with a public forum held yesterday in Manhattan.

Who deserves to control the schools in a city school district? Who benefits from mayoral control, and where does the private sector fit in when it comes to adding value to education in the public and charter school systems?

Arne Duncan Lives by the Basketball

Teachers College at Columbia University had Arne Duncan as a speaker long before he was nominated to Education Secretary. Here is what he said about Barack Obama and the future of education.

New York's Governor Mulls Public-Private Partnerships for Education Growth

On the surface of things, New York Governor David Paterson's statements last night during his state of the state address look set to give life to a drive to create new preparatory schools for college across the state.

His plan:

Create public-private partnerships to establish new early college prep high schools to prepare disadvantaged students.

Paterson also wants to expand a program that offers free college tuition to students who meet education standards and create a US$350 million state higher education loan program.

Education Industry Investment Forum

For eleven years, executives attending the EIIF have been finding ways to make new strategic relationships and build the for-profit education business into the booming industry it is today.

The EIIF is privileged this year to present discussions on for-profit ideas and businesses that foster the kinds of developments mentioned by Paterson in his State of the State Address.

We have for the first time in the 11 years of the forum a discussion helmed by a leader of a successful non-profit high school system, Green Dot Schools, who will be giving ideas to the for-profit industry on how for-profits and non-profits can learn from each other.

Marco Petruzzi, President and Chief Operating Officer,
Green Dot Schools, will join three other professionals in the following panel session on March 10, 2009 at 9.55 am:

A Non-Profits and For-Profits Bridge Builder Conversation: Answering the Sustainability Question

• What kind of report card does the private sector receive and how effectively is the private sector bringing up achievement?
• Achieving self-sustainable operations through value add in services or through capital raising projects
• Using student achievement assessment as the ultimate measure of quality and value
• Can the organization marshal and organize the other necessary resources – namely people – to become sustainable? How can it structure its operations in order to ensure that quality remains consistent and high?

Moderator: Ted Mitchell, CEO, New Schools Venture Fund

Larry Berger, CEO, Wireless Generation
George Cigale, Founder & CEO, Tutor.com
Keith Oelrich, CEO, Insight Schools
Marco Petruzzi, President and Chief Operating Officer,
Green Dot Schools

Your Chance to Interact with Speakers

Join these executive speakers and leaders in the industry by registering for the Education Industry Investment Forum, held March 9-11, 2009 at the Biltmore Resort & Spa in Phoenix, Arizona. You can also download the full brochure by clicking on this link.

For a few registered delegates, the FuturEd Symposium, now in its second year, offers five entrepreneurs a chance to sit on a panel to discuss the advances their companies bring to the education industry. More information about the FuturEd Symposium and ways to register here. We look forward to reviewing your application after you have registered for the conference.

New York Times Education Frenzy

If you are invested in education like we are, you will be pleasantly warmed by the bounty of coverage that the New York Times today gives to education as an industry and as an investment strategy.

You can visit a link at the New York Times that is focused on improvements in the education industry: click link here.

The team at the Education Industry Investment Forum has pulled out some of the highlights of the section. We start with the section that looks at schools as powerhouses for innovation and entrepreneurial invention. Here are what we thought were the top three coolest gigs going:

1. Video Games for the Blind in Singapore
2. Gastronomic Chemistry for Middle Schools
3. Feud Sparks Contemplation of Future for G.R.E. and GMAT
4. Two-Year Commuter Colleges Building Residency Halls

Five Questions with Rita Ferrandino, MD, ARC Capital Development

Rita Ferrandino, Managing Director, ARC Capital Development, will be teaching a Master Class on March 9, 2009 at the 10th Annual Education Industry Investment Forum at the Biltmore Resort & Spa in Phoenix, Arizona. She will be joined by her business partner Kevin Custer, currently the CEO of Kinderstreet Operation, LLC.

You can join Ferrandino and Custer by registering now: by clicking on the link to our registration page.

Rita Ferrandino and Kevin Custer Answer Questions about the Future of Education Investment

EIIF: What act of strategic investment in the education industry by any player in the past five years do you admire most, and what was its outcome?

Rita Ferrandino & Kevin CusterStudent Information Systems (SIS) - Pearson bought the two largest players in the student information system market which were PowerSchool and Chancery to add to the Pearson portfolio of SIS offerings.

