Education Week - February 19, 2014 - 11

student assignment in the district.
Mr. Lowe headed up a competition
this school year to crowdsource
school design proposals from anyone
in the Louisville community,
including teachers, entrepreneurs,
nonprofit groups, and community
members.
Panels of trained educators and
community members will then narrow
down the proposals, select finalists,
and, eventually, one or more
winners will be chosen to build their
designs, pending approval from the
district's school board. Proposals include
a technology-focused school,
a Spanish-immersion school, and a
school of sustainability.
"We really wanted thinking that's
coming from other places, from people
who are outside of the usual decisionmakers,"
said Mr. Lowe.
Interest in the competition was
overwhelming, with 82 teams submitting
letters of intent and 48 applications,
he said. Finalists will
be selected by March, and the new
school could open by fall 2015.
But beyond the one proposal
that is chosen (or multiple proposals
fused together to form the new
school design), he suspects that
many of the ideas submitted will
spark changes in the district's preexisting
schools as well.
Efforts in New York
As part of the iZone in the New York
City school system, which has one of
the most robust innovation zones in
the country with about 300 participating
schools, local officials also embraced
crowdsourcing as a way to spur
innovation.
Last year, the iZone, which started
in 2010, hosted a software applica-
tion development competition to solicit
apps and games to address the
achievement gaps in middle school
math. Winners were announced in
May with $104,000 in prizes distributed
to nine companies.
The innovation-zone concept dates
back to at least 1994 when Boston
Public Schools introduced a set of
"pilot schools," according to Daniel
French, the executive director of the
Boston-based Center for Collaborative
Education, which was established to
help support innovative school models
in the 57,000-student district.
Much like the current innovation
schools, Boston's pilot schools are
granted freedom over their budgets,
staffing, governance, curriculum, assessment,
and school calendar.
Today, out of 128 total schools, the
district has a total of 33 autonomous
schools-21 pilot schools, which were
created with the teachers' union; six
Horace Mann charter schools, which
are considered part of the district
but must seek state approval to
open; and six innovation schools,
which were created by state legislation
and receive authorization from
the local school board.
Inspiring Change
Mr. French said that some of the
initiatives of the innovative schools
have spread into the wider school
district, such as reworking staffing
policies to do away with seniority.
"Today there's growing understanding
or interest and willingness
on the part of many districts to
see that, in fact, there's some merit
to the principle that you have a better
chance of success as a school
if you're afforded greater control
over your resources and decision-
making," he said.
A 2007 study that compared the
performance of Boston's autonomous
schools with those in the rest
of the district found that the pilot
schools outperformed the district
in all areas, including graduation
rates, state test performance, and
disciplinary referrals.
But that performance has slipped
somewhat, said Mr. French, because
of cuts to the oversight system for
the schools.
"Without an accountability system
in place and a growing number of
schools, there's been more variation"
in performance, he said.
In the 21,000-student Syracuse,
N.Y., district, federal School Improvement
Grants are fueling a
newly created iZone that is focused
on low-performing schools. Seven
such schools are in the iZone, which
started this school year, said Zheadric
Barbra, the executive director
of the district's school turnaround
office.
The zone was created in collabo-
ration with the Syracuse Teachers'
Union, an affiliate of the American
Federation of Teachers, which is providing
team-building and classroommanagement
workshops and other
professional development, said Mr.
Barbra.
"I'm trying to let people understand
that innovation starts, begins,
and ends with groups of people that
continuously collaborate to bring
about changes that are rarely seen
or that people don't subscribe to on a
regular basis," Mr. Barbra said. "It's
people kicking around ideas focused
on how do we create something that
will totally change the landscape of
education for students in an urban
environment."
K-12 Leaders Critique
Corporate Influence
By Michele Molnar
Most school superintendents in
the United States say businesses
are positively influencing their
districts, but it's usually in a fragmented,
"checkbook philanthropy"
way, rather than a transformative,
systemic approach, concludes a
study and a white paper released
this month by Harvard Business
School, The Boston Consulting
Group, and the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation.
Last fall, Harvard Business
School and the Boston Consulting
Group surveyed superintendents
from the 10,000 largest districts
in the United States, and 1,118
responded. The researchers found
that just 3 percent of school superintendents
rate business leaders as
"well-informed" about public education,
and 14 percent of the survey
respondents say corporate leaders
are actually misinformed.
Superintendents are "very reasonably
demanding that business
leaders learn about education, respect
what educators are capable
of doing, be a partner, and not be
imperial, if you will," Jan W. Rivkin,
a professor of business administration
at Harvard Business School,
and the lead researcher on the project,
said in a phone interview.
Missed Opportunity
On the other side, business lead-
CORPORATE ED-TECH DONATIONS
Seven companies pledged more than $750 million in goods and services in a joint effort on behalf
of President Obama's ConnectED initiative to bring high-speed Internet connectivity and educational
technology into classrooms. The commitments announced earlier this month include:
shoutout?" he asked.
