edbizbuzz

The Education Industry Association (EIA) has won the Award of Excellence in the 2008 Associations Advance America (AAA) Awards program, a national competition sponsored by the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) & The Center for Association Leadership. EIA received the award for its development and promotion of the Code of Ethics for SES Providers, which has helped guide the conduct and operations of tutoring organizations that provide supplemental education services (SES) under the “No Child Left Behind” law....

• Drawn public commitments/affirmations from 26 SES provider members
• Been used by 14 states, including CT, FL, DE, IL, OH, PA, MD, NC, NM, NJ, NY, MA, TN, and VA, as part of their criteria to approve SES providers.
• (been) revised and strengthened... to account for emerging concerns and issues surrounding the administration of SES nationwide.

ASAE is the membership organization of the association profession. Founded in 1920, it claims 22,000 association CEOs, staff professionals, industry partners, and consultant members. Its subsidiary Center for Association Leadership provides professional development services. In effect, the award says that people in the business of managing associations believe EIA and Director Steve Pines have done something worthy of praise.

I agree. There's a story behind this EIA press release of April 14 - and lessons for the school improvement industry - that deserve the attention of edbizbuzz readers.

Continue reading "Kudos to the Education Industry Association" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 7:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I was prompted to consider this issues by "Are Teachers Professionals?" an April 7 posting by blogger Corey Bunje Bower in Thoughts on Education Policy noted by Alexander Russo's This Week in Education.

The nature of public education’s workforce shapes the school improvement marketplace. A teaching corps with the professional status of lawyers, doctors and accountants would encourage a very different sell-side than we have today. By the same token, the private sector market structure that has served pubic education for the past 150 years proceeded from a view of teachers that resembled nothing so much as proletarians on the manufacturing shop floor prior to the introduction of quality circles in the 1980s. As a consequence, the traditional education industry sells and markets to administrators.

Whether teaching should or will become a legally recognized profession, I think most observers have come to realize that our view of teachers needs to move in the direction of doctor and lawyer and away from assembly line laborers in the industrial revolution’s early phase. This is certainly the implication of proposals to hold teachers accountable for student outcomes.

Continue reading "Teaching Should Be a Legally-Recognized Profession, But It's Not" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday I attended parts of the Education Industry Association’s annual Washington policy conference:

• The keynote address by Republican Congressman Buck McKeon, ranking member on the House Education and Labor Committee, and this year’s recipient of the trade group’s “Friend of the Education Industry Award.”
• A panel on the experience of special education providers with their various government clients - primarily school districts.
• A panel on the intersection of research, development, evaluation, and the sale of “innovative” products, programs and services.

My Observations:

Continue reading "The Education Industry Association’s Annual Washington Meeting (II)" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Birds of a feather may flock together, but the problem faced by providers in the school improvement industry is determining what kind of birds they are. Those who view themselves as publishers can join the Association of Educational Publishers or the Association of American Publishers School Division. The Software and Information Industry Association’s Education Division is available to firms that consider their business education technology. The Knowledge Alliance has been making a bid to move beyond its traditional membership of education research nonprofits, to organization that see themselves in the business of applying knowledge to k-12 education problems. Comprehensive School Reform providers have the Coalition for Comprehensive School Improvement. Education Management Organizations have the National Council of Education Providers.

The net effect of this conception has been to turn the school improvement industry into something like the Kurdistan of Washington trade groups. The politics of empire left the Kurds spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran and parts of the former Soviet Union. The history and politics of federal education trade groups has spread the school improvement industry across organizations with different objectives and generally lacking a coherent voice or influence.

The Education Industry Association might have become the school improvement industry’s trade group. It might still. But it has pursued higher education business, and its history in tutoring has made it the de facto trade group of Supplemental Educational Service (SES) providers.

I have been going to the association’s annual and Washington meetings on and off from the time when the organization was called the Association of Educators in Private Practice. I am attending parts of the Washington meeting on federal policy today and tomorrow, and will be posting my observations.

Continue reading "The Education Industry Association’s Annual Washington Meeting (I)" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 8:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As a whole, the school improvement industry has tended to respond to potential changes in a reauthorized No Child Left Behind that threaten sales from a position of thinly veiled self interest. What passes for a public policy argument is that the kids who use their services will lose a benefit. Whether that argument is made sincerely or cynically, it simply misses the larger point in opposition to the law as it now stands – that the idea of one hundred percent student proficiency in core subjects by 2014 amounts to an impossible dream, and an unrealistic basis for public policy.

NCLB’s bedrock principle is “100/2014.” Unless the “impossibility argument” is addressed head on, the entire market for school improvement services is vulnerable to death by a thousand amendments.

What should the industry be saying?

Continue reading "What the School Improvement Industry Ought to be Saying About "100/2014" and the "Impossibility Argument"" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the last several days, I've seen a spate of articles on the large and growing number of schools in need of improvement under No Child Left Behind.

Stephanie Banchero of the Chicago Tribune notes that some 900 Illinois schools missed state targets Adequate Yearly Progress, up 30% from last year. Another 572 schools would have joined them, but for changes to the meaning of "pass" on state math and reading tests.

In the New York Times Diana Jean Schemo notes that 441 schools in Florida, 77 in New York state, and even 49 in Baltimore, Maryland fall into this category. Over 1000 California schools are failing, and the state predicts 6,063 by 2014.

Philip Ireland of the North County Times, quotes the school board president of Carlsbad Unified School Districts - one of the best in the state - Kelli Moor: "Within two to three years, our school district will be in the headlines for failing." Schemo quotes Guadalupe Parama, director of high schools on the East Side of Los Angeles Unified School District: "What are we supposed to do? Shut down every school?”

That depends on why schools aren't making AYP.

It's an important question, and not just for politicians and eduwonks debating NCLB reauthorization. Proficiency targets are the single most important factor determining the size of the school improvement market as measured by potential sales revenues.

Continue reading "Should/Does the School Improvement Industry Have Anything to Say About 100% Proficiency by 2014?" »

Posted by Dean Millot at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)