Thus, Pearson bought their largest competitors and now owns the entire SIS marketplace.

EIIFWhat industry genre will have the most influence in the future of education over the next five years?


RF & KCPreK Education Market Segment

We believe the amount of investment into the PreK education segment will produce results quickly. The traditional school day is finite. The introduction or addition of PreK education is a unique opportunity for upside.

EIIF: If you could name any industry within education that requires the most change, what industry is it and what changes do you think it needs?

RF & KC
Teacher Education

Our future depends on our ability to develop of the next generation of teachers. We need to proactively recruit the best and brightest teachers.

As an industry, we need to improve teacher compensation, training, and keeping highly qualified teachers engaged.

EIIF: What inspirational idea outside of education has had a dominant effect on how you do business?

RF & KC

Web 2.0 technology
The barriers of entry to starting and launching a new business are dropping due to Web 2.0 technology

EIIF:
For an education company or for profit school that is looking to grow, what is the one thing they need to be prepared to do before meeting investors or before launching their product or service into the marketplace?

RF & KC:
Know your customer.
Understand intimately what that customer will pay for.

Details on the Ferrandino-Custer Master Class, 9.00AM March 2, 2009 at the Biltmore Resort & Spa

Maximize Distribution and Ensure Returns on Capital Investment by Utilizing Effective Political and Commercial Marketing Solutions

• Fine tune government interactions by learning political marketing strategies and incorporating their resources into a business plan to ensure rapid uptake of products and ideas in school districts
• Calibrate investment strategies for K12 by leveraging networks, employing best practice in marketing to decision-makers
• Familiarize yourself with technologies that deepen your level of investment and commercial involvement with end users and end practitioners in public schools
• Employ social media and web 2.0 to radically boost investment return and leverage soft-power relationships to further your company and investment house’s interests

Rita Ferrandino, Managing Director, ARC Capital Development
Kevin Custer, Partner, ARC Capital Development

Download the EIIF brochure and register early.

Future Leaders Institute Auction

For the rest of the day you can bid on items up for sale. The auction is put on by The Future Leaders Institute of New York City.

Why China is not Holding the American Economy for Ransom

Many people fear the immense amount of US debt held by foriegn countries. But Richard Spencer makes a case why this is not necessary:

Peston I think is falling into a common trap here of thinking that because China holds 1.9 trillion dollars of foreign exchange reserves, including more than 600 billion dollars in US treasury bonds, it holds all the cards, and America should do what China tells it to. But as I have argued before, this is a symbiotic relationship, in which both sides were caught in a trap - China couldn't stop overproducing, and through its currency interventions ensured that America could happily go on buying. That's what led to the US trade deficit. Both sides failed to bring this imbalance to an end on time, and both sides will now suffer. This goes for Britain too, of course.

Chinese officials themselves are now going around and saying of America that it should be nice to people who lend it money.

But in some ways this is an old saw: it has been common enough for people to talk about the inevitable transfer of power from America to China in the coming years as being the result of China becoming "America's bank".

Yet China is not America's bank. America is China's bank. This is pretty obvious when you think about it. You don't need to be an economist; you just need to think about your own bank accounts.

Why Robert Peston is Wrong.

Student Loan Corporation to Cut 91 Jobs

Saw this on Thomson Financial wire and now on Forbes today: Student Loan Corporation to cut 91 jobs.

Shift Happens

Looking at the web today:

this wonderful collection of insights and facts that is viral by nature. I don't know the original author, but I found it at Chris Knudsen's blog.

* If you are one in a million in China, there are 1,300 people just like you
* The smartest top 25% of people in China represent a population greater than all of North America
* China will soon have more English speakers in its population than any other country in the world
* In the next eight minutes, 60 babies will be born in America. 351 will be born in India
* By the age of 38 you will have had between 10 and 14 jobs
* 1 in 4 Americans are working in the first year of their current job
* The U.S. ranks 20th in the world for broadband penetration.
* In 2002Â Nintendo invested more in R&D than the federal government (excludes military R&D)
* 1 in 8 married U.S. couples met online
* There are 2.7 billion searches on Google each month. Where were these questions addressed to before Google?
* There are more than 6 billion sms messages sent everyday
* There are 540,000 words in the English language -- five times more than there were in 1800
* 3,000 books are published daily
* More knowledge exists in one week of the New York Times than a person was able to access in their entire lifetime in the 1800’s
* 1.5 exabytes of information will be created this year -- that’s more than was created in the previous 5,000 years
* What a college freshman learns this year will be outdated by his junior year of college
* Fiber optics capacity is tripling every six months
* The $100 laptop project will ship 50 to 100 million laptops per year to people in underdeveloped countries. There were 47 million laptops shipped world wide last year
* By 2023 a $1000 computer will exceed the capacity of the human brain
* By 2047 a $1000 computer will exceed the capacity of the human race