Donald Cohen, the executive director
of In The Public Interest, a
resource center on outsourcing, responsible
contracting, and best practices
for good government, added
that "schools need to be wired, and
it's great to see contributions that
help kick-start that. But we have to
make sure these contributors aren't
taking advantage of our children to
lock in additional sales and market
share going forward. Education
policy needs to be driven by public
interest, not profit margins."
Coverage of entrepreneurship and
innovation in education and school
design is supported in part by a grant
from the Carnegie Corporation of New
York. Education Week retains sole
editorial control over the content of this
coverage.
The MARKETPLACE K-12 blog tracks
news and trends on this issue.
www.edweek.org/go/marketplacek12
nAPPLE: $100 million in
iPads, MacBooks, and other
products, as well as content
and professional development
tools to enrich learning in
disadvantaged schools;
nAT&T: More than $100 million
to provide middle school
students with free Internet
connectivity for educational
devices over their wireless
network for three years;
nAUTODESK: An expansion
of its "Design the Future"
program to every secondary
school in the country, for a
donation valued at more than
$250 million
nMICROSOFT: The launch of
an "affordability" program
to all U.S. public schools,
by "deeply" discounting the
price of its signature Windows
operating system, which it
said will "substantially" lower
the cost of Windows-based
devices, and provide more than
12 million copies of its Office
application free to qualifying
institutions, among other
contributions;
nO'REILLY MEDIA: Partnered
with Safari Books Online to
make more than $100 million
in educational content and
tools available for free to every
school in America;
nSPRINT: Offering free wireless
service for up to 50,000 lowincome
high school students
over the next four years,
amounting to an estimated
value of $100 million;
nVERIZON: Providing a multiyear
program to support the
ConnectED vision through up
to $100 million in cash and inkind
commitments to expand
existing programs aimed at
helping teachers use devices in
STEM classes, and to start new
programs.
SOURCES: The White House;
Education Week
ers are often frustrated, wishing
for "more progress in our education
system, but also kind of scared;
they don't know what to do, so they
give generously, but in a way that
is fragmented and not necessarily
sustained," he said.
"There's a need for an alignment
between the two sectors; what we
found in our work is a fundamental
missed opportunity," observed
Mr. Rivkin.
Still, 95 percent of superinten-
dents say that businesses are involved
in their schools, according
to the survey. By a nearly 3-to-1
margin, business efforts to donate
money and goods and to support
individual students outnumbered
deeper engagement in curriculum
design, teacher development, and
district-level management assistance,
the researchers found.
Ninety percent of superintendents
who responded to the nationally
representative survey believe
that business' engagement leads to
a positive impact on education-although
only 10 percent say the impact
of that involvement has been
evaluated. Mr. Rivkin said corporate
participation in education tends to
be "focused on alleviating immediate
needs and addressing the problems
of a weak system, rather than
trying to strengthen the system."
The findings, detailed in "Partial
Credit: How America's School
Superintendents See Business as
a Partner," show that most administrators
(81 percent) want to see
even more business participation
at their schools. Of those, about onequarter
would like businesses to get
involved in new ways, while 74 percent
are looking to sustain the same
kinds of engagement.
Business Leaders' 'Playbook'
To address that wish, the three
collaborators on the research concurrently
released "Lasting Impact:
A Business Leader's Playbook
for Supporting America's
Schools," which provides ideas for
bridging the divide between "what
educators need" and "what businesses
are providing."
The playbook focuses on three
ways businesses can contribute:
* Laying the policy foundations
for innovation, by, for example,
becoming involved in supporting
the implementation of the Common
Core State Standards;
* Partnering with educators
to scale up proven innovations,
such as ExxonMobil's work with
the National Math and Science
Initiative, or IBM's work with the
Pathways in Technology Early
College High School in Brooklyn;
and,
* Supporting educators to reinvent
a local education ecosystem,
as is happening in Cincinnati,
where business leaders joined
nonprofits and educators in the
StriveTogether partnership to
build an integrated system to
support the education of the city's
children from cradle to career.
The co-authors acknowledge
that these "transformational approaches"
have their benefits and
challenges. The 30-page booklet
explores topics such as charters
and school choice, accountability,
and reinvention.
"There's a big difference between
the business community
supporting schools in what the
leaders of schools want to do, versus
business involvement around
a very different vision of what
schools should do [when that
means] upsetting the status quo,
pushing for reforms that may
not be agreed upon by teachers'
unions and administrators," said
Patrick J. McGuinn, an associate
professor of political science and
education at Drew University in
Madison, N.J.
Coverage of entrepreneurship and
innovation in education and school
design is supported in part by a grant
from the Carnegie Corporation of New
York. Education Week retains sole
editorial control over the content of
this coverage.
Scan this tag with your
smartphone for links to
"Partial Credit: How
America's School
Superintendents See Business as a
Partner" and "Lasting Impact: A Business
Leader's Playbook for Supporting America's
Schools." www.edweek.org/links
EDUCATION WEEK | February 19, 2014 | www.edweek.org | 11
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Education Week - February 19, 2014

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