entrepreneurship venture?
Educational social entrepreneurship refers to the individuals, organisations or associations which run educational ventures that use a social entrepreneurship business process. It can be argued educational social entrepreneurship should include the entrepreneurial firms that sell educational resources or run schools. Pearson, for example, is a profitable multina- tional education corporation that sells educational resources and assessments in 70 coun- tries, while EdisonLearning operates schools in the United States and the United Kingdom that teach 100,000 pupils. These profit-making ventures are not the focus of this research. The focus of this research is on educational SEVs whose primary value proposition is to meet an unmet educational need, and pursue a broader social mission in innovative ways, by earning revenue and drawing on private resources and capital.
Educational social entrepreneurship is not a synonym for alternative or designated spe-
cial character education.1 Even though some of the benefits from education cannot be
monetised, educational SEVs capture value from the services they provide and are likely to
1In New Zealand, Alternative Education (AE) refers to services that provide learning opportunities for
pupils who cannot learn in regular state schools, and have fallen out of the system, because of problems such as truancy or behavioural issues (Te Kete Ipurangi,2015b). It is intended that pupils in AE will either return to regular schooling or transition to tertiary training or employment.
reinvest any surpluses to grow their ventures.
While educational SEVs may be driven by individuals, who act as catalysts, they are also likely to be collective endeavours, as they are developed in response to the educational needs, values and expectations of particular local communities. For example, prior to be- coming a kind of designated special character state school in New Zealand, the Māorikura kaupapaschool movement (schools run according tote aho matua(a Māori worldview and philosophy) began a grassroots initiative aimed at promoting Māori language and culture among those who identified as Māori (see, for example, Penetito,2002; Pihama, Cram, & Walker,2002; G. H. Smith,1997,2000; Tocker,2015). Advocates ofkaupapaMāori ed- ucation believed developing a parallel school system would protect Māori customs, help urban Māori to develop a sense of identity that had been lost during the 20th century and, at its most radical, resist the perceived dominance of New Zealand European culture.
4.2.1 Charter schools
The value propositions of educational SEVs that run schools of various kinds around the world have similar emphases on meeting unmet educational needs through innovation. Each uses, or displays, different business models, innovations, and/or concerns for dif- ferent pupils. The charter school model is perhaps one of the best examples of educa- tional social entrepreneurship, as the sponsor organisations that run charter schools in different places around the world may balance social objectives against the use of a market model. The passage of laws to permit private providers to operate publicly-funded inde- pendent schools, such as charter schools in the United States, ‘Academies’ in England, or ‘Free Schools’ in England and Sweden, has created opportunities for educational social en- trepreneurs in developed countries to start alternatives to regular state schools. As well as the licence to run a school, charter school sponsors receive a per-pupil subsidy from the government to help pay operating costs. Depending on where charter schools operate, the subsidy can be equivalent to what pupils receive at regular state schools or a proportion. Sponsors may receive assistance with capital costs, or they can finance capital expenditure themselves. New Zealand’s PSKH initiative was based on the charter school model. Even though charter schools have been operating in the United States since 1991, they do not appear to have ever been evaluated as a kind of social entrepreneurship.
tem change. The charter school model is based on the principle of high accountability
in return for the freedom to innovate (Toma and Zimmer,2012, p. 209; Betts and Tang,
2014, p. 1). Thus, the charter school model is an example of how public choice theory
has been applied to school organisation and management (Buchanan & Tullock,1962).
The theory assumes that providing all schools with the freedom to compete for pupils, and to innovate, will lead to changes in teaching practices, and learning environments, in under-performing schools (see, for example, Betts,2005; Betts,2009, pp. 2–5; Chubb and Moe1990; LaRocque,2005, pp. 12–13; and Preston, Goldring, Berends, and Cannata,2012, pp. 318–19). However, these incentives can only work in markets, or quasi-markets, where schools can respond to parental preferences. In education systems like New Zealand’s, where the government controls school curricula and school network capacity, sets maxi- mum school rolls and decides which schools can open or close, it is difficult for state schools to respond to parental demand as assumed by public choice theory.
While each place has implemented the model differently, the idea is that opening in- novative charter schools will expand the range of good schools from which parents can choose. Depending on what legislation permits, these schools often target pupils in
poverty, or who have experienced problems with attending regular schools (Hess,2007).
Charter schools might use, for example, split management and school leadership struc- tures, more culturally-appropriate curricula, smaller class sizes, specialist focuses, or longer school days or years to help achieve their goals. None of these innovations are brand new. But, by using innovations such as these, or perhaps by developing new or different ap- proaches, charter schools are meant to help show what works in education, and drive up standards in regular state schools, as they compete for pupils. Even though charter schools are operated and governed by private or community sponsors, scholars have de- bated whether and to what extent charter schools use different educational approaches and have a markedly different impact on pupils’ achievement compared to regular state schools. These issues are discussed more fully in chapter 10 with reference to the results of this research.
As the charter school model has matured, it has become more valuable as part of col- laborative approaches to improving education in school systems, rather than by encour- aging disruptive innovation or competition. In the United States, for example, some ur- ban school districts, including New York, Baltimore, Denver and Boston, are collaborat- ing with charter school sponsors on ‘portfolio’ approaches to schooling (Baxter & Cooley
Nelson,2012; Lake, Posamentier, Denice, & Hill,2016). Portfolio approaches involve shar- ing infrastructure, such as enrolment systems or facilities, and taking joint responsibility for such issues as special education, the equitable distribution of school funding, and co- developing instructional best practices. The purpose is to help regular schools and charter schools to work constructively together to provide the best education for diverse pupils, rather than by pitting schools against each other.
The portfolio approach has played to charter schools’ strength in helping ethnic minor- ity pupils to achieve more highly than in regular state schools, or in areas where there are large achievement gaps between higher and lower-performing pupils (see, for example,
Betts and Tang,2014, pp. 31–34; Raymond et al.,2013, pp. 26–45, 63–78; Hoxby, Mu-
rarka, and Kang,2009, pp. IV-5–8). Those sponsors and districts engaged in collabora-
tion hope these arrangements will help to diffuse innovation and expertise among charter schools and regular state schools, to address the disparity in achievement between lower and higher-performing pupils, and to lift the overall quality of public school systems. The charter school model shows that educational social entrepreneurship is possible, and can create value for certain sections of the community.
4.2.2 Pop-up schools
Whereas the charter school model has involved creating parallel publicly-funded indepen- dent school systems, a different, more recent, approach initiated in the United States has been to develop an incubator for educational social entrepreneurs known as ‘Schools 4.0’. Schools 4.0 is a non-profit educational SEV whose founders saw an opportunity, in the after-math of hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans schools in 2010, to train en- trepreneurs in how to open small-scale, ‘pop-up’ schools for families and children.
Pop-up schools are tailored to the granular problems faced by particular communities. The Schools 4.0 model involves helping educational social entrepreneurs to define tough problems, envision and test possible solutions at a small scale, and then scale-up and launch effective approaches (Candler,2015, pp. 3–4, 21).
A strength of the model is that pop-up schools are embedded in their communities, through partnerships with organisations, like museums, businesses or local employers. These partnerships may lead to job and career opportunities for the pupils who attend these schools. Cultivating the talent of people with innovative ideas is another strength
of School 4.0’s model. The intention is these innovative individuals will grow communi- ties associated with their start-ups, which can sustain innovation and, in time, encourage reform of state school systems.
While the Schools 4.0 approach is not meant to ‘blow up the system’, it is disruptive insofar as it represents a break with conventional approaches to school development. It also provides a way for educational social entrepreneurs to experiment in a lower-risk en- vironment.