New York Mulls Giving Mayor Control of City Schools

The non-profit group Learn NY is campaigning to give New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg control of the city's schools.

Here is the group's website.

No More Money for Day Cares

Technically, there will be money, but in New York City the city controllers are cutting the budgets for day care centers.

Those reductions are part of a package of $62 million in cuts that will affect day care services to struggling working families across the five boroughs. Mr. Mattingly said some hard choices were necessary “to avoid a train wreck” to the city’s day care programs in this time of fiscal crisis.

The rest of the cuts will affect school-age children, who could be served by Department of Education programs, he said. By the start of the next school year, for example, Children’s Services will no longer pay for day care slots for 3,300 5-year-olds who could be served through kindergarten and after-school programs.

It will also stop co-financing slots for 4-year-olds who are enrolled in universal prekindergarten programs. Currently, child welfare funds go to provide enrichment in these classrooms.

More American Students Study In China Than Ever Before

These days, when a student wants a real education, she studies abroad. The New York Times finds that more students than before are choosing China as their hot spot.

As a person formerly employed in China, I highly recommend it. Nothing prepares the American better for participation in a hyper-capitalist global economy than doing business or learning how the world is run from the Chinese point of view.

India Has More Honors Students than America Has Kids

glumbert - Did You Know?

Entrepreneurs, Create the Future of Education

If you are like most entrepreneurs, you value conversations, ideas, and you understand and appreciate the value of risk.

I'm not talking petal to the metal risk. I'm talking about risk that refines your business and takes your ideas into a direction that few people travel.

Are you an education innovator who is out to disrupt traditional education services? Are you online savvy? Do you want to answer the call to action that students are giving you by offering them and their schools a service that addresses real need in the market?

Do you think you have a school idea that would work well in the for-profit K12 and Post Secondary industry?

Sign up to participate in the 11th Annual Education Industry Investment Forum and apply to be on of the Five Entrepreneurs to Watch in 2009.

Are you a John Katzman, founder of 2Tor?

Does your business plan's vision of the future resemble the innovative energy and forward thinking of a Jordan Goldman, founder of Unigo.com?

Do you look at publishing like Jeff Shelstad at Flat World Knowledge?

If so, and even if you are wildly different than these individuals, you have an opportunity to join them at the 2nd Annual FuturED Symposium, a showcase and platform for the latest developments in the education industry.

We look forward to seeing you in Phoenix in March.

Will Tenure for Public School Teachers Disappear in DC?

The Washington, D.C. public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee is floating an eyebrow-raising proposal to abolish tenure plans in the school district and incorporate the investment assistance of private foundations and individuals.

From the article:

Ms. Rhee has not proposed abolishing tenure outright. Under her proposal, each teacher would choose between two compensation plans, one called green and the other red. Pay for teachers in the green plan would rise spectacularly, nearly doubling by 2010. But they would need to give up tenure for a year, after which they would need a principal’s recommendation or face dismissal.

Teachers who choose the red plan would also get big pay increases but would lose seniority rights that allow them to bump more-junior teachers if their school closes or undergoes an overhaul. If they were not hired by another school, their only options would be early retirement, a buyout or eventual dismissal.

In an interview, Ms. Rhee said she considered tenure outmoded.

“Tenure is the holy grail of teacher unions,” she said, “but has no educational value for kids; it only benefits adults. If we can put veteran teachers who have tenure in a position where they don’t have it, that would help us to radically increase our teacher quality. And maybe other districts would try it, too.”

But the proposal that could garner up to US$75 million for increasing teacher salaries is drawing fire from the Washington Teachers' Union.

Washington Teachers' Union