New Video Series Celebrates Education Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs are a special breed; they’re tenacious, imaginative risk-takers willing to work hard to see their ideas become reality. They draw on diverse experiences to generate breakthrough ideas that disrupt the status quo. And they’re bringing the same transformative impact to public education as they have in the fields of medicine, technology and science. That’s […]
Friday Night Lights (and Pitches)
Last Friday night saw nearly 300 Bay Area entrepreneurs, VCs and philanthropists gather for the final pitch session of The EdTech Entrepreneurs Lab, an education startup incubation program helping cultivate the next generation of education technology entrepreneurs. Since February, a cohort of 25 incredible individuals has been working through the Lab on tech-enabled solutions to […]
2011 Entrepreneur of the Year, Organization of the Year, and New Market Maker Awards
While more than 800 supporters of entrepreneurial change in public education gathered at the twelfth annual NewSchools Summit in Burlingame, CA on Wednesday, we announced the recipients of our annual awards, including Entrepreneur of the Year, Organization of the Year, and New Market Maker Award. The awards are designed to recognize and celebrate the achievements […]
Rethinking the for-profit model
For many years, for-profit education organizations have faced fairly pervasive skepticism. Why? In part, you can blame the very mixed performance of for-profit school operators. Some, understandably, wonder whether every possible dollar is being directed toward the benefit of students (although it’s important to note that for-profits typically have to raise private funding, which results […]
Supporting Superman (and Woman)
How does NewSchools support education entrepreneurs? I get this question more than any other and not just from those outside the education community so I wanted to give some real examples of how NewSchools helps entrepreneurs. Education venture philanthropy came on the scene in 1999 when then Stanford GSB student Kim Smith, legendary venture capitalist John Doerr […]
For Profit, For Good?
When starting a new venture, one of the first questions that education entrepreneurs wrestle with is the legal structure. There are no hard fast rules to determine legal structure – it depends on your goals, as Jim Fruchterman so nicely lays out in the Stanford Social Review article “For Love or Lucre.” Once upon a […]
New investments… and a new video!
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/18677353 w=500&h=281] Back in September, we made a promise that if 150,000 people pledged to see the movie Waiting for “Superman”, we would invest $5 million in entrepreneurial organizations that improve public education for low-income kids. The movie gets viewers outraged—as they should be—at the fact that in some communities, a quality education is […]
Ted Talks at Google
Despite all of the attention being paid to innovation in public education today, educational entrepreneurs still face many obstacles to reaching children through their ideas. Unlike in fields like technology and medicine, where capital markets help entrepreneurs build transformative ideas, education entrepreneurs motivated to improve educational outcomes for students often find little support and even […]
News roundup: lotteries, turnarounds, graduation, and other venture highlights
With the school year coming to a close, a variety of recent pieces have reflected on several entrepreneurial organizations’ successes while also being clear about the challenges that lie ahead: Harlem Success Academy Students Outscore Peers, in Education Week (school operated by Success Charter Network) On a related note, don’t miss the new documentary The Lottery about families […]
NewSchools, on Facebook?
NewSchools is considering becoming a part of the Facebook community. We’d love to hear your ideas regarding how best to create our presence on Facebook that enhances our work and that of the greater education entrepreneurship community. Please leave us your feedback!