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If you’ve been following my series on the social keiretsu, you know that publications are the subject of a forthcoming post. One of the points I’m going to make is that most readers will regard the positions of several people from the same institution with greater skepticism than one made by the same number of people from different organizations. The reasons are obvious – it’s more likely that the individuals in the second instance have arrived at their positions independently, while it's clear that the individuals in the first case share interests likely to account for their convergence. Where parties appear to be independent, but are in fact closely related and share interests, but this is not disclosed, the effect on readers is misleading per se.

Via editor Paul Tough, and probably February's Yale Education Leadership Conference, the March 9 New York Times Sunday Magazine provides a case study of the problem.

Continue reading "Sidebar on a Social Keiretsu: NY Times Mag Interviews the New Philanthropy" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 12:57 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Like overlapping board memberships, financial relationships do indicate related parties rather than mere social acquaintances. It is possible for individuals and organizations to act in concert de facto without overlapping boards or financial ties – or even direct conversations, especially in the pursuit of shared ideological and political objectives. Indeed, this is an essential ingredient of modern political campaigns – consider the “527s.” By the same token, one bank’s extension of home owner mortgages and business lines of credit to multiple parties implies it is possible to have close financial ties entirely at arms length.

The question is: what do we have here? Specifically, what are the financial relationships among the organizations discussed in my last posting? And for readers, what are the implications? Does the pattern of foundation grants suggest coordination, concerted action, a network, an alliance?

Continue reading "Deconstructing a Social Keiretsu (III): Money Talks, But What Does it Say?" »

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Why Start Here?

I’ve decided to begin this series with the relationship across various boards for several reasons.

First, to illustrate how the social keiretsu imitates the vertical and horizontal spread of its commercial counterpart. This keiretsu networks foundation funding (including the new philanthropy Gates, Walton, and Fisher Foundations), financial intermediaries (including New Schools Venture Fund and the Charter School Growth Fund) and their social entrepreneur grantees (for example Charter Management Organizations (CMO) Uncommon Schools, Los Angeles Alliance for College Ready Public Schools), advocacy groups (the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and the pro-voucher Black Educators for Educational Options and Hispanic Council for Reform and Education Options), and self-styled education policy think tanks (Fordham Institute, Education Sector and American Enterprise Institute). Recently it has started to extend its reach into academic research and quasi-academic outreach.

Continue reading "Deconstructing a Social Keiretsu in Public Education (II): Board of Directors" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This is the sixth in series addressing the questions implied by Alexander Russo's statement.

“Social entrepreneurship is everywhere these days…. And of course it's a big buzzword in certain education circles as well. I still don't know what it means.”

In this series of posts, I’ve tried to strip away the vague and overbroad use of the phrase; its applications to intrapreneurship within school districts or dominant publishers, commercial entrepreneurship in public education, and any new nonprofit in public education. This leaves us with two operationally useful definitions, and the answer to Uberblogger Russo’s fundamental question whether “social entrepreneurship” is mostly hype.

My answer:

No. As a new unformed model for social change in general, and school reform in particular, social entrepreneurship is not hype – it has real potential and is worthy of attention, investment and study.

Yes. It is hype in its glorification of the unproved nation–wide company-owned growth model and the transfer of venture-capital objectives and valuations to philanthropy, all at the expense of the local social entrepreneur.

Continue reading "Social Entrepreneurship: Summing Up" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This is the fifth in a series addressing the questions implied by Alexander Russo's statement:

“Social entrepreneurship is everywhere these days…. And of course it's a big buzzword in certain education circles as well. I still don't know what it means.”

Today, it’s hard to find an operationally useful definition in academic or popular use; i.e., one that distinguish “social entrepreneurs” from other categories of people in the crowd.

The term entrepreneur dates to the 1700s. “Social entrepreneur” was coined in the 1960’s. It became part of the social science vocabulary in the 1970’s. I would say the phrase was popularized by students and readers of Harvard Business School Professor Rosbeth Moss Kanter. (She was one of the first to bring issues of gender and family into the cannon of academic business literature, and so one of the first to explore the social dimensions of corporate existence.) The phrase has been used to cover everyone from those who run firms with “a social conscience” (Bill Gates – Gates Foundation), nonprofit leaders (Michael Brown – City Year), wealthy individuals (Baron Michael Young of Dartington - Open University), academics with ideas that are being used by nonprofits (Greg Dees - Fuqua). At some point, such breadth takes meaning away from the phrase as a definition. For example, everything these folks did was done long before the term was invented.

Continue reading "1996: Entrepreneurship Reaches a Critical Mass in Public Education (II)" »

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This is the fourth in a series addressing the questions implied by Alexander Russo's statement:

“Social entrepreneurship is everywhere these days…. And of course it's a big buzzword in certain education circles as well. I still don't know what it means.”

Two trends in state legislation made entrepreneurship possible in public education. A top-down standards and accountability movement led to laws setting benchmarks for what students should know and be able to do, requiring tests to show that students meet the standards, and establishing consequences for schools where average student performance falls below some level. A bottom-up charter school movement induced the passage of laws establishing an alternative public school system based on private initiative. One can argue about the teeth in state accountability legislation and the amount of space charter laws created for the private sector. Regardless, the first put some premium on products, services and programs that could improve student performance; the second permitted a modicum of competition in the supply of public schools.

