Education Week - April 24, 2013 - Special Report - S12

S12

EDUCATION WEEK APRIL 24, 2013
Industry & Innovation > www.edweek.org/go/i&ireport
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CONTINUED FROM PAGE S10

experts say, and that for educators, it’s all about what happens
during and after implementation that seems to count the most.
Isaak Aronson, the president and chief executive officer of SmartStart Education, an education and training provider based in New
Haven, Conn., said that his company’s reliance on case studies and
other self-generated research hasn’t stopped its ability to impress
clients with in-house statistics.
“Perhaps we sacrifice a bit of scientific rigor,” Mr. Aronson said,
“but I’m always cognizant of practical considerations versus valid
and reliable research.”
Other companies are trying establish mutually beneficial research partnerships with schools.
Zane Education, a New Zealand company that provides subtitled
videos to schools and has a U.S. office in Thousand Oaks, Calif., has
started approaching schools about collaborating.
“We’re going to them and saying, ‘Hey, would you like to work
with us on this research? We’ll provide you with those results at
no cost,’ ” said the company’s director, Nicholas Tee.
In the end, even companies that can afford top-level research
sometimes don’t measure up as well as expected.
Mr. Grover, with Innovations High School in Utah, felt a bit frustrated in 2012 by what he describes as “a big company that must
do a billion dollars of business a year.”
Though the company assured him it would provide a seamless
transition to a digital curriculum, he said, there were obvious problems a month after implementation. The learning management
system that was needed to run the curriculum wasn’t completed as

“

If you’re waiting
for all the evidence to
be fully baked, you’re
going to be waiting a
long time.”
KENNETH ZEFF
Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer
Fulton County (Ga.) School District

promised, and Mr. Grover accused its representative of not delivering what was promised.
“They made a strong effort to fix it with patches, and it’s working
now,” Mr. Grover said. “But the point is, had I not asked the questions that I did, how much more would they have hooked me?” u

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Education Week - April 24, 2013 - Special Report

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