Education Week - April 24, 2013 - Special Report - S1

ABOUT THIS REPORT
The intersection between public
mission and private opportunity continues to get busier as schools search
for better ways to educate students,
and entrepreneurs work to create
products and services to help educators achieve their goals.
How to balance the two sometimes
conflicting interests is a popular
topic at conferences that feature a
mix of entrepreneurs and K-12 educators and policymakers. The issue
often triggers heated debate fueled
by the question: Is your motivation
to simply make money or to improve
schools?
Some education observers, in fact,
are alarmed at what they see as increasingly aggressive moves by private companies to make money from
the K-12 system and influence how
it works; others see the expanding
role of for-profit ventures as a natural evolution of the interplay between
the private and public sectors in a
free-market economy.
This special report—a follow-up to

IN THIS ISSUE

our 2012 report “Accelerating Innovation” and produced with support from
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
and the Carnegie Corporation of New
York—examines the complex relationship between the private and public
sectors in K-12. It is part of an Education Week commitment to following
the education industry and new approaches to schooling on a special Industry & Innovation channel on edweek.org as well as through a monthly
e-newsletter, blogs, live and virtual
events, and other future offerings.
The 2013 report begins with a look at
the growing political influence of education companies and what that means
for schools. It also examines how educators can do a better job evaluating
the research that companies use to sell
their products, how district purchasing
approaches are changing, the benefits
and drawbacks of beta-testing products in schools, and the role of publicprivate partnerships.

S2

Education Industry
Players Exert PublicPolicy Influence

S3

Companies,
Policymakers Look
For Common Ground

S11

Big-Name Companies
Feature Larger-Impact
Research Efforts

S13

What to Ask
About Research

S14

Privatization Choices

S4

Industry Shapes Goals
And Tech Focus at
N.Y.C. School

S15

À la Carte Purchasing
Tactics Signal Districts’
Unique Needs

S5

Beta Testing Ed.
Products Can Get Tricky
for Schools

S16

Big Companies
Face K-12 Shift

S10

Vetting Product
Research to Determine
What Works

—KEVIN C. BUSHWELLER
Executive Project Editor

ONLINE EXCLUSIVES
CLICK ON THE DIGITAL EDITION

PRESIDENT &
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Virginia B. Edwards
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Gregory Chronister
EXECUTIVE PROJECT EDITOR
Kevin C. Bushweller
ASSISTANT PROJECT EDITOR
Sean Cavanagh
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Michelle R. Davis

covers technology for Education
Week and Digital Directions

DESIGN DIRECTOR
Laura Baker
DEPUTY DESIGN DIRECTOR
Gina Tomko
ASSISTANT DESIGN DIRECTOR/
PROJECT LEAD
Vanessa Solis
DESIGNERS
Sumi Bannerjee
Linda Jurkowitz
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Charles Borst

Amanda M. Fairbanks

DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION
Jo Arnone

Robin L. Flanigan

MANAGER,
ADVERTISING OPERATIONS
Casey Shellenberger

is a freelance writer based in New
York City

is a freelance writer based in
Rochester, N.Y.

ADVERTISING:
For information about
print and online advertising
in future special reports,
please contact
Associate Publisher,
Sales and Marketing,
Sean Herdman
at sherdman@epe.org
or (301) 280-3162.

Copyright ©2013 by Editorial Projects in Education Inc. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted by any means, electronic or otherwise, without the
written permission of the copyright holder. Readers may make up to five
print copies of this publication at no cost for personal, noncommercial use,
provided that each includes a full citation of the source.
Visit www.edweek.org/go/copies
for information about additional print photocopies.

Read the digital (PDF) edition of “When Public Mission Meets Private Opportunity”
and forward copies of the online version to your colleagues.
www.edweek.org/go/i&ireport-download

INDUSTRY & INNOVATION ONLINE
Follow breaking news and trends about the education marketplace and new
approaches to schooling on the Industry & Innovation channel on edweek.org. The
channel features articles from Education Week, news and opinion bloggers, virtual
events, white papers, and job listings.
www.edweek.org/ii

VIDEO: DEVELOPING TECH SKILLS
Watch high school students, educators, and IBM
employees talk about a public-private partnership
between the P-TECH program in the New York City
schools and IBM Corp. The partnership aims to
develop students’ technological skills, and it gives
them priority for future jobs at IBM.
www.edweek.org/go/partnerships-video
BLOGS
Marketplace K-12
Education Week Assistant Editor Sean Cavanagh covers developments
in the education industry that are having an impact on schools.
www.edweek.org/go/marketplace
Reimagining K-12
Matt Greenfield and Tom Segal of Rethink Education, a venture fund
focused on education technology startups, write about disruptive
innovation in the K-12 system.
www.edweek.org/go/reimagining
Vander Ark on Innovation
Tom Vander Ark, an education advocate, adviser, and the author of
Getting Smart: How Personal Digital Learning Is Changing the World,
writes extensively about digital learning and the education marketplace.
www.edweek.org/go/VanderArk
http://www.edweek.org http://www.edweek.org http://www.edweek.org/go/i&ireport-download http://www.edweek.org http://www.edweek.org/ii http://www.edweek.org/go/partnerships-video http://www.edweek.org/go/marketplace http://www.edweek.org/go/reimagining http://www.edweek.org/go/copies http://www.edweek.org/go/VanderArk
Education Week - April 24, 2013 - Special Report

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - April 24, 2013 - Special Report