Continue reading "1996: Entrepreneurship Reaches a Critical Mass in Public Education (I)" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 1:31 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This is the third in series addressing the questions implied by Alexander Russo's statement:

“Social entrepreneurship is everywhere these days…. And of course it's a big buzzword in certain education circles as well. I still don't know what it means.”

From my last posting, we have a simple definition of the original – commercial – entrepreneur:

One who is able to begin and sustain a (business) entity that organizes supply to satisfy a previously unmet demand and, when necessary, to dissolve it effectively and efficiently.

The definition contains three ideas: Organizing supply to satisfy a previously unmet demand; beginning and sustaining an entity; and the power to close it down – or keep it going. The first goes to individual creativity at the conceptual level; the second, one’s management initiative; the third, personal control. In the business setting, the third implies legal ownership based on personal investment.

How do we relate this to a "social" setting, like public education?

Continue reading "What Happened in Public Education BSE (Before Social Entrepreneurship)?" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 1:40 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

“Social entrepreneurship is everywhere these days…. And of course it's a big buzzword in certain education circles as well. I still don't know what it means.”

This is the second in series addressing the questions implied by Alexander Russo's statement.

The idea of an entrepreneurial class was coined by Irish political economist (and highly successful investor in some of the earliest "modern" corporations) Richard Cantillon – a source for such market luminaries as Adam Smith - around 1730. Cantillon borrowed the verb “entreprendre” – to undertake, from French. The past participle of the word is “entrepris;” in English – enterprise. “Entre” has roots in Latin for “between.” (So perhaps George Bush was onto something profound when at the July 2002 G-7 meeting, as Shirley Williams suggests, he told Tony Blair that “the problem with the French is they don’t have a word for entrepreneur.” ) Consistent with Cantillon’s baseline contribution to the study of entrepreneurship as a type of arbitrage – a business model that exploits price differences across two markets - an entrepreneur is “one who gets between.”

Continue reading "Social Entrepreneurship: First, Define "Entrepreneur"" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 12:10 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

“Social entrepreneurship is everywhere these days…. And of course it's a big buzzword in certain education circles as well. I still don't know what it means.”

Alexander Russo keeps asking simple, important questions about the market for public school improvement. First, about philanthropy’s real interest in the efficacy of its grantees’ programs. Then, the role and value of Washington’s so-called education policy “think tanks.” Now he’d like to know what the phrase “social entrepreneur” means in public education.

These kinds of questions seem incredibly naïve - until someone tries to answer them. Of course foundations care about the value their grantees' programs add to student performance. It’s obvious that think tanks advise policymakers. Social entrepreneurs are in the trenches – schools mostly - taking risks by running projects to change public education.

But pull off the bumper sticker, and you will find that these terms obscure more than enlighten. The image conveyed by each label is an ideal rarely realized, and enough posers have claimed each mantle to stretch their meaning beyond recognition. In a series of essays on foundation evaluation and education policy shops, I’ve tried to show how we’ve reached a point where the insignia often don’t match reality. Most foundations don’t see to it that their grantees are evaluated seriously. Most policy groups don’t have a direct or sustained effect on federal education policy.

"Social entrepreneurship" is another of these terms. I will argue that there are "real" social entrepreneurs in public education. They are quite scarce; not many are the people called such by the media. If we apply the term properly, it will be obvious that most of the real social entrepreneurs in public education are being starved by their supposed benefactors - sometimes quite deliberately.

Continue reading "Uberblogger Russo Asks: What is Social Entrepreneurship in Public Education? Who is a Social Entrepreneur?" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 2:03 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Prompted by ongoing stories of pharmaceutical companies that declined to publicize studies suggesting their profitable drug lines might be less than helpful to users, This Week in Education’s uberblogger Alexander Russo asked whether foundations suppressed unfavorable research on the effectiveness of their grantee's educational programs. (See January 18.)

Since then, there have been a few technical comments on methodology. I think Alexander hoped to spark a more expansive discussion.

In that spirit, I offer some observations based on personal experience.

Perhaps the most extensive and expensive review of education programs funded by philanthropy was RAND’s eight-year roughly $10 million evaluation of New American Schools (NAS) and its $100+ million acquaintance with comprehensive school reform design grantees. I experienced the ongoing review as a member of the RAND team, the lead grants officer and later Chief Operating Officer of NAS, and the President of NAS’s lending and equity investment arm, the Education Entrepreneurs Fund. Since that time, I have made a habit of following and summarizing program evaluation and evaluation issues and tracking relevant grant RFPs for subscribers to my firm's web-based publications School Improvement Industry Week and K-12Leads and Youth Service Markets Report.

Continue reading "Does Philanthropy Sink Contrary Research Too?" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 1:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The New York Post's Mellissa Klein and Angela Monetefinise tell a fairly disappointing story of the city's Leadership Academy for aspiring public school principals.

Continue reading "What Indicates Quality? What Demonstrates Accountability?" »

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