Groups that pour money into education-related causes like to think big. Look no further than the debate now swirling around a philanthropic proposal that would enroll half of Los Angeles’ students in charter schools.
But Matt Candler of the education incubator 4.0 Schools writes that donors and investors also need to think small. There’s value, he says, in backing large numbers of education ventures in their early stages— including new, tiny schools that may start out serving a few dozen students.
We get drunk on scale, but we have to remember that all big ideas were once small. KIPP started as a one-classroom experiment in Houston; Sal Khan was scratching out videos to his niece late at night while he still held down his analyst job. We should be looking for better ways to invest at this stage, when we can actually influence whether someone pursues a crazy idea instead of just settling in to the status quo.
There are signs of hope … in go to market investments like New Schools Venture Fund’s Catapult, the Next Gen Learning Challenge, and Project XQ (for new school ideas), and New Schools’ Ignite (for new tools). But even these programs assume folks will traverse early stages on their own.
In Florida, stories are bubbling up about small groups of educators striking out on their own to start new schools. In some cases, they’re setting out to serve low-income or special needs students — students who might have the most to gain from an innovative educator who succeeds at trying something new.
Many of these schools start as private schools that emerge from sudden events (students were desperate for other options, a specialized school for children with autism relocated and became hard for some parents to reach). How many more new schools could be launched if more donors and philanthropists were willing to support new, experimental ventures that start small, and grow if they do well? This approach could allow more educators to try new things, while limiting the risk of failure. Schools that do well could apply to become charters, or remain private and help students participate in scholarship programs.
