Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed

http://avichal.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/why-education-startups-do-not-succeed/

by jonathanjaeger • 13 years ago

17 8 13 years ago

avichal.wordpress.com

Millennium• 13 years ago

Education startups do not appear to succeed because it takes too long to measure their success. You can't just look at graduation rates and senior test scores: you're producing people who will be building and maintaining things for some 30 years, then managing and planning for some 30 more, and you need data points from this entire time span.

We're only really just starting to get big pictures from the changes implemented in the 1960s. It's too early to say very much about the things implemented later on, and we essentially have no data at all on today's startups. That's why they don't seem to succeed: we can't even really know if they're succeeding or not.

mathattack• 13 years ago

Great article. Thanks for sharing. I think that the change in time horizons is very important. It can take a long time to see the benefits of education. It can also take a long time for companies to realize the benefits of what they're doing. Outside of Khan Academy, there's not a lot of hockey stick growth.

drharris2• 13 years ago

A big part of education startup failure is conflict of interest among all the parties. For an individual teacher to adopt a new technology is not super difficult; you just have to solve a real pain point, or show that your tool can help them actually teach students. The problem here is that teachers have no money. Not only are they rarely given discretionary money to use for the classroom, but they're severely underpaid professionals who are notorious for already spending lots of personal money on their students. No way to monetize this group effectively.

The second layer is District/State boards of education. The problem here is educating (ironic) these former educators on what the classroom needs. Often, these people believe that the technologies available the last time they were in the classroom are sufficient for teachers to do their work. Additionally, teachers have very little pull in this group, as most are elected/appointed officials. This group actually has considerable influence money-wise, as there is a lot of money earmarked for technological purposes. But by and large they are not aware of technologies that are not prefaced by Microsoft, Dell, or IBM.

The ancillary of the second layer is the district/state IT department. Let's just say that the best people in IT don't wind up here, because the pay and work environment are horrible. To save costs, you're constantly looking into open source solutions. Likely, these people will believe your excellent product can be easily replaced by a Wordpress install with a bunch of plugins. Maybe it's really because they just want to prove they can program like any professional (hint, they cannot). So, no support from IT for you.

The final layer is at the federal level, people who make policies. Your best bet here is to have a 20-year Senator who will vouch for your product, lobby for you with all the other old people involved in setting educational policy. Here's a hint though - people think Common Core is a radical change but it's half a century in the making and really doesn't change what anybody was already doing except for adding more testing. Long story short, if your product isn't another way to test students in a standardized manner, you'll get no traction at this level.

So, good luck!

missn• 13 years ago

Definitely agree with you about issues with monetizing teachers. You would be surprise though to know the kind of things that departments/districts pay for.

I once worked for a company that provided montly conferences to teachers (marketed as professional development courses). Apparently, the districts in our area provided teachers with a budget towards professional development courses and so for the majority of them, they just invoiced the cost of the seminar to their districts.

Not the typical education startup you would think of starting but they're completely self-funded and they seem like they're doing well (with a steady stream of attendees for the last ten years).

Maybe it's just a matter of looking for ways to use the money that is already allocated (but not used) rather than convincing districts to add more to the budget? I know for my former company, the issue wasn't about how teachers could pay for the conferences but rather teachers didn't know they had the money to use for these conferences to begin with.

xname2• 13 years ago

Please google: teacher underpaid myth

drharris2• 13 years ago

I'm related to 7 teachers, across 3 different states. They have much more education than I do (Masters degrees with lots of continuing graduate education hours), and make less than half the salary. It's not a myth. Keep in mind these are not hourly plant workers or night managers at a grocery store, they are highly educated professionals who work the equivalent time of a salaried year in my profession.

gte910h• 13 years ago

I think organizations may reach education better than companies:

http://codeforamerica.org/ for instance

Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed

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