Harvard Course Yields Education Entrepreneurs

Education Week:

When Stacey M. Childress began teaching a course on educational entrepreneurship at the Harvard Business School three years ago, she anticipated that a few graduates each year would make the leap into the education sector. But, to her surprise, the course has proved to be a breeding ground for the next generation of educational risk-takers.

Recent graduates have gone on to found their own charter schools; work for the Broad and Bill & Melinda Gates foundations; help manage district redesigns in New York City and Oakland, Calif.; join Teach For America, the KIPP charter school network, and the Harlem Children’s Zone; and enter the education practices of mainstream consulting companies, among other ventures....

And while some of those students enrolled in the course knowing that they wanted to enter the education field, for others it was a turning point. ...

“This isn’t an education course that happens to be at the business school,” said Ms. Childress, whose first job was teaching English at a public high school in Texas before she went to work in the electronics-security industry and, subsequently, co-founded a software company. “It’s an entrepreneurship course that happens to be focused on the education sector.

“It sits within our social-enterprise course offerings that are about starting, leading, and managing mission-driven organizations,” she said, “and it’s cross-listed with our entrepreneurship unit.” ...

But what sets the Harvard course apart, according to Kim Smith, a co-founder of the San Francisco-based NewSchools Venture Fund, a venture philanthropy working in education, is its focus on entrepreneurship as a way to think about redesigning the education system, “and really improving the system, not just starting a company for its own sake.”...

It’s framed around two central questions: Is there a link between effective leadership and management practices and higher educational outcomes? And, will the introduction of market principles—such as the transparency of performance data, accountability for results, and choices for customers—force change on the public system and lead to higher performance?